It appears that today has a much better chance for severe weather. The SPC ( http://www.spc.noaa.gov/ ) has us in a slight risk for severe weather. If you haven't noticed today has been fairly muggy compared to yesterday. The warm front has been lifting across the state sending us warm air advection. This is helping to destablalize the atmosphere allowing for showers and thunderstorms to pop up to our west. Two key ingredients in severe weather development, moisture and instability.
Presently Kansas is experiencing tornado warnings with several reports of tornadoes on the ground. Lucky for us, it has not arrived just yet, but it is on the way. With the sunshine we have seen poke through this afternoon and the low level jet strengthening in the warm sector, our air mass is losing its cap. It's like taking a bottle cap off a shaken soda, once the cap erodes an explosion of thunderstorms begin to develop.
After looking at the Skew T diagram from this morning in Springfield, MO, it appears that a severe weather outbreak for us is quite possible. All the indicies indicated off to the right show a good chance for showers and thunderstorms to turn severe. We also see the shifting of the winds in the lower levels of the atmosphere. This would support possible tornadic development, particularly off to the West and North in the state of Missouri. You can also take note that there is a lot of moisture at the surface with a drier airmass above it. Then in the upper levels of the atmosphere, the moisture starts to return. http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/skew/skew_KSGF.html
After looking at our RPM precipitation model, it appears that we will see a strong line of showers and thunderstorms start to move into the area later this evening. Some of these will likely become severe. Most of that looks to stay up to the Northern and Western portions of our viewing area. Keep it right here to KOMU 8 News and http://www.komu.com/ for the latest in severe weather coverage!
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