4/5 – The Chief’s “Big Changes Ahead” Wednesday Morning Forecast

A cold front drapes south into the southern Plains where severe weather is ongoing across the AR/OK/MO region and will continue NE into the Ohio Valley region today. This means that just about all of the associated dynamic energy will press away from our area with time leaving a slowing cold front drifting into the LA/AR/MS region today, as frontal orientation transitions into nearly parallel to the mean wind flow aloft.

We’ll start out today mostly cloudy with patchy low stratus and a thicker cirrus canopy. The question now is will we have enough subtle forcing mechanisms from the frontal boundary to develop shallow showers.

Going into tonight, question remains on if convection to our west can cold pool out enough to surge a weak outflow boundary east with time into daybreak Thursday. Simply put about Thursday, we will need to closely monitor where any lingering outflow boundary sets up as this could act as a focal for shower/t-storm initiation as we approach peak diurnal heating. Regardless, should this scenario pan out, this raises the possibility of locally heavy rainfall/isolated flash flooding as boundary orientation/speed slowly to the S and E becomes nearly parallel to the mean storm motion meaning updrafts rooted to the boundary could slow down to a crawl at times (backward propagation). Additionally, a locally strong storm or two cannot be ruled out.

Messy, lingering showers and a few storms continue into Thursday night, but decrease in coverage as we lose diurnal support. Main focus becomes as we discussed yesterday, a weak mid-level impulse riding along the front from TX/MX, NE into the northern Gulf coast states. This will support another round of more widespread heavier showers and storms during the day on Friday. This same scenario will occur again Saturday into Easter morning.