Severe Weather Set Up for Friday March 3rd

A vigorous disturbance tracking through the jet-stream winds looks to lead to a rapidly deepening surface low pressure system that looks to impact much of the Eastern US as we head into your Friday with high winds, heavy rain and snow and the potential for some early season severe storms capable of both damaging straight-line winds and even tornadoes.

While severe storms across the Plains looks to wind down overnight, they are expected to reinvigorate on Friday with daytime heating. The current SPC convective outlook places a broad area stretching from Southern Indiana to Central Dixie as well as a region extending from near the Mississippi River Valley into the Southern Appalachians in a SLIGHT RISK for severe storms. In addition, an ENHANCED RISK for severe storms has been issued for parts of Central Kentucky and Northern Tennessee that includes the Louisville, Lexington and Nashville markets.

One of the key ingredients that looks to make this storm so powerful will be the sharp temperature gradient that looks to set up across the region with air temps forecasted to be in the 30's and 40's across Central IL and into Northern IN, then a broad area of 60's and 70's surging up ahead of the low to the south across the SLIGHT and ENHANCED RISK areas over Southern IN, KY and TN during the afternoon on Friday.

Future radar shows the progression of the precipition with snow developing north in BLUE and heavy rainfall with thunderstorms in YELLO, ORANGE and RED.

The worst of the weather looks to arrive in the form of a broken line of potentially rotating supercells developing late morning into Western TN and KY before enter Central/Eastern portions of the two states as well as Southern IN during the afternoon hours with heating.

While sufficient instability, lift and wind energy will be available to produce a few tornadoes across the region, a much more large-scale threat will come in the form of straight-line winds where models are forecasting widespread 50 to 65 mph gusts across the Lower Ohio and Tennessee River Valleys.