Chinook

helicopter view of tornado from Oklahoma City - News 9

maybe distinguishable funnel cloud near Watonga

Storms by Alva seem to all being showing the curvature such that they might be supercells. I would suppose they could compete quite a bit. Still kind of awesome to see every single storm looking like a kidney bean. I would think one or more storms will produce a tornado in that group.

It should be a surface-based updraft. Perhaps a brief moment when I believed the CC (correlation) looked low, as if a debris signature. But I don't know if the debris signature ever happened, or I suppose, nobody ever reported a tornado.

already looking a lot like a possible tornado producer near Bucklin, Kansas (radar from 1959z)

My area had 0.11" rain in April and 0.30" rain last night. The grass has been quite dry. I don't think many lawns can run their sprinklers, because they probably activate sprinklers after the chance of frost is gone. We've got 85% humidity today. That's something. edit: western Nebraska really does have accumulating snow today, so, kind of a rude awakening for May, but it should help with the drought, with maybe some 0.5" water equivalent going to help the crops as soon as it melts.

3-d view of tornado warned storm at Andrews a few minutes ago two updrafts

WRF-NSSL really has a large cluster of storms, stretching some 150-200 miles along I-20. I wonder if this is possible.

I'd say there is a strong case for a tornado outbreak in Oklahoma, as long as they can hit the 70's after the morning storms.

Convection-allowing models showing numerous storms from SE Colorado down into New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. Each model shows the storms heading eastward, rather than stalling. This particular model has has a storm near Wichita Falls. The overall scenario looks very good, with mid-50's dew points, 0-6km shear of about 50 kt, and, as mentioned in the long SPC discussion, increasing storm relative helicity. By the way, the people of the region might freak out if they see a raindrop, let alone heavy rain or a tornado. Last rain over 0.01" at Tucumcari, NM was March 31st.

Near Bloomington, Illinois

confirmed tornado warning at I-294 and Westchester, Elmhurst

Update: the 06z outlook has slight risk with the typical 5% tornado outlook, for primarily Illinois, but also over to Indianapolis and southeast Missouri and nearby Arkansas.

Convection-allowing models show some somewhat-discrete storms going directly into Chicago tomorrow. I'm decently impressed by the 0-6km shear and 0-3km storm-relative helicity in the area of several of these cells.

current tornado-warned storm at Minden, NE (no confirmed tornado that I know of)

The 00z convection-allowing models have high coverage of thunderstorms near the Illinois-Indiana border on Saturday afternoon. There are some disagreements on shear, possibly varying from 30 kt to 50 kt. Storm-relative helicity will not be too high. CAPE values could be 1500 - 2000 J/kg.

We are up to the point where the 00z convection-allowing models are covering Friday. Here is the 00z FV3 for Saturday 00z. The FV3 is usually quite a convection-happy model compared to others. I do expect some severe storms in Nebraska, probably some version of an MCS, and some supercells in Kansas and northern Oklahoma, east of a distinct dryline, with a huge moisture gradient.

SPC now has an enhanced risk for Friday

lots of storm reports around Richmond

There are about 5 large severe storms going in Oklahoma, all without too many storm reports that I have seen. There may be some hail reports that are not on the SPC database yet. 3D view of storm near Blanchard, OK, with OKC storm in the distance

Some broad rotation has been in the areas of SW Oklahoma city for a while. I don't believe there have been any reports of tornadoes yet.

Quite a bit of hail/wind activity near the dryline yesterday

As for my place, I think I got to 82-88, with just some breezes in the afternoon, with more winds of 25mph or better in the evening. Probably a lot more tomorrow. There are some major fires starting to burn I think west of Las Vegas, New Mexico and other places. If you plot all the severe thunderstorm reports and non-thunderstorm reports, you get this. Some fire reports are hidden under wind report icons.

This will summarize some of the things happening. The SPC has kept the enhanced risk relatively similar to the most recent one. The Day-2 outlook is a slight risk from Oklahoma to Minnesota (contrary to what is being shown here on the right) Then there's just a huge blizzard in the north and a high wind warning/extreme fire behavior in the south.

both posted April 19th near Cody, in northern Wyoming. I guess they briefly had a category 4 hurricane or something like that