Today's Storm Could Go Two Very Different Ways

本站添加: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hello everyone. My name is Evan Fryberger and as you can see across the United States, we have a lot of cloud cover, but we do have a lot of other things happening in terms of instability, in terms of rain, in terms of thunderstorm, and later on today potentially could have some tornadoes, large hail, and damaging winds today.

[00:00:19]And I will say some of the models have changed overnight, but we are still going to be kind of monitoring the same things. We do have a three out of five for severe weather over in parts of Mississippi and Alabama. That's in the orange. So that means a three out of five threat. We got two out of five here in the yellow. That's a slight risk for severe weather. And then we've got a one out of five for severe weather that extends all the way from basically the Mexico border up into North Carolina.

[00:00:43]And one of the things that is going to be very pivotal to what today can do in terms of severe weather is how much clearing we get from these clouds. As of right now, you can see most of Louisiana and Mississippi are kind of socked into these thicker clouds and so we have basically 100% cloud cover across this entire area right now. Now, a lot of our models are indicating now that we could see some clearing. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean 100%, but if we do see some clearing, then that strong tornado threat and a tornado threat could exist today. Yeah, as of right now across our country definitely where our risk is kind of socked in clouds which means we're watching the lapse rates the thermodynamics. So what are lapse rates?

[00:01:27]Just a quick little brief refresher out there. So say this is going up in height into the atmosphere and this is the ground level and say near the surface it is nice and warm as the air rises and then as it gets a little bit higher gets a little bit cooler and as it gets in even higher it gets pretty cool. So you can see here there's a decent gradient in between how warm the air is at the surface than how it is at the top. Those are pretty healthy laps rates right there. Today is a little bit cooler at the surface because of the cloud cover and then it takes a little bit longer for our temperatures to cool off uh as we go further up into the atmosphere. So there are some differences and these over here would be pretty weaklapse rates. So you can see looking at between our two lines that there are some differences. The bottom is red. The bottom is orange on this one. How do you turn that orange to red? Well, you got to get rid of these clouds. You got to get some surface heating. You got to get some sunshine down to the surface. This is a look at our current conditions out there which are really good to understand before we hop into the model so that we can compare uh and contrast what is actually happening like what we saw on satellite and what we s see over here in terms of our lapse rates because again these are going to be very important and also our forcing will be important but we'll talk about that a little bit later in the forecast but essentially what we look for is this above six. So, we look for a large area with a green outline to overspread our area where our storms are possible. And as of right now, we are don't even have a five with a blue outline really over much of our area. So, our lapse rates across the southeast are very low, which is not favorable for severe weather right now. But if we push this trend, so this is going to be the wrap model uh into the future, you can see that eventually as we go six hours from now, those lapse rates might improve. But if they don't and they do something just like this, sticking around those five, it's going to be very hard for these storms to mature. Now, the wrap model has a different look at this storm than some of our other models. So, there is still some uncertainty. technically still a chance that we get some stronger storms, but with how much cloud cover we're seeing right now, this isn't a surprising scenario whatsoever. Again, we want around six. We can only have six 6 hours from now around Louisiana, although you can see a bunch of convection happening. So, those storms would struggle to mature and you need mature cells in order to, you know, get uh storms that can tap into the sheer environment. So, all right. So, let's break down what our overall atmosphere, what our models are saying, and then we'll keep in mind all the things that we've learned about our current situation before the storms get started.

[00:04:08]So, as you can see throughout the day, we're going to have a pretty strong flow of loft, which essentially is going to glance our area where convection is going to be possible back over here. So, we're not really talking about a whole lot of forcing. When we turn on our wind barbs out here, you can see generally down here near the coast, our winds are going in this direction. And then generally over here into northern Alabama, they're kind of going in this direction. So that's kind of the same direction. There's not really a whole lot of areas inside of here where we see a lot of forcing. Now, we could have a little bit of a shortwave midlevel trough kind of come through this area and improve that throughout the day. But generally, our forcing is going to be pretty weak, which again, forcing is pretty much a spreading apart of our wind vectors with distance in the upper levels of the atmosphere. And essentially, that creates a void and that forces warm air to rise. That mix with the lapse rates, you get an updraft and you get a storm. So, the lapse rates and or forcing is relatively weak today, which means storms are going to struggle to get their act together. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they won't.

[00:05:13]Again, models can be wrong even right before the event, but I just want to give you guys my two thoughts. So, here's the HR solutions in terms of overlaying the upper level and the lower level winds. And as you can see, we really don't ever see that V out here until we get late into the afternoon.

[00:05:28]You know, that V that we look for in our wind barbs, it shows us that our winds are perpendicular. If I bring this back, you can see in the lower level. So, we got two flags here. The bottom flag represents the lower level winds and the upper flag represents the upper level winds. And when you get this Vshape, that indicates that our winds are coming out of the south here and up above our heads, way above our heads where planes fly, they're going in that direction.

[00:05:51]That's perpendicularity. That can cause spin. When you see something like this where you have your wind barbs kind of going generally in the same directions, that's more parallel and that leads to more straight line damaging winds rather than rotation. So once you get those upper level winds and those lower level winds, you start to see moisture advection. Starting off this morning, our moisture is sitting over there in Louisiana. Our best pool of 70°ree due points is sitting over there in Louisiana and Mississippi. And throughout the day, we are expecting that to overspread into our area of interest. Back over here near Mississippi going into central Alabama.

[00:06:25]And if we add some sun to that, we get instability or some heat to that. So there's generally going to be some heat.

[00:06:31]There's a lot of moisture, so it's going to be easy for there to be a lot of instability for these storms to tap into throughout the day. So, we've got pretty much all the ingredients except for decent lapse rates right now and decent forcing. So, those are the things that we're going to have to watch throughout the day. If the lapse rates overperform and they get up close to those sevens, then yeah, we could have some strong tornadoes down here in Mississippi and Alabama. But if they stay below six, might not even see some severe weather.

[00:06:59]I mean, that's how drastic uh the change in the strength of the updraft can do to these storms. So, the last thing I kind of want to mention before we go over the future satellite or not the future satellite, the uh future radar and start talking about timing is going to be our lapse rates. So, once we get into these oranges and darker oranges, that means we have higher lapse rates. And starting off this morning, you can see across the area, we're really not going to have very high laps rates really at all. But then eventually, we see some build in. I mean, we're talking about six almost uh 7 degree lapse rates out here. So, that definitely means that we could get some storms sustain and potentially become strongly tornatic. So, this is definitely a change from yesterday that the HR and also the Rufus model are indicating, which you just saw the RAP model, which doesn't get even near that amount of lapse rates. So, there are some differences in our model. There are uncertainty and really all that banks off of is if we get cloud clearing. The HR is showing clouds clear throughout the day in our threat area. It also shows a little bit more clearing than what is actually happening. So that is something to note. Clouds are definitely thicker across Louisiana going into Mississippi than the HR indicates. But all that being said, this is what we need to watch out for in terms of the future radar. So this is at around 10:00 a.m. As I push this forward, you can see that we are going to see some storms kind of convect along a frontal boundary here. And as we get to around 2:00 p.m., we're going to start to see some storms develop back over here into eastern Louisiana and near Hattisburg where the HR is indicating decent lapse rates. But where the WAP model is saying, uh, not so fast. So, got to watch to see before these storms fire where our cloud cover is. And these storms coming into the area might bring their own additional cloud cover and their own additional, you know, stopping the surface heating from happening. So, we've got to watch pretty much with a fine tooth comb or with a binoculars or a telescope turned towards the ground instead of up into space to try to figure out if these storms are going to be able to be a problem today. But generally, it does seem like at least the HR for now supports, you know, some storms trying to mature in our warm sector. And as I continue to push this forward, you can see that we have a decent amount of storms that are going to try today to mature over there near Hazelhurst by the time we get into 6 p.m. Laura or Laurel, sorry, Union, Monroeville over there near Marian might not get as far north as Birmingham as our cold front is expected to crash a little bit faster than we thought yesterday. And then after these storms, try to decide what happens and that cold front crashes all the way down to the south by 900 p.m. We could still have some damaging winds over there near Claris, Selma, Grove Hill, Chatham, Colombia. Maybe still a brief tornado threat. And then as I continue to push this forward, you can see as we go into the overnight hours, our storms kind of fall apart. Maybe a reinvigoration of our storms by around 2:00 a.m. back over here near Selma.

[00:09:42]There's not really a whole lot of instability, so I'm not too concerned about that. And then eventually as we go into tomorrow, we're going to see our storms in the early morning start to make a trek down into southern Alabama, into southern Georgia, through South Carolina, and then eventually going to see some severe weather, not a whole lot, over there into North Carolina. But coming back over to here again, it's going to be just in time decent thermodynamics. And you know, I will say there's been a lot of times right before severe weather happens in the Southeast where we get the models last moment saying, "Oh, the lapse rates are going to be there." And they still don't show up. We've had our models even kind of surprise me in terms of not a whole lot of convection happen uh the day before yesterday, yesterday. And so I got a feeling that that trend could continue today. We will see. Obviously, it's really not a good idea to take past events and then try to put them onto current events, but I mean those are pretty close and those atmospheres are technically connected in a way. So, big question is will lapse rates improve?

[00:10:40]Will we get that surface heating? Will we see this cloud cover start to part and that sunshine make it down to the surface? But thank you so much for everybody uh tuning in. Hit that like and subscribe button if you did enjoy this forecast, if you found it informational, and comment down below what you are expecting yourself today and how you feel about these storms. And I'll see you guys later today with a live