Saturday Looks Intriguing

After all the rain from Thursday, we are in for a treat today. 100% sunshine should be overhead. Although temperatures will be a little cooler. High temperatures will top out in the 50°'s this afternoon.

Looking ahead to the weekend... The rain is coming back. Saturday morning and early afternoon should be fine, but I am watching a storm developing over the Rockies this morning along with upper level energy just coming on-shore over the west coast.

The upper-level portion of the storm looks intriguing to me for Saturday evening. Here is a look at the NAM models' 500mb chart.

Ahead of the upper low you can see the nose of the faster winds moving in to northern Arkansas and southern Missouri. This is "energy" coming to aid thunderstorms that develop.

The problem is the development part of the equation. The atmosphere has been scoured out after yesterday's rain. With high pressure keeping things cool and dry (dew point) today the atmosphere over the area isn't primed for severe thunderstorms.

We should see our winds turn around to the south tomorrow and start to draw up some moisture. I would like to see dew points in the lower to middle 50°'s this time of year for severe thunderstorms (if not a little higher). Today our dew points are in the upper 20°'s to lower 30°'s so we need to pump a lot of moisture up this way.

Here is the forecast dew points for Saturday afternoon.

This model brings dew points in to the upper 40's to near 50° in the Missouri Bootheel. This might be one of the things that ends up limiting severe thunderstorms from developing.

The Storm Prediction Center doesn't have anyone outlooked for severe weather tomorrow. However, they said they are monitoring the Arkansas, southern Missouri, western Tennessee, northern Louisiana, and northern Mississippi area.