Thunderstorms to Snow?!?

Numerous clusters of thunderstorms continue across portions of the Central and Southern Plains tonight, with a continued risk of a few severe/tornadic storms through the early overnight. The tornadic threat today across much of the risk area in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri was hindered by shallow moisture layer. Which when subjected to continued mixing during the afternoon led to marginal dew points in the 40s for most areas, and even meager dew point depressions. With the addition of early showers and cloud cover to areas just ahead of the low pressure system, little instability, especially in the lower levels, was present to aid in the development of strong convection. Nonetheless convection was able to fire, especially just ahead of the scattered showers/sprinkles in extreme northeast Oklahoma into southwest Missouri during the evening. Marginally severe hail and some rotation was noted on the stronger cells, and although tornadoes were reported thus far no damage reports have been received.

This current storm system is sliding to the north and will become vertically stacked over Iowa. Leading to continued wrap-around moisture and thus ongoing scattered showers through the day on Friday. Cold air advection will also be present to the west and southwest of the vertically stacked low, thus conditions may become favorable for at least a wintery mix of precipitation during the overnight Thursday into Friday for parts of northern Kansas and Missouri. Areas including the Kansas City Metro may see a few hours of a rain/snow mix early Friday, although with current surface temperatures there will not likely be any accumulation. Areas of northeast Kansas, northwest Missouri and southeast Nebraska and adjacent areas of extreme southwest Iowa may not be quite as lucky with snowfall becoming heavy enough for accumulations at least on grassy surfaces. Models are having a hard time depicting the magnitude of cold air and its' association with any lift to aid in snowflake development, in addition to warm surface temperatures will lead to models likely overestimating the accumulated snowfall.

Temperatures a little below average through the weekend, but we'll at least start to dry off after a decent amount of spring rainfall. The other story to watch through the weekend will by the flooding on several rivers in the Northern and Central Plains. Making matters worse in a high number of ice jams that are also occurring thanks to rapid melting. These ice jams can create rapidly rising waters and are very hard to forecast, thus anyone in flood prone areas should pay close attention to water levels through the weekend and beyond.

Got to hear a few rumbles of thunder in Kansas City, nothing overly impressive but it was a nice sound to hear. Wait and see about a few snowflakes and then hopefully get back on track towards spring!!