New Tornado Watch to the West

A new tornado watch has been issued to our southwest, covering parts of Louisiana and southern Mississippi. Tornado watches now cover all over southern Mississippi, Southwestern Alabama, extreme Northwest Florida, southeastern and Central Louisiana.

Thunderstorms have rapidly become severe this afternoon from east of Alexandria LA to south of Winnsboro. They will be crossing the Mississippi River into southwestern Louisiana between Natchez and Vicksburg. These storms fired ahead of a weakening pre-frontal trough and are feeding on the very warm and moist air coming off the Gulf of Mexico on strong low level winds. CAPE values are pushing 2500 j/kg in Central Louisiana. Tornado warnings are in effect for several parishes in East Central Louisiana.

Temperatures have warmed into the lower 70s over Central Alabama. It was 72F at Birmingham at 2 p.m. Moisture levels are rising, with the dewpoint now up to 52F at Birmingham. They have some way to go to support severe weather, but they will get there quickly as strong wind fields pull Gulf moisture northward.

The system will be coming into Alabama at a good time of the day from an instability point of view…with temperatures having fallen back into the 60s. Instability values too be low over Central Alabama, probably between 250 and 500 j/kg late tonight. They will be a little higher over Southwest Alabama. So, the storms shoudl drop in intensity before moving into Alabama late tonight. But storms along the line will have the potential to produce severe hail and damaging winds as well as isolated tornadoes embedded in the line.

More tornado watches will be issued further to the north in Mississippi as we go into late afternoon and this evening. I would not be surprised to see watches into Alabama later this evening. There will be severe thunderstorm and probably tornado warnings late tonight, so make sure you have a reliable source for warnings that will wake you. NOAA Weatheradio or WeatherCall come to mind.

Category: Alabama's Weather, Severe Weather