FORECAST: Severe Storms LIKELY. Strong Tornadoes POSSIBLE.

The Storm Prediction Center has been busy issuing convective outlooks which are normally reserved for the spring. However, it looks like for all practical purposes, spring arrives this week for many with warm temps and the potential for big-time thunderstorms over the next few days ahead.

Storms are ongoing across the Plains at this hour with a Slight Risk of severe storms issued for the Red River Valley across Western OK and Northern TX. The Slight Risk area shifts into Eastern OK and North-Central TX tomorrow.

While a few severe storms and possibly even a tornado or two will be possible tonight/tomorrow. A much more WIDESPREAD event is expected on Tuesday with an ENHANCED RISK (in orange) of severe storms posted for Southern AR, Northern LA and Central MS. Surrounding this area is a broad SLIGHT RISK (yellow) that extends from Southern MO through the Lower MS Valley and the Gulf Coast.

The reason for the expected rough weather involves the arrival of a vigorous upper storm system that is expected to eject out of the Southern Rockies with an associated surface low pressure system that looks to rapidly develop on Tuesday across the Middle MSValley.

This robust upper-level ball of energy looks to provide strong lift helping to drop pressure at the surface leading to the rapid development of both heavy snow to the north across the Upper Midwest but also a huge shield of rain and thunderstorms to the south that looks to pinwheel around the seasonally very strong surface low that looks to track from Kansas into the Central Great Lakes on Tuesday.

One-hour precip plots (shown below) via today's Euro forecast run shows the rapid advancement of a very large squall line of thunderstorm activity that looks to rip through much of the South late Tuesday/Tuesday night. A close-up look at the activity across the the Lower MS Valley shows the individual "supercell" structures that look to create the potential of severe weather in the form of damaging winds, hail and the potential of tornadoes.

So what do I think?

I think this will be a rough one for the Deep South. There's a tremendous amount of wind energy with this system and it will be able to tap into Gulf moisture that should be sufficient for the initiation of severe storms. However, there seems to be a limited amount of CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy), running in the 500-1000 j/kg range that could help to prevent these storms from achieving maximum intensity. At least that is the way the data has been trending so this could be potentially really good news as it could limit tornado production.