00:00From our Severe Weather Center in Wichita, Kansas, meteorologist Guy Pearson.
00:05Nobody knows severe weather as well as Mr. Guy.
00:08And Guy, let's begin.
00:09Already behind you, you can see some showers and thunderstorms, nothing that's severe.
00:13But when we talk about severe weather, you know what, we typically are talking
00:18about the same ingredients time and time again.
00:21We begin with a big temperature contrast across the central U.S. today, Guy.
00:28Yep, certainly.
00:30Good morning, everybody.
00:31And temperatures and having a large discrepancy
00:35in temperatures is a big part of that.
00:37You know, so we've been talking about it here all week about how much heat we've had,
00:43records set across parts of Kansas and on to the northeast, the 80 in Chicago today.
00:48All that heat has moved up there.
00:50Well, we finally have a nice, big, strong cold front that's coming in,
00:54and that's going to be the main trigger point that's going
00:56to set off this severe weather later today.
00:58And more importantly, you know, these frontal boundaries over the last couple
01:01of weeks have not had any gulf moisture.
01:04This front is different.
01:05You can see those winds howling now out of the south from Texas and Oklahoma.
01:10These are the sustained winds.
01:12Note the direction coming right in out of the Gulf of Mexico, Guy.
01:15And this front has something others haven't had.
01:18As I mentioned, it does have gulf moisture.
01:20And look at that surge of that higher dew point air of 60 degrees going right
01:25across central Kansas this morning.
01:29Yep. I mean, that's certainly those winds.
01:31We felt it across the Wichita area yesterday.
01:34We had 50 to almost 60 mile an hour winds here yesterday at times.
01:38And just driving in yesterday morning, and then I took a look at the clouds as I was driving
01:43in this morning, and everything streaming in the lower level clouds
01:46that transport that moisture north.
01:49And that's how we're getting, you know, the lower end dew points.
01:52You can see while the dew point's a little bit lower in Omaha, that front and where
01:56that moisture has pooled just southeast of Omaha there, you can see that green line
02:01of higher dew points all the way into the low 60s.
02:04So, yes, we finally have some moisture in place here for, you know, the dynamics
02:10and the cold front itself to be able to work with to generate those storms
02:13that certainly we need much needed rain across the plains here.
02:18Yeah. Now, let's talk about the energy.
02:19There it is, Four Corners area.
02:21You have that little swirl.
02:23That's going to come out in the plain states later today.
02:26So that's going to be the trigger.
02:28And, you know, Guy, one of the ingredients I love looking at, and I know you do as well,
02:34is the low-level jet.
02:36Explain to our viewers why this is such an important, let's say, an important ingredient
02:43or an important tool for severe weather generation.
02:50Yeah, certainly.
02:51The low-level jet typically sets up in your later evening and early overnight hours.
02:56And it's really a low-level, well, just as it is, low-level jet.
03:00It's a huge moisture transport northward.
03:03And so that's why we have those low 60 dew points all the way up southeast of Omaha,
03:09as well as then we go through the next little bit here into the overnight hours tonight
03:15as this graphic works on through.
03:17We actually have the winds increasing later tonight.
03:20You have the surface low that actually starts to develop along the front and dragging that
03:25cold front to the east.
03:26But then also you have that temperature differential from heating during the day.
03:31So you've got all the area across Missouri, southern Illinois, Arkansas, that's been in
03:36sunshine and heat all day, we'll be having clouds back to the west across Kansas.
03:41And then that low-level jet, with that difference between that heating, allows those winds to
03:47really increase and forward that moisture transport farther north and really increasing overnight.
03:54You get that low-level jet into the thunderstorms that are already developed, it continues to
03:59pump more moisture into it, as well as then more wind speed as well.
04:03So to help with some of that directional shear and or just the amount of wind and dynamics
04:08that the system has to work with.
04:10You can see our threat, the some risk all the way from Madison toward Little Rock.
04:14The moderate risk Kansas City and Oklahoma City.
04:16And really quickly, Guy, I want to show you the future radar here because you share the
04:21same concern I do in central Kansas later today.
04:26Yep, certainly.
04:28At the beginning of future radar here through about 5 o'clock, you actually see some of
04:33those individual or discrete cells, as you mentioned earlier today, actually develop.
04:38And those are the types of cells that have the best environment to work with as far as
04:44the directional shear that we look for those turning of the winds in the atmosphere to
04:47help those tornadoes develop.
04:50And so as we start to then work through the 5 to 10 o'clock or 5 to 9 o'clock time frame
04:55here, we see more storms start to develop and then storms, as you talked about earlier,
05:01start to become more linear and line out, meaning then everything is all connected together.
05:07There's not as much opportunity for some of those different directional wind shears to
05:11get in there.
05:13The likelihood of tornadoes will decrease certainly from about 10 o'clock onward to
05:18where it's mainly the line of storms.
05:21There might be one or two very spotty to where there's little notches along the line of storms
05:26itself, but really it'll be winds after 10 o'clock or so.
05:31But certainly that forward at 10 o'clock time frame like we were talking about across Kansas
05:36up towards Kansas City, that's going to be the best time for that tornadic development,
05:40I think.
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