Wed.'s Severe Weather Threat

13 years ago

Do y'all want the good news first or the bad news first?

OK, the good news is that Thursday and Friday are expected to bring almost all of us a great chance of rain with NO severe weather expected. In some areas, the rainfall is expected to be very heavy. That will be great for our landscapes and gardens.

The bad news is that we have to get through one more day of potentially severe weather today.

The NWS's Storm Prediction Center in Norman has placed most of Oklahoma and parts of several other states in a "Slight" risk area for severe weather beginning this afternoon.

Where is today's severe weather likely to form? The latest model run discussed in the 1 a.m. SPC update forecasts that late afternoon thunderstorms may initiate from northern Missouri south-southwestward across eastern Kansas and into northern Oklahoma. So, if y'all are in northern OK, watch the weather especially carefully. And, if you're not in northern OK, watch carefully too because the slight risk area goes as far south as the Red River and parts of western North Texas.

A cold front will be moving south-southeastward acoss the central plains today with a moist and very unstable air mass in place. Strong vertical wind shear profiles means conditions will be right for some supercell T-storms to form.

Here's part of what the SPC says about today: "The current thinking is that a broken line of intense storms will develop in the late afternoon.....Model forecasts also suggest storm mode may gradually transition to a linear structure......Large hail and wind damage will be likely with the stronger cell elements".

I know it has been a nerve-wracking week and today will be another one of those late-afternoon-severe-weather type of days. Hang on, though, because the rest of the week doesn't have severe weather in our forecast.

Dawn

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Comments (6)

OklaMoni
13 years ago
Well, I could do with a nice slow rain, not a down pour like on Monday. All that ran right off, cept it did fill my rain barrels.

Mine says:

Today: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1pm. Some of the storms could be severe. Cloudy, with a high near 85. South wind between 18 and 20 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
13 years ago
Moni,

At least you had enough rain to run off! lol We had a half inch during the last round of storms Monday evening and a little bit of small hail and it did fall really quickly....in just a few minutes but the rain seemed to mostly puddle up or soak in. I am hoping for heavy, heavy rain in the Thurs.-Fri. storms because we sure need it.

I am a bit worried about the high dewpoint/high temperature combination many of us will have by late afternoon. I think we're expecting to be around 90 degrees here at our house if they haven't changed the forecast since yesterday.

I hope this afternoon's severe weather does not materialize at all, but am afraid it will be bad somewhere.

Dawn
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We're at the northern end of tornado alley, so we get our fair share of them. We've got so much open space here, though, that the odds of them touching down in a heavily populated area are much more slim; they don't often hit the news outside of the province. Last summer, my in-laws were hit by a plough wind that lifted their large cattle barn roof right off the structure and flung it across the yard (news crew came and their clip made it to the national news that evening). Our own communication tower twisted and fell, just missing our house. The winds that night were nearly 100 km/h, if I recall. Lots of twisted grain bins in the ditches all over the area. When you're monitoring the live feed for Greg Johnson's storm chaser truck and he's headed pretty much for your property, though, it does rattle your nerves! We lost about half of our broccoli last summer with the storms, a little over 20 heads. The main stalks snapped right off, so there was no opportunity to recover. The rest were bent flat against the ground for a few days, but they eventually righted themselves and still produced, albeit moderately. Anything with a large leaf was hit hard by wind and hail - mainly squash/pumpkins, rhubarb and the beans. The pole beans were shredded the worst, but surprisingly recovered and managed to produce eventually. We thankfully had the pole structures braced really well. The tomatoes weathered things much better than I thought they would, as did the peppers. A lot of veggies that were flattened - literally into the mud - I thought I'd lost, then they would gradually right themselves. They're tougher than you think!
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Reed, I feel sorry for Tulsa. This morning Dr. Forbes distinctly mentioned Tulsa having a '7' TorCon more than he mentioned OKC, though at one point he said the storms would form near OKC and move towards Tulsa. The issue will be how violent they are when they form...even if they form in the OKC area, they could be violent from the start or they might gain in strength as discrete cells merge together into a squall line. I think today I wouldn't want to be in Iowa either. We have crazy wind here today. I guess it must be from outflow boundaries from yesterday's storms. I have gigantic trees north of my garden and they were dancing back and forth in the wind so much that it was scaring me and I came inside to get away from them. If a tree is going to fall on my garden, it needs to do it while I am not in the garden. Wulfleton, I am sorry you're feeling homesick. Count your blessings every single day because you do have a lot to be grateful for. Oklahoma has beautiful weather in April and October. The rest of the year we just cringe, hold our breath and hope for the best. The good thing is that once you have learned how to successfully garden in OK, you can garden anywhere. Today's weather likely won't turn out to be nothing, but maybe we'll luck out and the worst storms will hit sparsely populated areas so at least fewer people are harmed that way. Dawn
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Amy, We were laughing about that same sort of issue the other day. Usually, we are dry and the clay contracts and we have a hard time getting doors to shut and lock properly. Tim is always having to make little adjustments to the hinges and locks to keep them working well. Beginning with last summer's and autumn's rainfalls, the clay expanded and the house was more or less back to normal and everything was working. Now, with continual rainfall for months on end, the constantly expanding clay has the doors getting harder to close again, but in an opposite way from when the problem is caused by contracting clay. You have to laugh about it or it would make a person crazy. We spend most of our time either extremely dry or extremely wet, and precious little of it "just right". I hope drier weather is coming. At our house, we how are just a smidgen under 35" of rainfall for this calendar year. Our mesonet station is about 4" behind us, but even so, it has almost a year's worth itself. Normal or average rainfall for us is 34" based on all the years the Mesonet station has existed or about 38 or 39" based on the 30-year-average. I cannot imagine what we'll end up for this entire year if the rainfall doesn't drop off drastically. George, Been there, done that, with the water trying to suck the boots off my feet. I'm gonna need a boat if it keeps raining. We have sunshine today, y'all, and have had it for at least a couple of hours so it is hot and muggy outside where Tim is mowing and indoors as well, where I've been in the kitchen blanching and freezing oodles of snap peas and snap beans. At least it is a good year for legumes. My food processing is up for the day, so now the kitchen can cool off but Tim will be out there making mud ruts in the lawn with the mower for a while yet. I hope to be outside in the garden tomorrow morning picking tomatoes, and probably more sugar snap peas. Of course, that depends on whether or not it rains tonight. There's tons of wildflowers blooming all over now, on both sides of the river, so at least the bees, butterflies and other flying things should be thrilled. This morning we had a blue bird world out in the yard with all sorts of the birds coming for their birdseed breakfast---we had indigo buntings (which I've only seen a handful of times, mostly in the last year), painted buntings, bluebirds and blue jays. There were tons of other birds, most notably mourning doves and cardinals, but I was enthralled by the many kinds of blue birds all visiting at the same time. In every direction that I looked, I could watch blue birds flying here and there, jockeying for position in the area where I'd scattered some bird seed for them. Dawn
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owiebrain
13 years ago
We're not even showing a chance of rain on our forecast down here. Good thing because I'd like at least one day of sun before it starts back in again. We got 1.25" from the last batch of storms and I had just planted corn, pumpkins, and various melons. Call me silly but I much prefer them to sprout than to sit in the wet ground for days and rot. LOL

You guys up north hang on to your hats!

Diane
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
13 years ago
Diane

Our local forecasters don't have rain in our forecast either, but they've been known to be wrong once or twice.

I've linked the SPC's Convective page so you can see the slight risk area they have circled. Notice how you and I are outside of it but inside the other circled area. The text that explains their reasoning follows, if you want to read it and try to decipher the scientific gobblygook. The area outside the slight risk area also has a chance of something happening, but a fairly low one.

For the folks in northern OK, Dr. Greg Forbes of The Weather Channel increased his TorCon rating for northern OK from a 4 to 5 this morning, meaning that he gives northern OK a 50% chance of having a tornado somewhere. He usually picks a city and then the actual 50 percent chance would be within 50 miles of that city, but he didn't name a city this morning...he just said 'northern Oklahoma'. For comparison's sake, he gave northern Oklahoma a TorCon rating of 8 on Monday, and we all know what happened.

Diane, I like for the rain to fall in nice even batches too so nothing drowns, but we get whatever we get. This morning, TWC said some parts of the Great Plains could get a month's worth of rain in the next wave of storms that begins tomorrow and lasts several days. They didn't say which parts of the Great Plains though. When I come back inside for lunch, I'll try to find and link their national precip forecast map so we can see what we might be expecting here.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: SPC Convective Map/Text for today
OklaMoni
13 years ago
It all ran off, cause it came down all at once. Only about 10 minutes worth.

Looked promising earlier, but nothing so far today. Good grief, how on earth did we miss the rain? And it doesn't look to promising with the next set of clouds coming in....

Moni
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
13 years ago
Moni,

Rain finally arrived here around 4 a.m., although the wind, lighting and thunder arrived around 10 p.m. last night! I guess our rain was lost and couldn't find us.

Judging from what I'm seeing on the radar right now, I'm guess lots of you in central OK are getting rain overnight and this morning.

Dawn

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OklaMoni

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