Severe weather is back!

There is another enhanced risk for severe weather today, this time ranging from the Texas Panhandle to south central Kansas. Surely, storm chasers are once again going to be out there, probably starting in Amarillo and getting their steak, then tracking east with the storms. For my money, the short term models seems to be favoring development in the late evening in Stillwater and Ponca City, in northern Oklahoma. Were I chaser, that’s where I would go. But I’m not! Good luck if you are.

Organization harder to come by

After a few particularly miserable weeks, if some models are to be believed (and important people are believing them) we might actually be able to come up for air next week. There isn’t a well put together system to be found in the near future, and beyond what, say, the NAM has to offer, it kind of gets into silly territory anyways. The SPC just has marginal risks the next three days, and after that, not a thing. There will be some sultry air mass type of storms in the southern US, and certainly there could be a strong one in there somewhere, but not the widespread chaos of the last several weeks. Hooray!

Yesterday’s storms were, in one way, well behaved

These are the storm reports from yesterday, featuring a whopping 762 reports stretching from their origin in southern Missouri and following a wave through Tennessee into downstate North Carolina. You really couldn’t have asked for a more organized storm system. Usually, you see a few disparate tracks of short lived storm, but this one set up in Missouri and just kept on trucking. The other reports aren’t even in conjunction with the main batch. It’s not just the tornado outbreaks that are strong thunderstorms.

Also, I know we are overdue for a couple of verifications, but our last two forecasts were in Muncie and Goldsboro. Nice work by this complex to avoid our towns. It was a lot closer to Muncie the day before, when tornadoes started in the Kalamazoo area and stretched south along the Ohio-Indiana border

Heat roasting the Philippines

Heat index temperatures around metro Manila this week have been in the triple digits, and aren’t expected to drop in the near future. The thick, tropical air mass is expected to remain in place north of the ITCZ and south of the more active trade pattern, which is soaking south China but little else. Looking at the long range model outlook, there isn’t really a change in pattern either.

It will likely take a tropical wave moving through to kick up some seabreezes and move air around, though we are in the dry season for the Asian tropics. It’s never really cool in the Philippines, though, so bear that in mind when thinking about what kind of unbearable heat would lead to it being newsworthy.