It seems like folks in Oklahoma and Kansas are waking up to severe storms every morning, and we are looking at yet another overnight threat tonight. But before then, as storms initially form, we should expect some pretty severe weather from SW KS into the Panhandles and then east from there.

Today’s risk area as outlined by the Storm Prediction Center centers the risk area along the OK/KS border.
Most models (pictured is the HRRR) develop storms along and north of the Raton Mesa by mid-afternoon.
Most models produce storms in an environment like this one (pictured is the RRFS). There are big temperature/dewpoint spreads and very high LCLs. There is enough storm relative flow that storms may try to organize, but if enough storms go up at once I think they’ll struggle to not merge cold pools and grow upscale.
The HRRR presents one possibility, where storms basically do grow upscale but you get a pretty robust supercell on the south side of a eastward moving cluster.
The RRFS shows the other possibility, that storms are generally linear from almost the first cumulus towers.
By evening, if you can get a robust supercell, there is enough shear and curvature in the hodographs to make a supercell happen. However, the tornado risk is likely pretty low given the capped surface soundings. I do think storms can survive this environment if they are propagating east as a linear cluster — but if you can get a supercell I could see a smoothed out but sculpted UFO like structure tonight.

The Bottom Line

Storms are a certainty and as they grow upscale into the evening, an enhanced damaging winds threat is evident given the 1700+ DCAPE. Before that, hodograph shape, hail growth zone instability, and storm mode should support giant hail with initial storms/supercells.

I suspect we’ll have a few supercells develop initially but most will merge into a linear segment that tracks east along the OK/KS border. It is possible we’ll get a supercell or two embedded in the line, and there may be just enough help in the environment to support a very low tornado threat.

We’ll have another risk or two this week on the Central/Southern Plains. I’m not seeing any major risks, but there’ll be a few severe storms around. As always, subscribe to our newsletter and also be sure to check back here often.