Good late morning NBC Action Weather Bloggers,
We will have Skytracker, our chase crews, and weather team in place later today as there is a serious threat of severe thunderstorms. Here is the latest outlook from the SPC:
From the SPC discussion:
Strong heating and continued influs of lower 60s dew points will likely greatly weaken cap from far northeastern KS across southeastern KS/northern oklahoma this afternoon. Shoule even one or two thunderstorms fire during the afternoon/early evening across this region...they could easily evolve into long-lived supercells given MLCAPE of 2500 J/KG and 40-50 KT deep layer shear.
Here is the hail threat below:
This is a very complex situation today. I have seen days like this go from nothing to a severe weather outbreak very quickly, and other days where only one isolated thunderstorm pops, and then it all goes after sunset. We will know a lot more by the time our newcasts are on at 5 and 6 PM tonight. Watch NBC Action News tonight, and we will update the blog as soon as we see something developing. I don't expect any development until after 5 PM.
Look at this map. It is impressive, and a bit unusual. The surface low in Nebraska has continued to weaken and move north. The cold front has been pulled to all the way past Manhattan as of noon. And, it should completely stall by this evening, but where? And, the dry line intersecting the front is telling us where the surface low will likely develop in response to a very strong jet streak coming across eastern New Mexico this evening. When this jet streak and associated upper level storm round the base of the trough and move into western Kansas, I am expecting explosive development of thunderstorms, some severe, in the area betwee Wichita, Emporia, and Chanute, down into northern Oklahoma. They should then race north northeast and affect us tonight.
The wild card, and scary thing for this evening, is the potential supercells that could form along the cold front and dry line around 6 or 7 PM. These first cells are the most likely to produce tornadoes. We will be monitoring thi situation closely on NBC Action News.
Gary