Severe Weather on Monday, October 13th

Good evening everyone. It's 7:15 PM on Sunday night and I'm in the storm center for Andrew tonight. There still appears to be a threat for severe weather on Monday. Let's break down the bullet points first:

• School teachers and administrators need to review their severe weather plan in the morning.
• Parents, schools have a plan in place, so don't worry about your kids at school.
• 2 rounds are possible. I'm expecting a small round of storms late tonight into daybreak that could be severe. The greatest threat would be hail, but damaging winds and even a tornado can not be ruled out. This will be ahead of the warm front lifting north.
• 2nd round will be stronger and I'm expecting that to mainly be in the afternoon. More on the timing of this round in a graphic below.
• Damaging winds will be the main threat, but hail and tornadoes can not be ruled out.
• The severe weather threat ends by tomorrow evening.
• Timing is still questionable and one of the most difficult parts of this forecast.
• Watch Justin in the morning for the latest info.

OK, let's take a look at some data. If you step outside right now, you can probably feel the air becoming more unstable. We look at CAPE or "Convective Available Potential Energy" when forecasting severe storms. The CAPE was zero this morning and the air was very stable. It's becoming more unstable tonight. This is a map showing the CAPE by 1:00 AM. The greens and yellows are the areas with the highest "Potential Energy". This will help the storms that will develop before the sun comes up:

As a result, this is what radar could look like at 2:00 AM. As I mentioned earlier, these storms could have large hail:

Let's fast-forward to the second round. Take a look at the CAPE at 1:00 PM. You can see that we are unstable and you can clearly see the front coming through:

As a result, we should have a very healthy squall-line moving through at 3:00 PM. If this model verifies, dismissal at schools may need to be delayed until the main line moves through. Pay close attention schools:

To summarize, we should see some storms develop before daybreak. The main line will come in later in the day and here is the timing for it. Stay tuned for changes!:

Here are the threats for Monday:

And finally, here is a map that shows where the greatest threats are located. We may make a "high" threat area on this map at some point on Monday:

Now is not the time to panic. We have had much worse weather in the past, but let's all have a plan tomorrow and be safe. 

Ryan