Perhaps I'll look some more soon, but so long as the models are getting what's happening now correct, can have a little more faith in them. The HRRR seemed to have a good handle earlier today. Now is the time to start looking at the obs, satellite, and radar to really get a better sense of what the atmosphere is doing and how the models are handling that. Really helps to have 6 hourly balloons plus the vortex SE soundings
Tomorrow is a day I will not be shocked to see multiple, strong to violent tornadoes or a bunch of wind reports with a couple tornadoes embedded in messy clusters or lines of storms. Either a big tornado day or just a big severe weather day.
Not ruling out a potential high risk. Wording is strong for long track tornadoes from the latest SPC outlook. Very frightened for northern Mississippi and my college friends in Oxford :(
Oh my. Even if tornadoes don’t pop off strong winds are going to be a problem with as drenched as some of those places have been recently.
If anyone wants to satellite watch today, there's a mesoscale sector (images every 1 minute, slightly faster than radar): https://weather.cod.edu/satrad/exper/?parms=meso-meso2-02-48-0-100-1&checked=map&colorbar=undefined
A quick glance at the morning soundings/vertical profiles show much steeper lapse rates (temperature cools more rapidly with height) than some of the models were indicating yesterday. That will likely yield a bit higher instability and better hail potential as well.
Here's our system via water vapor imagery. The leading shortwave pushing through Arkansas now with dry air (sinking air) behind it through northern TX and OK. Storms firing along the leading edge of the wave in AR now (brighter greens). Wrap around snow and fog on the north and northwest side of the low (NE, CO, and KS)
And already have storms firing along the cold front back into Texas and along and north of the warm front in TN, MO, and AR:
Key point made in the MCD: The 9am Univ. Louisiana Monroe special Vortex2SE sounding showed a residual capping inversion near 700mb. The capping inversion has so far impeded sustained, free warm sector convective development to the east of the squall line. The models didn't have much of a cap today, so these special (and frequent balloons/soundings) are showing key aspects of what the atmosphere is actually doing.
Good example of the wind shear. Low level clouds (whitest clouds) are streaming northward with winds out of the south/southeast. Meanwhile, the upper clouds (finer greyish clouds) are streaming eastward along the westerly winds aloft.
Those low level clouds streaming northward are becoming more lumpy as the (meager) cap erodes this morning. Starting to see echoes show up on radar as this is the case. Expect to see an increase in storm coverage soon.
This watch is about as close as you can get without being labeled a PDS watch. I suppose the SPC lead who put it out could have slapped a PDS tag on it, but just rolled with very high probabilities Probability of 2 or more tornadoes: 90% Probability of 1 or more strong (EF2+): 70%
Storm to watch right now (well, one of them). Getting low-level convergence at the moment...storm will likely begin to develop low-level rotation soon...it's at least trying.
NWS is keeping an eye on the storms forming West/Southwest of Tuscaloosa. Didn't expect stuff in AL this early
Yeah, plenty of instability there and little to no cap preventing storms from going up prior to the main wave/system getting into AL
Severe warning now with tornado possible tag. Rotation aloft has really increased. Still attempting to organize in the low levels.
Rotation aloft on that severe with tor possible cell near the SW portion of the yellow warning box...reds and green couplet - red away (toward top left of the image) and green toward radar (toward bottom right) implies rotation: