Hey everyone, looks like most of the day Saturday will be clear to partly cloudy skies and hot. At this time a Moderate severe storm risk has been issued for areas including the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma.
Current forecasts call for severe thunderstorms to develop from the Texas panhandle down to near Wichita Falls TX, then evolve into an MCS (storm complex) and push down twards the northern parts of the metroplex this evening.
While areas north of I-20 does have slight chances for thunderstorms during the afternoon, most likely we will remain sunny and dry until the evening when the storm complex pushes through. Atmospheric conditions this evening may be supportive for a bow echo type of storm to develop. A bow echo is the same type of storm that impacted us on Wednesday, prompting the tornado warning for Frisco. If weather forecasts continue to indicate this type of event, I will likely send out further updates on this later.
Now as a side note, these severe weather events occurring the first two weeks of June is somewhat uncharacteristic for this area and certainly was not anticipated in long range climatological computer models. This June had the markings of being a very hot and very dry month, but Dallas received 8+ inches of rain in 24 hours this week, and multiple tornado reports have been received from all around north Texas including a few last night near Mineral Wells just 68 miles west of Frisco. Sunday and Monday also have severe weather threats for areas to our north and west but do not include the DFW metroplex at this time. I believe a major contributing factor to this pattern of severe weather is the southern branch of the jet stream is parked pretty far south for this time of year. Currently the jet stream sits across the 4 corners states, through Kansas and Oklahoma, into Illinois. This southern branch of the jet stream may be partially responsible for keeping moisture return from the gulf in the southern and central plains, keeping a fairly persistent stationary front parked right along the Texas/Oklahoma border, and overall seems to be retaining a very mid-spring type of weather pattern. Its almost as if the unseasonable high pressure ridge that kept most severe weather from forming during my storm chasing trip in May, is now indirectly responsible for this unseasonably late severe weather pattern in the southern and central plains.
