First Round of Severe Weather

Over the next 36-48 hours, parts of Region 8 will see their first round of severe weather of the year. Make sure you have a way to get warnings! The best way is to text STORM to 52488. Then, enter your county.

The severe weather threat map has not changed from the one we sent out on social media yesterday. At KAIT, we still think there is a medium risk of severe weather in NW Arkansas and parts of Missouri for later today:

The latest short-term data suggest that we will see storms develop around Joplin, MO around 4:00 or so:

This is when the air will be at it's most unstable point. We have talked about CAPE in the past. It's the amount of energy available for the storms. The higher the number, the more energy there is available. Other factors come into play for the storms to develop, but this is just how much "fuel" is there for them. Notice the plume of energy ahead of the storm:

 By the early evening 6:00-7:00, the line becomes more mature:

I think we will see some warnings in our NW counties this evening. At this point, the air is still pretty unstable. Notice that the storms are running ahead of the most unstable air....

By 10:00, we have storms coming into Region 8, but they should be weakening:

Stay informed later today and again tomorrow night. We will be watching the storms closely.

-Ryan