Severe Weather Update - January 9, 2020

Thursday January 9, 2020

As promised, the Day 3 Outlook has spread some more light on the severe weather we can expect on Saturday. As shown below most of our area is in an Enhanced (Orange) risk zone. Looking at the probabilistic product, this equates to a 30% probability of severe weather within 25 miles of any point. Further, the black hatched area indicates a 10% chance of significant severe weather within 25 miles of a point. As a refresher, severe weather is one or more of the following: a tornado, damaging winds 58 mph or greater, 1" hail or larger. Significant severe weather is a tornado that produces EF2 or greater damage, winds 75 mph or greater, hail 2" or larger. This latter definition is what is represented by the hatched area.

The SPC doesn't go into a lot of details about specific threats until Day 1 which will be issued for us very early Saturday morning. At that time they will outline more specifically what kinds of severe weather to expect and how widespread it may be. It sounds like the main risk will be damaging winds along the main line with a few embedded tornadoes. If the ingredients remain in place there could be a significant tornado risk for storms out ahead of the main line. Below is a simulated radar image for noon Saturday showing the main line and storms out in front to give you an idea what that may look like. Below that shows potential wind guests. Note that this isn't a forecast. We need to wait until Friday or Saturday morning for specifics.

Lastly, this weather isn't too unusual for us, just stay aware and be prepared. Make sure you have a safe place nearby when the weather is near and that you have a way to receive alerts. I'll send out another update Saturday or maybe tomorrow if something changes.

As a side note this will be the first update posted to my blog, https://www.deepsouthwx.com/. In addition to these updates there is some other weather info on there that will grow with time. If there is anything you want to see let me know. Note that the subscribe button isn't working. If you subscribe you will get added to a list but for some reason Google Blogger isn't emailing new posts out to people, something in their system is broke. I'm going to try to find a workaround for that but for now I'll just keep sending emails.

Have a great end of the week.

Chris