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Discussion – 

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Late afternoon notes on Wednesday's Severe Weather Potential

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There seems to be a lot of worry and hype with tomorrow’s severe weather setup. Let me start off by saying I do not expect a tornado outbreak nor do I expect a high number of tornadoes tomorrow. There will certainly be at least a low-end threat of a tornado. It isn’t out of the question we deal with a couple tornadoes tomorrow. I don’t expect them to be significant or long-lived but that doesn’t matter. If the only brief tornado tomorrow touches down on your street – it’s a big deal. Several factors tomorrow morning will help determine the overall severe weather threat tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow evening. Widespread cloud cover and a few showers are expected across North Texas, Northeast Texas, and East Texas. Uncertainty remains on how quickly skies will clear in North Texas tomorrow afternoon and how strong the cap will be along the dryline. At this time it looks like the dryline will be setup over or just west of the D/FW Metroplex. Don’t be surprised if it ends up farther west than we think right now – that happened last week. That is one reason to check back for forecast updates.

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  • Widespread cloud cover and showers in the morning hours will play a critical role in afternoon severe weather potential. If clouds/rain clears out by early afternoon then the threat of severe storms may increase for late Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night.
  • The cap is expected to be strong ahead of the dryline tomorrow afternoon. That cap may limit/prevent thunderstorm initiation.
  • Several high-res models do develop severe thunderstorms in western North Texas by late afternoon Wednesday. Any storm that fires up could quickly become severe.
  • Large hail will be the primary threat with the strongest storms (supercells). Some hailstones could be larger than 2″ and approach the size of a tennis-ball. This is conditional on actual thunderstorm development which morning clouds/rain could prevent.
  • The tornado threat is not expected to be high on Wednesday. That does not mean the tornado risk is zero. If we get supercellular initiation tomorrow afternoon then we could see a low-end tornado threat develop.
  • Depending on cloud cover we may also see a seperate severe weather risk setup in East Texas Wednesday afternoon. This would not be in association with teh dryline but an upper level disturbance moving overhead. A conditional risk for a few supercells may develop – which would need to be watched for low-level rotation. This threat is even more uncertain than the dryline threat further west. It goes without saying you should check back for forecast updates.

Jenny will have a full blog out a bit later on. She’ll cover the latest forecast information and provide a good general setup on how things may play out tomorrow. Remember – this is springtime in Texas. Don’t be scared – be prepared!

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David Reimer

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