5-10-2010 Severe Weather Outbreak

It was an extremely active day across the southern Plains with numerous severe weather reports as an intense storm system sparked off numerous strong supercell thunderstorms that produced huge hail, damaging winds, and tornadoes. Here is the map from The Storm Prediction Center showing the severe weather reports:

There were 37 reports of tornadoes across southern Kansas and Oklahoma and with those tornadoes unfortuneately 5 deaths were reported. The Oklahoma City area was hit by a couple tornadoes. Three storms blew up on the west side of the city and turned into a tornadic supercells in no time at all. The storms raced ENE at nearly 55 mph and produced a tornado that tracked through south OKC, Norman, and Moore, OK. Here is a radar image of the same storm roughly 60 miles to the east right near the town of Siminole, OK.

 

This is a classic looking supercell, notice how well defined the hook is.

Now if you look back up to the report map, notice how localized the outbreak was, from south central Kansas through southern Oklahoma. This storm system had the potential to produce a historic severe weather outbreak, and we would of been dealing with reports across Arkansas, and Missouri as well, but that area was dealing with cloud cover, rain, and a cold airmass all day and this pretty much fizzled away the chance of severe weather.

There is a chance for more thunderstorms Tuesday evening and overnight as a warm front lifts northward through the area. There is a chance a few storms may be severe, but my focus is Wednesday afternoon and evening. The warm front will be pushing into northeastern Kansas and northern Missouri and the focus will be on locations south of the front where storms will likely fire. I will go into more detail on this tomorrow and in the next couple days I will post the tornado ratings from Monday's tornadic event.

Alex Pickman