By the middle of this coming week, you’ll notice the feel of summer to the air. By the end of the week, you’ll feel as though we’ve been suddenly thrust into the summer season.
The good news with all of this is that our spring tornado season comes to an end now. Our peak season for tornadoes is March and April, with activity often spilling over into May a bit. The pattern for the rest of this month does not feature any pattern that would favor tornadoes.
That’s not to say severe weather is over. As you all know, we can have some mean storms fire off in the heat and humidity of summer, but those rarely spawn a tornado. In other words, we are quickly transitioning into the season of straight-line winds being the main threat with storms.
The worst summer storms are the lines of storms (squall lines) that drop down on us from the north or northwest. Whew…those can pack a punch! That’s the kind that did all that wind damage at the Crossville Flea Market and Stock Barn last year. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for anything like that in the coming months.
And, of course, there’s always the concern of a landfalling hurricane moving this way and giving us flooding rainfall and brief tornado spin-ups. That’s a low risk for our area but its not a zero risk.
My primary concern is the rainfall deficit we have. We are now over three inches below normal and that deficit is going to grow even more this week. If things don’t change, we could end up several inches in the hole for rain before month’s end. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Vegetation and increased evaporation from increasing heat can dry things out FAST this time of year. Droughts can be very swift and sneaky in the late spring/early summer. This is the current outlook for rainfall over the next seven days. This is concerning.
On the map above, you’ll notice a big dry area over the Southeast. That’s from an area of hot high pressure that will be setting up over the Southeast, much like what we see in the summer. The southerly flow to the west of the high will pump up lots of moisture into the southern plains over the coming week. That’s not good news for them because it means more severe weather for them.
There have been some indications in the extended guidance (unreliable) of a tropical system developing in the Gulf and moving toward Louisiana. You can see that in the rainfall forecast above. That streak of higher rainfall coming into the central Gulf is the result of model data thinking a system may form there. We’ll see!
I’ll be watching it all! You all have a good evening!
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