12:30 PM Severe Weather Update

As the day becomes busier, I can't guarantee more blog updates, but here's what we are seeing at 12:30 PM. First off, the Storm Prediction Center is about to issue a Tornado Watch for a large part of Arkansas. Here is the area. This will likely include some Region 8 counties:

Second, the rain this morning and early afternoon is helping us a lot! The longer we can stay in cloud cover and rain, the better chance we have to keep the atmosphere more stable. Sure, we have had heavy rain and lots of lightning, but that's better than tornadoes! Look at this map. It shows the change in CAPE or Storm Energy over the past 3 hours. The rain has made the air more stable. That's good. Remember, we cheer for "people victories" and not "tornado victories". If I were to highlight an area set to see some tornado warnings in the next few hours, it would be western AR:

Being more stable is good news, but the bad news is that some short-range model data still shows us becoming very unstable this evening through tomorrow morning. The is the CAPE or storm energy this evening:

We can't let our guard down! Tonight and tomorrow morning look very volatile. Andrew and I are here at KAIT now and Justin will be here later. When you have a prolonged storm threat, staggering the schedules becomes difficult. We'll be here though!

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Take care,
Ryan