October 14 Th Severe Weather Outlook

First of all we stated yesterday that this was not going to be a Major Tornado Outbreak ..I hope those that were forecasting that have swallowed a little humble pie..and will think twice before HYPING an event. Especially when they have Meteorologist attached to their names..

Now lets get into today..This is late because models were not in agreement..so felt the need to observe radar and satellite and wait for the next cycle of models to come out...

So lets look at the current radar first..

This is a radar /satellite combo and as you can see basically out ahead of the line of rain showers and embedded storms is cloud cover. The other thing you may notice is that it is already approaching the western parts of KY and TN...

However one also notices on the most recent surface analysis map that the cold front is still pretty much back to the west which implies that all the action (rain and heavy rain presently) is out ahead of this cold front in the warm sector..
Now this is all important because this would mean with precipitation arriving right around daybreak it would do two different things:
It will limit instability 
It will cut down on daytime heating influence...

So when this happens you have the atmosphere losing the ability to destabalize because it needs time to recover from the precipitation that will be moving thru..

So lets look at the latest NAM and see what we are now looking at ..

Now we are looking at CAPE that is more meager compared to the 00z run and actually now less then 2000. So this is actually an improvement from 00z..

And by 00z it moves east wards and now SW KY is really out of any meaningful CAPE..
Lift index is also not very impressive with it going to about -4 or so across the region...

Greatest Lift is down in SE and Eastern TX... Meanwhile shear is also not quite as strong as the 00z run with about 50 knots being the top of the highest range as compared to 60 knots..

Helicity is still about the same as it was on the prior runs around 250-300 with NC KY in around 400

The highest EHI is still in W KY into NW TN ...with about 2.0 and 1 pretty much elsewhere...

Under normal circumstances we see this and we would feel pretty confident on tornado chances..
However as the following maps will show HPC agrees with our thinking of precipitation already moving into the western areas of TN/KY by about 8 AM morning time...

And pretty much east of those areas sometime between 2 PM and 8 PM...

So since Helicity is not really in the 400 levels in alignment with the EHI that is there...CAPE is considerably lower... we are not seeing the same tornado percentage as what SPC says....

We are seeing a lower risk for severe weather with the possibility of SW ohio seeing a tornado or isolated tornado (higher Helicity) but that to is stretching it considering the lack of EHI in that region..

With any severe we think the main threats are going to be hail and or winds. With clouds on the increase and precipitation moving in now or shortly this will help to stabalize the atmosphere and allow less destabilization to occur...

DO not be surprised to see Garden Variety storms and heavy rain however...

As for Tornado chances they are at less then 2 % as always we will be following this thru out the day!