Severe Thunderstorm Watch issued until 9pm on Mother's Day

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Good Sunday afternoon everyone. I'm meteorologist Thomas Patrick. Here's your Mother's Day severe weather update for Central Texas. A severe thunderstorm watch issued for parts of Central Texas including here in Waco, Temple, and Killeen and most areas to the northwest from here. This watch goes until 9:00 tonight and I do think there will be a line of storms that's going to be pressing in from our northwestern communities and then getting closer towards I-35 basically at that hour.

[00:00:27]That severe thunderstorm watch nearly matches our morning forecast updates on our severe weather potential. The red shaded area would be numerous severe thunderstorms that forecast it effectively from Waco, Temple, Killeen, and northwest. This particular severe weather event is going to be a high wind risk for the region. We've got this at a six out of 10 for some wind speeds upwards of 70 mph. That's the highest severe weather mode severe weather risk for this event. We can't rule out the potential for large hail or an isolated tornado, though that risk is mostly going to be contained to areas probably northwest of our viewing area. So on the map, that would be our northwestern most counties here effectively from Hillsboro to Goldthwaite, but I do think that the storms that lie northwest of us are going to have that higher risk for hail and tornadoes. And then by the time it's moving through Central Texas, this is mainly a high wind event for us.

[00:01:27]Here's what that this looks like. It's all about the cold front positioning and the thunderstorms that are firing up along that or to the south at least as of this hour. We're recording this at about 4:00 in the afternoon. There's your severe thunderstorm watch, the orange shaded box here, that covers areas from San Angelo to Abilene towards Waco. Now the storms here, there's a couple discrete areas. There's one that's just northwest and then there's a few more storms that are closer towards the low pressure center, but I want what I want to really point out here is that these storms almost appear fairly short-lived. There's not a whole lot of upper level winds in the atmosphere.

[00:02:09]We're talking about like an area 1 to 4 mi above the ground, not very strong winds, and thus there's not a lot of support. The analogy here is that these storms have a lot of energy and they're jumping up, but the atmosphere is not catching them and holding them aloft.

[00:02:25]Instead, these storms are jumping up and they're falling back down. We can see that with some of the storms, especially the ones that have been near Dallas. The storms fired up and then they weakened as they continued on, but these storms have held their strength a little bit more. The reason for this is that they are they have to create their own cold pools of rain-cooled air, and that will help the momentum of these storms forward. And the ones that have the greatest momentum will have the greatest severe weather risk, honestly, the greatest wind speeds all together. So, there's the nearest storm. It's just about a county or two northwest of Meridian and Hamilton, so that would be Bosque and Hamilton counties.

[00:03:07]If these storms continue to move to the southeast, which I do expect them to go in that direction, I think we could start to see some storms as early as about 6:00. Very slow-moving storms at the moment. But this is what I'm watching. There's a very subtle detail on Doppler radar that I've noticed.

[00:03:24]There's what's called an outflow boundary. Basically, the storms that were over Oklahoma and North Texas this morning created a very subtle boundary for some of these storms to form and fire up on. Actually, you can see out towards Tyler one of those such storms actually just fired up several hours ago and kept that boundary moving along. The storms that we're watching are on the very edge of that boundary.

[00:03:51]They could actually use that boundary to kind of ride along that line, and that would put it into Bosque County. If this storm does decide to use that almost as a guide in terms of motion. So, that's what we're watching very closely.

[00:04:05]Good like good subtleties on our radar that's helping us giving a good idea of when and where these storms are going to occur. So, here's the timeline of events heading into this evening. Earliest storms 6:00, probably a bit closer to 7:00 for the region, and you'll see that for Waco, Killeen, Temple 8:00 9:00 tonight is going to be that main window of not just thunderstorms, but any severe weather threats. Severe threats really ending by midnight, though we may hang on to some very light rain after that.

[00:04:32]Here's what our future track looks like.

[00:04:34]It's going to happen very quick here.

[00:04:36]We'll start at 8:00 this evening. Here are these storms. I think this modeling really just expands the total number of storms a bit greater than what we are currently seen, but certainly some of those storms will ride in from the northwest and move towards Gatesville, move towards Waco by 8:00 tonight. So, you'll want to hunker down. No more outdoor plans. Really have that all wrapped up by 7:00 at the latest for your Mother's Day. These storms continue southeast. They'll move towards the Brazos Valley by 10:00. Looks pretty messy, and I do think the severe weather risks will start to diminish starting at 10:00 tonight. And then we'll be left with more just heavy rain and thunder by the time we get to midnight or afterwards. There's tomorrow morning.

[00:05:17]Everything will be long gone by then.

[00:05:20]So, into Monday morning just a mostly cloudy day. Cold front passing through.

[00:05:24]Though, when I say colder tomorrow, I still just mean upper 70s for high temperatures. So, that's only about 10° cooler than what we've seen today. A lot of upper 70s for Central Texas. Later next week, we'll start to heat back up.

[00:05:38]I think we'll be flirting with 90° more often than not starting Wednesday and then through the following weekend.

[00:05:45]So, let's show you your Central Texas 10-day forecast beyond today. It actually looks really quiet all of next week and even into the weekend, but you see those high temperatures starting to get into the low 90s for a few days. For the Brazos Valley, there may be a very leftover sprinkle tomorrow morning.

[00:06:03]After that, you get into the drier forecast again, upper 80s, maybe even a low 90 at times. But, we'll leave you with this, a severe thunderstorm watch goes until 9:00 tonight. Again, we'll be tracking the latest of these severe thunderstorms as they work their way into Central Texas. I'm meteorologist Thomas Patrick, you can always follow me on any of my social media accounts, and we will be live on ABC 25 News at 5:30 tonight.