Severe weather season is here

It has been a little been since my last blog, but lets get back into it. The area experienced it first severe thunderstorm event of the season April 1st with numerous damaging wind reports. Take a look at the map below the NWS put together showing the report locations. Some of these places had roofs torn off.



I was not expecting this particular event to occur with the severity it did. I thought a band of moderate to heavy rain was going to push through out ahead of the cold front with a couple embedded, possibly strong to marginally severe thunderstorms to push through. Instead a line of thunderstorms formed and numerous damaging straight line winds/microbursts were reported. So what is going to happen next?

A storm system will be approaching the area for your Easter Sunday, but the day should remain dry. During the late afternoon and evening hours a warm front is going to lift through the area and bring a round of showers and thunderstorms. Some of these thunderstorms will have the potential to reach severe limits. Right now, it looks like the main threat will be hail and mayb some damaging winds for late afternoon Sunday into Monday morning. The warm frontwill continue to lift north into Iowa and allow warm, moist air to spill into the area. Monday will become warm, muggy, and windy. The SPC has our area in a slight risk Sunday afternoon through Monday morning, and a slight risk across Eastern Nebraska, Iowa, and into Illinios as the warm front moves north into that area. Our next chance of thunderstorms will come Tuesday afternoon as the cold front rolls through which could bring another round for some severe weather.

I will have a new blog tomorrow morning on this setup.

Alex Pickman