While our weather heats up to the 70s this week, our eyes are focused on the disturbance coming in from the Rockies.
By Thursday, a deep trough will swing through the Mississippi Valley creating a surface low in the Mid-West. As this low takes shape, a fairly strong cold front will emerge underneath it. Once the cold front slips down to our neighborhood there is a slim chance that severe weather will break out near the southeast corner of the state Thursday evening.
The reason I say a slim shot at severe weather is due to the fact that our environment is not ideal for strong storms in Central Arkansas. Little Rock and other locations will have a nice cap, or an inversion of warm air aloft, that will prevent storms from developing. However, as the cold front slips down to the southeast portion of the state, there may be enough daytime heating for the air to overcome this cap and produce strong thunderstorms.
(NAM model showing no storms early Thursday evening)
The good news right now is that all of the computer models suggest that the storms will not develop until they are well south of Arkansas. Our computer model at FOX 16 is on the same page as every other weather model out there. Of course, these are just computer models and they typically struggle with surface based convection (i.e. storm development) which is the type of convection we would be looking at on this day. So we're not highly confident that we'll avoid the storms here.
(FOX 16 weather model shows low tornado potential for areas south of AR.)
Right now this is not a major concern but we will need to monitor the weather conditions in the near future. We'll stay on top of this developing story and let you know the latest on FOX 16.
