Front pushes east through Mid-Missouri

A powerful cold front is moving through Mid-Missouri, bringing with it storms with damaging winds.

Watch a 1:30 p.m. update with Chief Meteorologist Jessica Quick in the player below.

The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch that includes Boone, Cole, Callaway and other Mid-Missouri counties. The watch is in effect until 6 p.m.

What's changed?

We've had a few ingredients in place for some stronger storms, but the big one we've been missing was instability.

The broken cloud cover has allowed enough sunshine to filter through to change that this morning. As these storms roll into Mid-Missouri, they likely won't lose a lot of steam.

Damaging straight-line winds still appear to be the primary threat, but a spin-up tornado can't be ruled out. The window of opportunity is still into the early afternoon before all of this moves east.