Flash Flood Watch Until Monday Morning
Here’s an update to my morning post on the severe storm potential today.
First off, the National Weather Service has issued a Flash Flood Watch in effect through Monday morning for Springfield and areas to the west and north.
Additional rain and storm areas are expected to blossom to the west of our area later this afternoon and evening. This activity will spread over the same areas that got the brunt of the rain last night and early this morning. Localized flash flooding is possible when the next round of rain arrives later tonight.
The threat for severe storms has increased a bit since this morning. Unstable air has been building over a good portion of the area. There remains in place a cap of warmer air which will tend to snuff out the rising updrafts of wannabe storms. Still, a few subtle features in the atmosphere may force the issue and storms should eventually be able to break the cap. There is some evidence of this already as radar images at 4:15 show some cells starting to pop up over northeast Oklahoma and southeast Kansas.
Large hail and damaging winds are the main threats. Tornadoes are not completely out of the question especially for storms which can follow close to old cool air boundaries from previous rain activity.
I’ll be watching carefully for the remainder of the evening hours.