Tornado Outbreak Imminent for Plains.
Tomorrow is shaping up to be a pretty bad day for the Plains. The Storm Prediction Center currently has parts of the Red River Valley of Western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle under a MODERATE RISK for severe storms Monday and Monday night. This is the second highest category for convective thunderstorm risk and could be upgraded to a HIGH RISK tomorrow.
Much of the Central and Southern Plains will be impacted as a powerful, "strongly negatively tilted", upper level trough ejects out of the Southern Rockies and into the Plains late Monday/Tuesday.
This type of jet stream structure is classicly known within the meteorological realm to produce outbreaks of tornadoes. This will will come with with plenty of ingredients that are expected to be in place too such as extreme instability, as well as both strong bulk and directional wind shear. In a nutshell, the enviroment will be primed for nasty supercell thunderstorms.
In fact, according the the 3k NAM, below, the "Supercell Composite Parameter" will be pegged or nearly pegged at 50... top of the scale for much of Central and Western OK and into parts of Texas.
Forecast soundings for the Red River Valley for late tomorrow (see below image via 3k NAM) include CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) at near 5,000 units. A "backed" surface wind ouf of the southeast (near bottom center) that veers all the way up to jet stream level (middle) in a very strong midlevel wind field (middle center) which produced a "large looping hodograph" (top right).
So what does all this mean?
Quite simply, this appears to be a near textbook set up for severe weather and tornadoes tomorrow/tomorrow night for the Central and Southern Plains where violent long tracked tornadoes may be possible along with very large hail and destructive straightline winds.
Here's a look at the 3k NAM "future reflectivity" (Futurecast) for the period showing storms initially blowing up on a warm front over far Eastern NM and the Texas Panhandle in the morning tomorrow before lifting northeast through the high plains as a severe squall line. The worst of the weather looks to hold off until the second round of supercells which look to develop along the dryline late afternoon/evening beforee evolving into multiple lines of severe thunderstsorms capable of producing destructive winds, very large hail and violent tornadoes.
The storms are expected to continue tomorrow night before slowly weakening across East-Central OK and into Central TX Tuesday morning. If you have friends/family in the region, be sure to reach out.
I'll be monitoring the situation closely and we'll be sure to provide WxLIVE coverage thru the newly launched #WxLIVENOW youtube channel as storms develop. I'll see you then. Stay tuned.
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