Wednesday, April 9, 2008

4/9 - 6:30pm - This is Making Me Nervous

I've been watching the evolution of this severe outbreak for Thursday and Friday. It now looks as if the storms will pack enough punch on Thursday (tomorrow) night to cause wind damage and possible hail. Another component of this system is the tornado threat as well, which mainly applies to areas just west of here. What's getting me is that these will be strong and long-tracked tornadoes, possibly not well adhering to any drop in instability as they go east. In that case I'm afraid that some of those tornadoes could come into the area, but I think they'd be few and far between given the time of day and lack of instability as you go east.

Another thing that came up in the last few hours is a change in timing for the front passage on Friday... now in the afternoon. If this indeed happens, we'd be in the cross hairs for severe weather again. It won't be as bad as tomorrow, but still there is a possibility. I noticed the CAPE values (measures instability -key for storm development) are highest at 4pm for Friday, which is prime time for severe weather. So we'll keep our eyes on that.

In any case, if I wake up tomorrow morning and the SPC's outlook for severe weather has shifted east, we're in trouble. We're in a SLIGHT risk for severe weather tomorrow as of the current forecast. There will be a HIGH risk issued tomorrow for the Missouri and Arkansas corridor most likely, but we'll see how that goes.

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