A Severe Thunderstorm Watch was recently issued for much of central & eastern Oklahoma, including both the Oklahoma City & Tulsa metro areas. It is valid until 7pm CDT.
A line of strong thunderstorms (which originated over the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle region early this morning) continues to gather strength over central and southwest Oklahoma. It is moving Eastward while the individual storms within the complex are moving Northeast.
Large hail and damaging winds will be the greatest threats with this activity, although an isolated tornado also cannot be ruled out, particularly with any thunderstorm that manages to develop ahead of the main system or separate itself from the remainder of the main system.
Based on the current movement of the main thunderstorm area over central Oklahoma, it would reach the Oklahoma City Metro area during the next one to two hours, and the Tulsa Metro area between 5 and 7 pm this evening.
Isolated to scattered thunderstorms may also develop out ahead of the main system over eastern Oklahoma as the atmosphere heats up and destabilizes this afternoon. Any such development would also carry the same severe weather threats as noted above.
4 comments:
Is this line of storms our main event, or could there be yet another one that forms behind it? This one seems to be moving very slowly.
That's the $64,000 question for sure. At the moment it is still cloudy all the way out to the dryline where these storms initially formed this morning. The dryline itself has moved along the TX/OK border. If some clearing is able to take place along the dryline in the next few hours, redevelopment is likely. As I mentioned earlier, I do believe it would be less widespread than it looked like at this time yesterday, which doesn't necessarily translate to less intense activity, just intense activity over a smaller area. Watch for an updated post concerning the redevelopment potential in the next hour.
As far as what's going now, it is likely to start to accelerate Eastward as stronger winds aloft overspread the region. High resolution computer models bring the activity into Tulsa during the 6 o'clock hour this evening, for example.
For what its worth, those same models do not show redevelopment along the dryline in Western Oklahoma this evening, but I am not 100% convinced as of yet. Stay tuned for updates on that....
Thank you so much! I hope I'm not bothering you! :-)
Not a problem at all. Just wish I knew if redevelopment was a sure bet, just not feeling strongly either way on that at this time. Maybe by 4-5pm we'll have a better handle on that.
Check the most recent post. Even though it concerns TX, I posted images of the HRRR model I was referring to, and you can see what it does (and doesn't do) with thunderstorms in Oklahoma.
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