Increased Severe Storm Risk Looms for Texas to Kansas Friday

By Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist

April 23,2015; 10:54PM,EDT

 

 

Following strong to locally severe thunderstorms in part of the South Central states during Thursday night, the risk of violent storms will dramatically increase over the region on Friday.
A few locally severe storms will ignite in Texas and along the Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska border region through Thursday night.
The main event of severe weather this week is likely to occur later Friday into Friday night.
AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski is concerned about an outbreak of severe weather late this week that can threaten lives and property.

"It really will not be until the end of the week that severe weather really ramps up and a significant outbreak could occur as the main storm system moves out from the Southwest," Kottlowski said.
As a storm system pushes out of the Southwest late this week, the coverage of severe storms is forecast to increase dramatically across a large part of Texas and Oklahoma and expand northeastward into Kansas and Missouri as well as eastward into Arkansas and Louisiana.
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The most powerful storms are likely to erupt near the boundary of dry and moist air centered over west-central Texas, western Oklahoma and south-central Kansas during Friday afternoon.
"The most likely area for the storms to fire first on Friday is west of the I-35 corridor in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas," Kottlowski said.
The risk of severe weather will then quickly expand eastward and northeastward Friday evening toward northeastern Texas, eastern Oklahoma, eastern Kansas and neighboring areas of western Arkansas and Missouri.
"The storms will bring the risk of damaging wind gusts, large hail and isolated tornadoes," Dewvall said.
In the absence of tornadoes, wind gusts can reach 70 mph in the more intense storms. Some of the storms can produce hail the size of golf balls or larger.
The storms could reach as far as southern Nebraska, southern Iowa, eastern Missouri, eastern Arkansas and Louisiana before diminishing in intensity later Friday night.
Since the storms will occur in areas hit by heavy rain earlier in April, there will be an ongoing risk of flash flooding. Portions of the Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi Valley have received twice their normal rainfall for the month.
Advancing dry air will bring an end to the severe storm risk in western portions of Texas and Oklahoma on Friday night.
As the storms push farther to the east, they will spoil part of the weekend in the Southeastern states, the Ohio Valley and part of the mid-Atlantic.