Severe Weather - Mar. 10

Models continue to indicate the potential for severe weather across portions of the Central and Southern Plains for this afternoon, evening, and overnight.  A low pressure system currently ejecting onto the Plains will continue to trek east-northeast across Oklahoma and into the southeast corner of Kansas by 6pm this evening.  The low is then expected to move nearly northward as it gets ingested by the upper level system located over the northern Plains.  Moisture return is ongoing this morning ahead of the surface low pressure and will continue through this evening, however, dew point values along the surface warm front and near the surface low are likely to only reach near 50F.  Slightly higher dew points are possible further south along the dryline in eastern Oklahoma, however, surface temperatures are also expected to be higher resulting in similar LCL's across the region.

Sufficient surface based cape, at or above 1000 J/kg, will be present in the warm sector resulting in surface based convection around or just after 3pm near the surface low and southward along the dryline.  Additional convection along the warm front will also likely develop during the late afternoon and move northeast along the warm front and surface low track during the overnight. These storms along the warm front will likely be a broken line and/or linear clusters therefore the severe weather threat is lower.  However, an isolated large hail or damaging wind gusts cannot be ruled out with these storms which may move into the Kansas City area after 10pm.

The storms along the low pressure system and especially the dryline will be a slightly different story, with the ability for surface based storms to remain somewhat discrete.  Given strong low level shear and sufficient instability, storm type will likely be supercellular with the potential for very large hail and isolated tornadoes. The tornado threat may continue into the overnight across Arkansas where storms may be able to stay somewhat discrete, whereas further north storms will likely congeal and continue their potential for large hail and perhaps an isolated damaging wind gusts over southern Missouri.  Many storm chasers are heading out today, with the majority of targets being the southeast corner of Kansas or northeast Oklahoma.  As mentioned last night with my target area along Highway 169 at the Kansas/Oklahoma border; this hasn't appeared to change to much with this mornings' NAM.

I'll be in the office working this afternoon and evening, likely getting off just before our round of thunderstorms arrive in the Kansas City area. I'll be watching the storms initiate across the warm sector, however, no updates on the blog are expected until early tonight if at all.