Enhanced Risk of Severe Storms through the Evening

Once again, Mid-Missouri is bracing itself for another round of severe weather. Much like we saw last week, this round of severe weather will occur through the evening hours. This means you need to make sure that you have some form of alerts that would wake you should you be asleep during inclement weather. The ABC 17 Stormtrack Weather App is an excellent alert device, as it will voice alert you when warnings are issued for your area.

SYNOPSIS:

This evening a round of showers and storms are set to develop ahead of an approaching cold front. This cold front will have plenty of energy to work with it, to bring severe modes of severe weather. As evident by stepping outside, you can tell there is a lot of wind energy associated with this system. Winds this afternoon will be very windy, with winds out of the south up to 25 mph, gusting up to 50 mph. These winds will pull in moisture form the Gulf of Mexico and help aide in storm development through the evening hours. There’s two rounds of potential storm development that ABC 17 is watching this evening. The first line will be the storms that form ahead of the cold front, with the second line being the actual storms along the cold front. Both lines will have the potential for bring strong to severe storms, with all modes of severe weather possible. As most of the winds associated with the cold front is unidirectional, our tornado threat significantly drops along the front itself, but there is still a chance a few embedded and short-lived tornadoes form along the main line of storms this evening. The front is expected to clear all of Mid-Missouri as we head into the overnight hours, with gusty winds staying with us through Tuesday. It’s Tuesday, when we’ll have to watch for fire weather concerns.

THREATS:

All modes of severe weather are possible with any storms that develop this evening. In order, our threats for any storms that develop are wind, hail and tornadoes.

Our tornado threat is a lot higher between the hours of 6-9pm with any discreet supercells that we see form ahead of the line of storms. Much like we saw last week, we do not want the sun to peek through the clouds, because that will limit our severe threat in the afternoon. The tornado threat as mentioned above, significantly drops off along the frontal boundary itself, but there should be enough weak rotation at the surface that a quick-spin up tornado can’t be ruled out.

As evident by our winds outside, there is a lot of energy built up with this system. Winds are gusting up to 50 mph and will continue to gust through the day. With any storms that we do see develop, damaging winds are a huge concern, along with the potential for hail in excess of one inch.

TIMING:

There’s two main round of storms expected this evening. The first round of storms will only occur, if we see peeks of sunshine, with the second round occurring with the frontal passage itself.

Round 1: While rain showers are possible through the day, if we see plenty of sun, we’ll start to see discreet supercells form around 5 PM. These storms will have to be watched for the potential of tornadic development. Any storms that do form this afternoon will quickly go severe. The window of opportunity for discreet supercells to form is 5 to 8 PM.

Round 2: If no discreet supercells form ahead of the main line of storms, then this will be the only round of storms experienced this evening. This line of storms will be associated with the cold front itself. As far as the timing, you can expect the line of storms to be in northwestern Mid-Missouri by 7 at the earliest. The storms will be near Columbia/Jefferson City by 10 PM at the earliest and near I-44 by midnight. Thankfully the storms themselves will be moving quickly, so flooding is not an issue.

The storms will exit all of Mid-Missouri by 2am, with cooler and drier air arriving on the backside of the cold front. Beyond midnight, our severe threat will gradually diminish until the storms exit the region. Stay safe through the evening, and make sure to download our ABC 17 Stormtrack Weather App.