...BUT Will Storms Actually Reach Their Full Potential?

本站添加: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Hey everyone, we've got quite the stretch of severe weather coming where the ceiling is going to be pretty high with these storms, which means the potential of these storms to be very dangerous is definitely there. But the real question is, are the storms actually going to reach that potential?

[00:00:15]And that is what we're going to be going over in today's forecast, breaking down every little thing so that you guys can see what the different scenarios are as we go into Sunday and Monday, and also talking about today as well and Tuesday.

[00:00:29]So today we do have an enhanced risk for severe weather that's a three out of five here in the orange out over there in Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado with a slight risk from Kansas, Nebraska going into Iowa and Missouri. And another one over there into Kentucky and southern Indiana. And going into tomorrow, we also have another enhanced risk, potentially an even dangerous more dangerous day, but there are some caveats that need to be talked about about tomorrow. But we do have an enhanced risk, three out of five, all the way over there into Nebraska and South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. And then we have a slight risk over in there in Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Nebraska. And then going into Monday, what has the potential to be our most dangerous day, we also have an enhanced risk all the way there in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri. You can tell it's a little bit smaller than it was yesterday when we talked about it. Then we have a slight risk in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas. And then going into Tuesday, we got another slight risk out over here in your Oklahoma all the way up into Michigan. So quite the active stretch of severe weather is in store for us going into the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday. So let's go ahead and break it on down. So first starting off with today's risk, as you can see, we're likely going to have some showers and thunderstorms back over there in Missouri, Illinois going into Kentucky early on today. And as we go throughout the day, some storms are going to be able to fire over there in your St. Louis and Olney as well in the Illinois area. And then as I continue to push this forward, you can see those storms might congeal into a line and eventually move into Louisville as something a little bit more severe. So, that's why there is a slight risk for severe weather out here. Not really a big chance for tornadoes, but some damaging winds and maybe some large hail definitely seems to be in the possibilities there. But then as we go later into the evening, we start to see some storms get started up here in our main risk. Talking about storms back over here near Sidney, Holly Oak, Wray, Sharon Springs. And then some more storms over there near St. Joseph and southern Iowa. Now, if we look at our instability, you can see that we're definitely going to have some instability on the more eastern side of our risk. As you can see, we do have some 2 to 3,000 J/kg over there into Kansas and also over here into Iowa. And then but back over here further to the west, a little bit less instability. So, these storms are going to kind of start off elevated as we get started at around 7:00 p.m. here. As I push this forward, this line of damaging winds could also have some tornado potential, but it's mostly going to be large hail to very large hail and damaging winds as this pushes into McCook, Elwood, and Norton.

[00:02:51]Could even have some significant damaging winds of 75 mph winds and above. And if we overlay where our shear is, our lower-level shear, which is where our tornado threat is going to kind of pick up, you can see that we do have some lower-level shear that builds throughout the day over in near these storms near Beatrice and Sidney. But look at them, they're looking a little bit scraggly out there. And why is that?

[00:03:11]Uh that's because of the capping inversion. There's a stout capping inversion in place. A decent amount of lower-level shear though, lots of turning with height. You see our CINH is in the negatives back over here, -318, indicating that we are going to have a pretty stout capping inversion around these storms. But, the ceiling is there.

[00:03:29]There's plenty of lower-level shear. If any of these storms interact with each other just in the right way to kind of bust through that cap, could easily see these storms become significant hail or damaging winds and maybe even a significant tornado could be on the table over there in northeastern Kansas going up into Beatrice. But it's a big butt, which is what I like. I cannot lie. But yeah, back over here, these storms are going to mainly be outflow dominant. Not a whole lot of lower-level wind shear, but we could get maybe some brief spin-ups as this moves out to the east. But again, mainly just damaging winds in our western portion and maybe if these storms can break through the cap, could see some stronger storms, very large hail, damaging winds, and maybe a tornado or two with a small conditional risk for a strong tornado.

[00:04:07]But again, it doesn't seem like these storms are really going to be able to challenge the capping inversion. Now, going into day two's risk, as you can see, we are going to see some storms move throughout Nebraska, bringing some damaging wind potential all the way throughout Iowa as well. And then after those clear out, our atmosphere is going to start to recharge. You can see all this instability kind of filling back in as we get a low-pressure system develop on the Kansas and Nebraska border here.

[00:04:35]We've got a warm front extending up to the north. This is going to be for Sunday. And we've got a wide-open warm sector over here where storms can fire off of what we call a dry line. There's a lot of dry air back here, and then a lot of moist air right there in that in between that gradient. Sometimes you can get enough forcing for some storms to fire, and there's going to be also way more wind shear in this area as we go throughout the day. And so when you're diagnosing a ceiling like that, when you have like 40 to 50 knots in the lower levels and turning with height, and storms that could potentially fire, that's when we start to see these higher probabilities come out. We got a 10% chance for strong tornadoes back over there in Grand Island, going up near Sioux Falls, parts of Iowa and Minnesota as well with a 5% around that. So strong tornadoes are going to be possible tomorrow. There's an issue with tomorrow that I really do think needs to be discussed. Now again, this is not guaranteed to happen like this, but it's a scenario that we need to keep in mind for tomorrow. That is technically some good news. I think the best way to kind of demonstrate this is by looking at our dew points. You can see right there, there's that spin turning with height.

[00:05:36]Our SRH is going to be maximized pretty much right here in this quadrant of the storm. Now, if we do get some storms fire off to the south, there's also going to be enough shear to support potentially some tornadoes down there, but the capping inversion is going to be way stronger the further south you go.

[00:05:50]But check this little boundary right here in this area. That is our cold front and the HRRR is painting an interesting picture for tomorrow. You see how that crashes down to the south and east faster than when storms can get started. You can see we really just don't have any storms out in this region and the cold front is crashing into our warm sector that causes storms to fire.

[00:06:12]Now, could we still get some tornadoes up there? Potentially in southern Minnesota with the QLCS threat, we certainly could. Could we get some QLCS tornadoes further down to the south and east in Nebraska? We certainly could.

[00:06:23]But this is a scenario we do have to keep an eye on. If this cold front undercuts our warm sector, which is again back over here into Nebraska, there's our cold front there. We got a little bit more time for discrete storms to fire and then none do, that's definitely a positive sign. Our long track or strong tornado potential will go down precipitously. And if you look in our warm sector, you can see why we're their ceiling is so high. We have 50 knots of wind shear over here. 50 knots in the lower level. That's a lot, but then look back over here. We got this little hourglass shape again.

[00:06:56]That's our capping inversion. If it holds strong, again if, it's not a guarantee, but if it holds strong and no storms fire and the cold front comes crashing down to the south and east, tomorrow might not be nearly as dangerous as we think. I do think we still have some potential for some very large hail and damaging winds, but that'll definitely temper the tornado threat. So we're going to be watching for this scenario like a hawk tomorrow and then we can come over to our worst case scenario model, which is the Rufus.

[00:07:22]This will show us the true ceiling of this event. You can see we have that cold front crashing back over here, but then right there where our lower level wind shear is going to be the strongest, we have a bunch of storms start to fire in and along that dry line. Look at the environment uh really all the way across this area. We're talking about 40 to 50 knots in the lower levels turning with height. But, look at that. Even with these storms convecting, they're still going to battle with the capping inversion. No matter where you look, that capping inversion is there. So, definitely some caveats for tomorrow. Is a strong tornado possible? Absolutely.

[00:07:54]The ceiling is there. Is there a a better chance or decent chance that these storms won't reach their true potential? That is also there. So, we've got to watch for both scenarios, the crashing cold front and then also this scenario. Again, the Rufus model usually isn't right, and this is definitely an outlier, 100%. This just kind of shows you what happens if everything convects even in the face of a capping inversion.

[00:08:18]Whereas, the HRRR model typically does a better job of actually showing what will really happen. So, I'm leaning more to this solution, but we still got to watch out for any storms to fire into that warm sector cuz there's going to be a lot of wind shear. Tornado potential will be high if we get one of those discrete storms in the warm sector.

[00:08:35]After this storm moves through our enhanced risk, you can see that this storm will eventually push off the the east bringing some more damaging winds.

[00:08:42]Very conditional threat down there near Norman, Wichita Falls, Abilene. There's going to be a strong cap. The risk is there just to be like, "Hey, if something crazy weird happens, then you guys could get some severe weather down there. Maybe some dry thunderstorms are possible." And then going into Monday, potentially the crescendo of our threat, you can see that we have an enhanced risk back out over here near Enid, Wichita, Medford, Emporia, Topeka, Beatrice, St. Joseph, St. Louis, Creston, Ottumwa, Toledo, Waterloo, and Carroll with the slight risk extending all the way from Michigan into Wisconsin all the way down into Texas. No have a tornado threat yet for this day, but it'll likely be a 10% hatched risk as well. And with Sunday's storms being more cold front dominant, we're definitely going to see a scraping of our environment further up to the north, but we do see a decent amount of our instability recover according to the RFS model, the Rufus model. Again, going to convect probably a lot more than what will actually happen here. But, I will say Monday is looking a little bit more messy as of our latest model runs here.

[00:09:42]We'll have to see we can we're still pretty far out. We'll have to see with how some of our other models come in on this storm. There's going to be a lot of instability. There's going to be a big chances for some very large hail, damaging winds as well, uh a decent chance for some supercells with some tornado potential. But, you can see that we're kind of getting a similar problem with a crashing cold front or a cold front that is relatively stationary, but not a whole lot of other things that fire storms. We're going to have to watch out ahead of our storms here. If we switch over to our lower level shear, you can see that it is not as cut and dry. Until we get into about Tuesday afternoon, our lower level shear isn't as strong. Maybe got to watch out for a conditional strong tornado threat or a strong tornado threat, but some strong winds and maybe some tornadoes over there into Arkansas with some uh upper level flow coming in there. But, our lower level shear is still going to be there. Not as strong as some of our other models and not as much lined up with where our main threat is and that's mainly because of that crashing cold front on Sunday could throw a wrench into Monday's forecast. So, we'll have to keep monitoring. I'm not as sold on there being that many failure modes for Monday just yet as we still are far away. But, Sunday definitely is looking like a pretty conditional day. You definitely tell though there's going to be a lot of lower level shear, but you can just see most of our storms kind of favor where our strong shear is a clustered mode. Just curious take a sounding out in this area. I mean decent lower level shear, capping inversion is slowly eroding. But, I mean not a whole lot of SRH. We're only talking about 100 and our storms are getting really clustered. Check up further up to the north, a little bit of a better looking hodograph, not as much capping, definitely some possibilities further up to the north here with some very large hail. But, again not a whole lot of spin near the surface by 6:00 p.m. on Monday.

[00:11:22]And then by the time our lower level shear starts to kick off, we do have some storms over there near Seneca and Topeka that would need to be watched as firing at about 1:00 a.m. where our lower level thermodynamics are just not looking that great. So, huge issues here on Monday. I can see but again, those huge issues are more of uncertainty at this point cuz we are still 3 days away.

[00:11:44]A lot of things can still change. But if you live out in this area, definitely be weather aware. Hopefully some good news up there into the northern portion of this risk. If it do get that sweeping cold front to come through, it's going to be harder for instability to build that far up north. Could still see some elevated hail as we further down in the south. Still big question marks. This is not a guaranteed outbreak just yet.

[00:12:03]Thank you everybody so much for tuning in. I do appreciate it and I will see you guys on the next video. Peace.