Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Severe Weather Update - Oklahoma


On the midday update, the SPC extended the conditional severe weather risk further to the Southwest across portions of Northeast, Central & Southwest Oklahoma.  

As I described in a post earlier today, there is a strong capping inversion in place across Oklahoma, which is why this risk is described as "conditional".  If a thunderstorm is able to break the cap and form, it will most certainly become severe (with hail and damaging winds the primary threats).  The big question is will a storm be able to break the cap and form?

The atmosphere is heating up rapidly across the region this afternoon, with temperatures already in the mid to upper 90s across much of central and southwest Oklahoma.  The higher the temperature rises over the next few hours, the weaker the cap will get, so I think there is at least a 30% chance of thunderstorm development somewhere within the Oklahoma portion of the risk area this late this afternoon or this evening.  While there may only be a 30% chance of a storm affecting any given location, there is a near 100% chance of any such storm becoming severe....so keep an eye to the sky!

For details on the threat to other areas within the severe weather outlook (shown in yellow on the image above), please refer to my post from earlier today.

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