Snow in Rockies; severe weather in Plains at end of week

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Severe Weather Expert Guy Pearson tracks severe weather, which is expected to bring heavy snow to the Rockies and hail, flooding and gusty winds to the Plains from Nebraska to Texas.

Transcript

00:00Hanson, the severe weather risk for us, what may be kind of breaking it down?

00:03Guy, thanks for joining us this morning.

00:07Good morning.

00:08All right, if we can get our map up here and Guy can just kind of

00:12pinpoint here how this pattern can bring severe weather.

00:18Yep, so you know as we're talking about severe weather, we're looking at

00:23having enough warmth, having enough moisture, and then certainly having enough dynamics

00:28on the backside and then some of those turnings of the winds of the loft

00:33higher up in the atmosphere to really help get severe weather going.

00:36And you can see in the graphic here, you know, we've had a good influx of moisture.

00:41We actually finally got some rain across Kansas last week and a good amount to really try to

00:47hit into that drought a little bit, but we've got moisture return back in place

00:51that we've been missing for a long time, especially across the southern plains.

00:55And so we've got that moisture streaming up, we're rebounding in temperatures,

00:58warming up the next couple days here a little bit, and then we have a potent system in the

01:03west that's got, you know, going to produce a lot of snow overnight tonight

01:08and has already produced a lot amount, a decent amount of snow across the central and southern

01:13Rockies. And that piece of energy as it finally starts to kick out here Thursday and especially

01:20into Friday is going to bring out severe weather back across the southern plains here.

01:25You mentioned the energy here, that's what we're looking at right now. I stopped it here at about

01:28three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon because that is one of the days that we could see severe

01:33weather, but you see kind of some limited energy across Texas.

01:38Yep, limited energy across Texas, you know, it's really a cutoff low in the southwest,

01:43so it's really just sort of spinning on itself. And you have, you know, some of that wind you can

01:49see back on the Thursday frame there on the western side, it was still feeding down the

01:53back side, so that means it's still digging, it's still intensifying before really kicking out.

01:58So that area that we're looking at on Thursday is going to be more confined to western Texas,

02:03but then as this finally does start to move out during the day here on Friday,

02:07then some of that energy will spread a little bit farther east and we will have storms that

02:13develop more across the southern plains and bring areas from, you know, even potentially all the way

02:19down to Austin, up to Dallas, to Oklahoma City, back into that severe weather potential.

02:26And Guy, we were talking earlier here about, like, what are the limiting factors when it

02:30comes to this particular severe weather setup? And you mentioned some of the moisture.

02:36You know, I mean, while we've got moisture back in place and it's sufficient for

02:42thunderstorms and then even severe thunderstorms, it's not really a lot of moisture, right? It's

02:48not like we're, you know, more springtime set up or anything like that to where it's really

02:53influx of moisture. You really step outside, you really feel it. It's more of just enough

02:58reaching that sort of threshold that we look for to have enough moisture in place for then

03:03severe weather to develop. All right, and that all breaks down to our risk here for Thursday into

03:08Thursday night. That some risk means severe thunderstorms possible in parts of the area.

03:13When you look at the different risks, what do you think is going to be the most standout from these?

03:19Yeah, I think the most standout from these is probably going to be the hail, the flooding

03:24downpours, and then the localized wind gusts there of 50 to 60. Those are probably going to be the

03:30main players for what we're seeing on Thursday as that initial sort of piece of energy works around

03:36that upper level low. And then as we sort of step through here, and then certainly during the day

03:41on Friday, that back end energy that was on the west side of that moving down around the southern

03:48end and then starting to kick out a little bit more is going to push that energy farther east.

03:52And certainly we are looking at severe weather across southern Oklahoma all the way to basically

03:59the I-35 corridor here. We are talking about hail, localized damaging wind gusts to 65, 55 to 65 for

04:07most of the severe storms with our local max of 80 in there from the AccuWeather standpoint.

04:14One thing about this graphic, we are going to be talking and monitoring things closely. There may

04:19be a moderate that we add in here going through the next 24 hours, so certainly stay tuned with

04:26that. Can't completely rule out an isolated tornado with this as well. You know this upper level low,

04:33it's really going to mature and sort of stay on top of itself instead of moving across the

04:37plains at a decent clip, and so that's going to limit the amount of severe weather and the coverage

04:43here. So not necessarily looking at a tornado outbreak with this one, but still certainly

04:49we could potentially see one or two here.

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