8:30AM Weather Update

The Storm Prediction Center has placed areas north of I-20 in a Moderate Risk of severe storms, with a Slight Risk for areas south of I-20. The map below are the latest damaging wind probabilities from the SPC. You can see central and north Mississippi are in the 45% range. 

I see no reason to make any changes with the forecast. We've already got a strong squall line developing in east Texas. There are Severe T-Storm Warnings on the entire line. Here is the radar as of 8:33am CDT.

The data from the weather balloon launch a couple of hours ago shows that we have a layer of warmer air aloft. This is called ac cap. It acts like a lid and makes it harder for clouds to build up to form storms. This will be weakening later today, but it should hold off storms until at least early afternoon.

The window for storms will be brief. The time frame of 1pm-7pm still seems to fit. I don't see storms forming prior to 1pm and the squall line should move through pretty fast, so things should be out by 7pm, if not before.

Strong straight-line winds will be the big threat today, but some tornadoes are possible in any storms that develop ahead of the squall line. There could be a few quick spin-up tornadoes within the squall line as well.

I've had an unusual number of messages about today being just like April 24, 2010 - the day of the Yazoo City tornado. I want to stress the set-up for today is a lot different than April 24th. I do not anticipate strong tornadoes today. That does not mean you should not pay attention to the weather, but I don't want to mislead you either. Any tornado can be bad if it hits a populated area. But, we're not going to see long tracking EF-4 tornadoes today, at least not here, regardless of what you may hear (so I'm told) on a certain national weather network.

We'll probably see some sort of watch or perhaps a couple of watches posted by late morning. I could see a Tornado watch for the entire area, or perhaps just for I-20 and north, with a Severe T-Storm Watch for south of I-20. I would bet on the Tornado Watch for the entire area though.

That's all for now. Follow me on Twitter @EricLawWLBT for more updates throughout the day.

Eric - elaw@wlbt.com