Quick afternoon update...Tornado Watch

It is a warm and windy Thursday and the NWS has issed a Wind Advisory for much of westen Missouri and Kansas. Winds will continue to gust over 40 mph at times out of te southwest. This is caused from tight pressure gradients out ahead of a stalled frontal boundary through Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa associated with a couple very strong surface lows.

Warm and humid air is pumping into the area with highs near 80 degees. With this airmass in place, a very strong surface low and a frontal boundary, thunderstorms have fired northwest of Manhattan, KS and the SPC has issued Tornado Watch as a result. Take a look at the map below:

You can see the watch area from central Kansas into southereastern Nebraska and far northwestern Missouri. Southeastern Nebraska looks to be most likely spot to see any tonadoes this evening. The main threats with these storms will be large hail and damaging winds with a couple tornadoes possible. The storms should develop to the southwest and northeast becoming linear and training over the same locations due to the nearly stalled front. So, flooding may become a problem. The line will slowly inch toward Kansas City throughout the night, but will the hold together before they reach thestate line? It will be close, but outflow boundaries may limit thunderstorm development for western Missouri on Friday. The storms should enter northwest Missouri late tonight and tomorrow morning. The SPC does have a large area under a slight risk for Friday as you can see in the map below:

As you can see the risk area is focused more over central and eastern Missouri. This is a complex and difficult forcast and there are a lot of factors to look over. I will have a new blog tomorrow.

Alex Pickman