Weather Alert Day: Storms bring isolated damaging wind & tornado risk Thursday afternoon

BLOG:

The ABC17 Stormtrack Weather Team has issued a Weather Alert Day for Thursday afternoon.

TIMING:

A surface low is stretching a warm front into our region. As this moves in, a weak plume of instability will be drug north. This will aid in developing thunderstorms as the very wind driven system moves into mid-Missouri. New this morning, forecast instability values are climbing.

On the north side of the warm front, showers have impacted the morning commute from the Lake of the Ozarks to Columbia and northward. To the south of the showers, a short break may come, but quickly be followed by thunderstorms. These are most likely in a cluster south of the warm front, passing through the region from noon through the afternoon. This cluster is expected to spread north and east. Exactly how it evolves is uncertain, but as more instability looks to move north with it, we'll have to monitor for isolated severe storms.

Surface instability is the kind that could lead to potential threats like tornadoes and damaging winds. Elevated instability is often not enough for tornadoes, but in our case, could create damaging wind potential.

THREATS/IMPACTS

There is potential for damaging winds, but the threat is very low. Instability both elevated and at the near surface level has been increasing in new data runs over the last 24 hours, creating increased concern for damaging winds and weak tornadoes. Both are expected on an isolated basis, but we need to watch afternoon storms for this threat. As much as an inch of rain could fall in the west, with totals for many between a quarter and a half an inch.