Another day of severe weather is expected across the United States today, with the greatest threat of severe storms forecast to impact along a line stretching from Texas north and east to New York this afternoon and evening. Within a long swath of severe-thunderstorm potential from central Texas to the Lower Great Lakes, the greatest concentration of severe weather, which will consist mainly of large hail and damaging winds, should be across parts of central Texas to central Arkansas. A few tornadoes are also within the severe weather region today.
Large supercells are currently forming along the responsible weather front across central Texas, with giant hail possible in this extremely unstable and deep-sheared environment. To the east corridors of damaging wind and hail may develop with storms extending from northeast Texas into Tennessee. These storms will track eastward today across Arkansas, with new storms forming in the moist and moderately unstable air mass farther east.
The worst of today’s storms will take aim on Texas, where the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) says that strong deep layer shear and fast westerly flow aloft will promote supercells capable of very large hail, damaging winds, and a few tornadoes. The SPC adds, “As this activity tracks southeastward, congealing outflow will increase the risk of corridors of damaging wind gusts.”
Relatively fast southwesterly mid and upper level flow is present today over much of the northeast, with a cold front moving across the Ohio Valley. According to the SPC, dewpoints in the 60s, strong daytime heating, and moderately steep mid-level lapse rates will produce conditions ripe for thunderstorms. Model guidance is in agreement that scattered clusters of thunderstorms will form across the region later today, with parameters favoring a risk of damaging winds and some hail in the strongest cells. An isolated tornado or two cannot be ruled out, especially across far western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania.
