Severe Weather in the Central Plains Today
More damaging winds. It's been that type of summer.
This has been a really busy season for damaging winds, as it seems every day we’re greeted with a scattering of damaging winds across the reports map. Today will be no exception in the central Plains.
Storms are up in Nebraska already, with some of them showing rotation, but most are showing a more blobby appearance. Whie the environment will technically support cold-pool dominant supercells, complex storm interactions and upscale growth will likely lead to a more linear/blobby multicell look through much of the day with damaging winds the primary threat.
The main driver of this is a small disturbance working its way over the top of the ridge, with 500mb winds at 25-35kt over the region. This is helping that shear increase just enough to create an environment that favors storm longetivity.
The aforementioned high is centered over SE New Mexico, where we’re seeing a fresh batch of monsoon convection again today work its way around the western edge of the ridge as storm activity under and around the immediate periphery of the ridge center is squashed. It’s been an eventful monsoon season already, and I feel like the busiest months will be August and September. We’re all very happy about that in the Southwest.
The Pattern Ahead
Looking ahead…the pattern is going to largely persist in where it’s been for much of the last month.
A ridge will sit over the southwest United States and will wobble to and fro over the coming days. This will impact where the monsoonal activity sets up on any given day, but it won’t suppress activity altogether.
The main corridor of very active severe weather will remain across the Northern Plains and down the immediate east/south side of the ridge where there’s plenty of monsoonal moisture and shear to fuel storms.
This pattern should persist much of the first part of August as well, with the ridge bouncing around in location and strength but never fully going away. The monsoon rolls on, and so does storm season.