Monday, February 27, 2012

Prognosis on Feb. 28-29 Severe Weather Event

Prognosis--

Latest short range models I am seeing are developing a fair squall line starting tomorrow around 5:00 PM CST, with the squall one forming later in the evening. The line looks to be separate storm cells congealed into a weak line formation. This would be okay for supercell formation, but radar returns really are not impressive. Some strong storms certainly look possible from this, but a devastating event is not in the books here.
Just glancing at radar returns from the latest short range models tells me that the least held together storm cells look to be present in east Oklahoma into Kansas and Missouri. After that, the tornado threat looks to weaken in Arkansas as the storms turn more linear and less of individual cells.

Opinion on SPC Day 2 outlook...
The SPC appears to be accurately portraying this threat, but I am not thinking that a 'moderate risk' level is necessary for tomorrow. The way the NAM is playing out things tells me that Arkansas will probably not get anything in a moderate risk atmosphere, but if the SPC does decide it is necessary, I think it would be a low level moderate risk.
However, the NAM is having surface winds at over 20 MPH across the entire potentially affected area, leading the way for possible wind shearing which would easily make the way for the threat of tornadoes.