More Severe Weather in February

From 6" of snow to a few weak tornadoes, Arkansas has been through a wild February and there are no signs of that stopping soon.

Today the National Weather Service released there full tornado report for Thursday's event.  There were three tornadoes that dropped in Central Arkansas.  All of the twisters were similar in the fact that they were very weak and carved out around less than 10 mile path.  Plus, no major injuries were identified.

As this information came out today, the Storm Predicition Center in Norman issued a MODERATE RISK of severe weather in Arkansas for Sunday night and into Monday morning.  If you don't understand this outlook that's understandable.  It's meant to impact the meteorology community more than the public.  When you break it down, it just means there is a medium-high chance we'll experience an episode of severe weather.

Anyways, the worst threat are tornadoes and very fast straight line winds.  Here is a quick summary for you. An area of low pressure will race across Missouri while a cold front lingering below it will sweep through Arkansas.  Out ahead of the front there will be enough lift for storms to develop in the state.  Since there will be a good amount of rotation in the atmosphere storms will have the ability to have spinning updrafts which could lead to a brief tornado.

THE GOOD NEWS: Since the front won't fire up any storms until late Sunday and into early Monday morning, there won't be a ton of instability in our atmosphere.  That hurts the chances of a strong tornado going through our region.  Secondly, the storms are likely to form into a line which limits the chances of a tornado developing.

THE BAD NEWS: If enough rotation manages to develop within the line of storms we could have small, brief tornadoes that touch down when the public is least aware of it (during the overnight hours when they're likely asleep).  In addition to that, any tornadoes that form will likely be hard to identify due to the night time atmosphere and possible rain wrapping around it.

At this time we haven't issued a Severe Weather Alert Day but to be just on the safe side have your NOAA weather radio ready to go Sunday night and into Monday morning.  If you hear any alarms from that or hear a siren outside your door tune to FOX 16 for the latest information.  We'll continue to monitor the atmosphere for you and give you the breaking news in the weather department.