00:00Well, we have a lot to talk about over the coming days with another round of severe storms.
00:04Storms are going to be threatening many areas here across parts of the plains, into the Ohio Valley, and beyond.
00:11And before we look ahead, just a quick recap of where we've been with the recent tornado reports.
00:18And not just tornado reports, but confirmed tornadoes.
00:21Take a look at this.
00:22Based on storm surveys that have been done, a very detailed process through the National Weather Service offices over the
00:29past five days, 75 separate tornadoes have been confirmed.
00:3375 separate tracks.
00:35In some cases, one storm may be surveyed by two different offices crossing from one office to the next.
00:40That's one single tornado.
00:42And other cases, we've had a couple of tornado tracks merge.
00:45We learned that they were actually one track.
00:47So that, again, is one tornado track instead of two surveys initially.
00:52So we pay a lot of attention to detail with tabulating the numbers.
00:57And 75 separate tornadoes confirmed.
00:5946 of these were EF-1s.
01:0139 of them were in central and northern Illinois.
01:05Pretty amazing.
01:06Nasty stuff.
01:07And among all this, zero fatalities.
01:09That's the good news.
01:10There have been a few injuries, eastern Iowa, for example, but zero fatalities out of Friday's storms.
01:16Now, as we take a look ahead, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we're back into it.
01:21There will even be some severe storms this Thursday night in the northern plains.
01:25But moving forward here, we've got some severe weather to talk about.
01:29And you can see Thursday, eastern Kansas into the area of Iowa.
01:33Friday, we're a little more concerned about the Ozarks and down into places like Little Rock, Arkansas.
01:37Saturday, the southern plains, parts of Kansas and Oklahoma, I should say.
01:43And then we're going to look ahead to Sunday, which could be a potentially more significant severe weather day as
01:48well.
01:49So here we are.
01:50And this late Wednesday night, you can see a storm system emerging from the part of the northern Rockies moving
01:58into Montana.
01:59And east of there, we have a lot of extra lift in the atmosphere.
02:03So spokes of energy kind of rotating around the base of this trough.
02:07And one of these spokes is moving through parts of the plains, northern plains, early Thursday morning, late Wednesday night.
02:14So there will be some severe storms in the Dakotas as well.
02:17But moving forward into Thursday, you can see there's a little bit of a southern disturbance, this guy down here,
02:25that races out.
02:27And eventually, because of the orientation of this trough, you can see that it gives it a little bit of
02:32a negative tilt.
02:34And when I say negative tilt, I mean it's tilted northwest to southeast, northwest to southeast.
02:39And overall, on Thursday evening, it begins to take a little bit of that tilt.
02:44That is a slightly more aggressive posture for storms like these and the upper-level driving factors behind them to
02:51bring some severe storms.
02:53It's going to produce extra lift in the atmosphere, and that will increase the wind shear for some on Thursday.
02:58So damaging wind and hail will be the big concerns on Thursday.
03:00And as we take a look at this playing out here, you can see areas like eastern Kansas, western Missouri,
03:07intersections of Iowa.
03:09Some aggressive thunderstorms will get going, and then they'll be rolling east parts of northeast Oklahoma facing a risk Thursday
03:15night.
03:15The dew points, they will be high as well.
03:18This is moisture streaming north out of the Gulf and into parts of the plains.
03:23You can see that deep green here.
03:24That's a sign that we're looking at about 65 degree Fahrenheit plus dew points.
03:30And take a look at what goes on through Saturday.
03:32You can see the southern plains on Saturday get into it as well with high dew point air.
03:38And this product here is a measure of CAPE, convective available potential energy, warmth and high humidity near the ground,
03:46and colder air aloft.
03:48And you can see this Wednesday night, we're looking at the northern plains.
03:51Parts of the Dakotas seeing modest, but still some updraft fuel.
03:56And then Thursday, it's that area of eastern Kansas into Missouri.
04:00Friday, a little more restrictive into parts of Arkansas.
04:04And then into Saturday, you can see more of the same.
04:08Southern plains getting back in on it.
04:10And just to give you a little bit of a kind of a reminder and a recap of where we
04:14had been with our forecast.
04:17I want to make myself disappear there from the map.
04:21There's the risk area Thursday, looking at areas from eastern Kansas, where there's a pretty strong signature of trouble, and
04:28then into areas like western Iowa.
04:31Friday, it's more of Arkansas.
04:34Saturday, the southern plains into western Arkansas again.
04:37So those are the first few days.
04:39We're also concerned about Sunday.
04:41Let's go to Sunday.
04:42Look at what happens on Sunday.
04:43A new bit of energy emerges from California.
04:47And this is on a kind of a different trajectory, coming from California, emerging Sunday afternoon into eastern Colorado.
04:54It's often when these upper-level disturbances reach eastern Colorado.
04:57I'm looking at this bit of energy here.
05:00I'm going to go back in time so you can trace that.
05:02See, it's coming from California.
05:03That's a fairly aggressive setup as well on Sunday.
05:07So here we go back in time.
05:09This is coming.
05:10This is the European now.
05:12The European showing a similar theme.
05:15It's a slightly different resolution to the data.
05:18But overall, as we track that system into Sunday's forecast, Sunday evening and afternoon, we have severe weather returning to
05:26areas along in east of Interstate 35.
05:29And some of these storms up into Kansas City could be severe and other parts of Kansas as well.
05:34Looking at the moisture available, you can see that pretty sharp contrast here between dry air to the west.
05:41But 70-degree dew point plus in eastern parts of Oklahoma.
05:45So that's surging northward here.
05:47And there's going to be plenty of fuel for this.
05:49And when we look at the instability, here you can see some of the brighter colors that we've seen.
05:53Scrolling and scrubbing back and forth through these several days.
05:56Sunday, we see the most vivid deep reds there.
05:59Some of the greatest instability.
06:00And here, now, at least in some communities, we're getting up around 3,000 to 4,500 joules per kilogram
06:05of CAPE.
06:07Very strong updraft.
06:08So what does that do for us?
06:10When it comes to our forecast for Sunday, we become a little more concerned about the combination of wind shear
06:17and instability.
06:18So tornadoes, hail, and damaging winds are concerned in the southern plains and into the western part of the Ozarks
06:24on Sunday.
06:26That's a big concern area.
06:28I-35 east to the Ozarks.
06:30All the way from Dallas to Springfield, Joplin, Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Wichita, Tulsa.
06:35And then a quick look ahead to Monday as that system rolls east.
06:38There will be some severe weather potential here as well.
06:40Up and down the bulk of the Mississippi Valley and the lower half of the Ohio Valley.
06:46So that is your forecast feed for now.
Comments