Significant Severe Weather Outbreak This Weekend

Right off the bat, if you are heading to Chili Fest in Snook Saturday, you will not experience any large storms. The wind will be quite busy, it will be very warm and there could be an isolated shower. The severe weather threat for the Brazos Valley will be from Sunday evening to Monday morning. However, the rest of the Plains will experience quite and event Saturday night into Sunday morning.

From this evening though Monday, the Plains, including us in the Brazos Valley will experience hazardous weather as a significant weather event will begin to unfold.

Lets set the stage for you. This evening, severe weather from a storm sitting over the eastern side of the Rockies will continue to produce powerful severe thunderstorms and even a few isolated tornadoes in Oklahoma. The big show and most intense energy that will help grow larger thunderstorms for the weekend sits over the western Rockies.

In the above image, the circled area is where there is strong energy in the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere that needs to be closely monitored this weekend. Once this piece of energy crosses the Rockies Saturday afternoon and enters the Plains, there will be sufficient dynamics to produce widespread significant severe weather.

Because there will be enough moisture in play, heat, energy in the upper levels of the atmosphere, a cold front that will move into the Plains that will help lift the air, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, Oklahoma is expecting a HIGH RISK of severe weather from Oklahoma to Nebraska. Unless there is enough dynamics to produce significant damage the SPC rarely uses their HIGH RISK category.

Areas tomorrow encompassed under the moderate and high risk categories in the image above will experience high straight line winds up to 80mph, very large hail (up to baseball or larger), and large long tracking tornadoes. Timing of this event Saturday will mainly be in the evening and overnight hours. I would not be surprised if tornadoes of EF-3 or stronger are generated from the storms tomorrow in this area of the country.

One of the biggest reasons why this area will see multiple tornadoes is because the jet stream will be on top of this region which will rotate the wind and help to prolong the life of strong thunderstorms.

That's Saturday......Sunday, this severe weather risk will shift to east and southeast Texas.

At the moment, we have a slight risk of severe weather Sunday evening and into Monday morning. Our main threats are for strong winds and hail. As far as tornadoes there might be an isolated one, but we don't have the same dynamics like Oklahoma and Kansas will have Saturday. Nonetheless, keep your guard up because this storm is quite energetic.

Look at the following image which shows the jet stream level on Sunday with the wind speeds around 35,000 feet.

Where the blue color is and especially the darker blue color, illustrates the strongest winds within the jet stream. Notice the this area is well to our north. Therefore, winds in the upper levels of the atmosphere do not have as good of a chance to produce long lived super cell thunderstorms here and our likely hood for tornadic development is much lower because this field of strong winds is north of us. However, there can still be a quick weak tornado here on Sunday evening.

Lets time this event out.....

Around 4-5PM on Sunday, a cold front will approach the Brazos Valley with strong to severe thunderstorms ahead of it. You can expect strong winds, hail and even the possibility for a weak tornado.

Note: It is still too early to call the exact timing, and the forecast can change from now to Sunday, and I will keep you updated on the situation.

Now, here is where the interesting part of this cold front comes into play. By Sunday night and into Monday morning, the cold front will approach the coast and slow down.....

Some computer information shows this front stalling Monday and early Tuesday. Despite the above model illustrating that we will be in the clear by noon Monday, other guidance suggests that the rain may stick around. Therefore, questions remain with the timing and speed of the front. However, the severe weather threat will diminish by Monday morning whether this front stalls or not.

If this front stalls we could be in for a ton of rain and the flooding risk will sky rocket. The following image is the current thinking on rainfall accumulation though Monday.

1" to 2" amounts of rain will be common, but if the front stalls, 3" to as much as 5" or rain will be in our future. That's the way it looks right now....check out this blog and the facebook page for the latest updates.

For more news and weather you can log onto: www.facebook.com/KAGSweather or www.facebook.com/KAGSTV. You can also check out our twitter feeds: @KAGSweather and @KAGSnews.

Omega Block Again, Changes By The Weekend

We have talked about the omega block before on this blog, and yet again, we are in this pattern again. Before I post the upper level orientation of the jet stream....take a look at the national temperature map and how a pattern like this can generate such a stark difference in temperatures from the Great Lakes to the Southern Plains.

Looks more like a wintry map with the blue colors surrounding the Great Lakes, while here in Texas, its nice and toasty with temperatures in the 80s. Furthermore, due to this cold pool of air sliding down the eastern trough of the omega block, FREEZE WARNINGS have been posted for areas between South Dakota to North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Overnight, there is the potential that those areas will have temperatures below 32 degrees killing any vegetation.

We lucked out and we are in the center of this, equating to lovely weather for the next several days.

Notice how the jet stream is very wavy. We call this a meridional pattern in the meteorological world. When you see on an upper level map something that looks like this, then large scale weather systems will have trouble moving west to east swiftly as opposed to a jet stream that is straight (zonal). The bottom line is that we will continue to see similar weather right into the weekend.

However, when we look out in the Pacific Ocean, changes are not too far away.

The trough that you can see above will make a slow move onto the west coast and eventually into the Rockies before eyeing us here in the Lone Star State. Due to strong upper level winds over the Pacific, this will allow the trough to dig into the U.S. and help to break down the high and allow the weather to finally make a move east.

By the weekend, we will begin to feel more affects from this. The next image is a model output illustrating the jet digging into the four corners.

As the entire trough crosses the Rockies and into the Plains Sunday, we will heighten rain chances with the potential for severe weather late Sunday and Monday.

For more news and weather you can log onto: www.facebook.com/KAGSweather or www.facebook.com/KAGSTV. You can also check out our twitter feeds: @KAGSweather and @KAGSnews.

Incredible Heat In March

March will go down as one of the warmest since records have been taken all across the United States. Out of 50 states, 25 of them have recorded the warmest March on record. Texas was not one of them, but we were up there with placing 5th for the month. The following image will give you a good grasp of the records that took place. Most of which occurred in the Plains and around the Great Lakes.

There is a strong contrast from the heat east of the Rockies, to the much cooler western states. The largest contributing factor was a lack of snowfall across the entire U.S. and central Canada. Snow acts as a refrigerator keeping the air near the ground chilled even if the upper levels try to warm. For this reason, cold fronts were not as vigorous because there weren't any deep pockets of chilled air. Plus, LaNina, kept the jet stream well to our north.

A jet stream is a stream of very fast winds about 35,000 feet above the ground. Despite its distance away from the surface, this phenomenon paves a highway for storms, but more importantly divides arctic air from tropical air. When the air was cold enough to support snow across the U.S. storms did not form at the right time.

On the other hand, even though the lower 48 was struggling to find its identity this winter, Anchorage, Alaska managed to surpass its all time seasonal snowfall record. The previous record was 132.6" in the  1954-1955 winter season. This season, so far  133.6" of snow has accumulated.

What you need to know is that Spring is a transition season with warm and cold spells. This time the warm air really won out, but cold spells can still happen in April.

A March For The History Books

As the song goes, "rain, rain, go away, come back some other day...." For us in the Brazos Valley, we wanted to rain, and well we got it good. March was a wonderful month. We were able to pull out of the drought and collect over 8 inches of rainfall.

Officially at Easterwood Airport, 8.66" if rain was collected over the course of the 31 days of March. This set a new record for most rainfall in the third month of the year. Additionally, for the year, 20.74" has been recorded. Therefore, from January to March, this has been the second wettest start to a year in recorded history. The wettest start was 20.79" in 1991.

Furthermore, the time period between the 1st of February and the 31st of March was the wettest February-March combination in history with 17.95" of rainfall. On top off all that, March 2012, was the 6th warmest on record. The average temperature for the month was 67.1 degrees.

More rain is in the offing tomorrow with the potential for severe weather.

For more news and weather you can log onto: www.facebook.com/KAGSweather or www.facebook.com/KAGSTV. You can also check out our twitter feeds: @KAGSweather and @KAGSnews.