Severe Weather March 18th 2013

Warm front has already lifted thru the region of TN but will continue to lift north. Low pressure along this front will continue to lift east northeast thru the region. The main action thru out the day yesterday and this early morning has been north of this warm front as the radar will currently show..

However.. there are showers and garden variety storms developing closer to the low pressure area to the west of KY pressing off to the ENE ..

Looking at severe parameters we are not very impressed with the severe weather chances as the only parameter that is really favorable for severe would be the lower level shear..

So shear of 30-40 knots across the region would be favorable for severe weather. The problem at least as far as TN/KY is concerned is that the CAPE is just not all that impressive with about 500 CAPE available. Remember CAPE is like fuel that feeds the atmosphere to help create severe weather..

The greatest CAPE is well to the south of those areas along the gulf coast. This also lines up with the area of greatest lift in the atmosphere..

Which also lines up with the greatest EHI

So as you can see the greatest severe weather parameters from CAPE to LI index to EHI is over the Gulf coast region. Over all as we said we are not to impressed with the severe weather chances but we think that any severe greatest threat would be south of KY and TN with KY and TN experiencing more in the way of heavy rainfall and garden variety thunderstorms. The timing essentially is another factor against severe weather as some showers etc are moving towards the region now. Due to the shear there could be some severe in TN/KY but with the other mitigating factors we see that being only strong gusty winds..along with some possible hail.
If any tornados were to occur we think the greatest chance would be further south of there where the EHI is more supportive of them even though Helicity is not that favorable. 
So with all that said above this is the outlook for today!.