Severe weather potential....Severe Thunderstorm Watch

With the stationary warm front across northern Missouri and a storm system approaching, there is potential for severe weather today. Take a look at the visible satelite image below:

You can see the area from southweathern Kansas entering northeast Kansas of clear skies. This is allowing daytime heating with temperatures now jumping into the 70's in that area. This is allowing the atmosphere to destabalize and you can see the area of thunderstorms developing in central Kansas.

This has prompted the NWS to iss a severe thunderstorm watch across the destabalizign area. Take a look at the severe weather map below:

This watch is valid through 10:00 PM, and I think more watches and warnings will be issued. But what are the threats today and tonight? The map below shows the severe weather risk area and the risk probabilities:

(Click the image to enlarge)

As you can see the main threat with this setup is hail with a large 30% risk area. There is a damaging wind risk, but it is only a 15% risk in central Kansas. There is even a tornadic risk from Kansas City southward where 1 or 2 tornadoes may spin up.

The showers and thunderstorms will continue across extreme northern Missouri ans southern Iowa today, but the bext chance of showers and thunderstorms across eastern Kansas and Missouri willl come later this evening and overnight as the main storm appoaches, trailing a cold front. The main threat will continue to be hail, but there could be some strong winds if a line forms along the front later tonight.

There is potential for flooding in some locations. I will have an update if anything significant develops.

Alex Pickman