01.20.10
First Severe Storms Day
The first severe storm watches of the year were issued today–tornado watches 1 and 2–for northeast Texas, Louisiana, and west central Mississippi. 14 tornadoes have been reported so far–see the map below.
Yesterday I thought there would be more hail reports in northeast Texas, with perhaps an isolated tornado or two, while I thought Louisiana would have more tornadoes because of the greater predicted wind shear.
There still is greater shear in Louisiana. However, the Dallas sounding looks great to me in terms of instability and moisture, but although the wind profile doesn’t look terrible, it doesn’t look the best either (see below).
I’m going to keep this short today, as Norman is experiencing some exciting January thunderstorms today as well; we got a little bit of pea-sized hail and lightning earlier this evening, and it looks like more lightning is on its way. The storms in our area are mostly forming just east of the shortwave trough (see below). Back to watching lightning!
