Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Thursday Thunder

Severe risk Thursday from the SPC
CLICK HERE TO POST YOUR OPINION ON THE PROPOSED NWS BUDGET CUTS.

Our quiet weather is about to come to a crashing stop as we have the possibility for 2 rounds of strong/severe thunderstorms.  The first one arrives Thursday afternoon and early evening.  The models differ on the timing of the second round.  Right now, it looks like late Sunday into Monday morning.

Thursday, we will have to watch and see how far north the warm front reaches and where exactly the surface low tracks.  It appears severe thunderstorms will be a good bet with damaging winds the primary threat.  Of course, in this situation, tornadoes can't be ruled out.  Just like many early season systems, the storms will be very fast movers.

The situation late Sunday shows a potent area of low pressure moving through the region with significant amounts of instability to produce severe weather.  There may also be enough shear to produce a tornado threat.  This is still several days away so it could change.  Right now, we need to focus on Thursday.  This first round of rough weather will hopefully get everyone into severe weather mode for spring.  By that I mean everyone should become aware and know what to do when severe weather hits.  What a wild month we have had... record snow to springtime thunderstorms and it's only February.

The Storm Prediction Center has not issued an outlook for the Sunday system yet, but in their long range discussion they say, " It is highly likely that in the subsequent outlooks... an area will likely be added... somewhere from the southern plains eastward into the lower Mississippi valley and perhaps eastward to the Atlantic coast as this powerful system takes shape Sunday into Monday."

No comments:

The NEW Arkansas Weather Blog