3/7 – The Chief’s “Sunny & Warm” Friday-Eve Morning Forecast

A beautiful day is ahead with mostly clear skies becoming partly cloudy this afternoon. The next frontal system will be getting together by tonight as the upper level support/feature develops out west. The surface low pressure system currently over the southern foothills of the Rockies will remain over the Tx/Ok panhandles today before getting kicked SE tonight. As the upper feature begins to swing eastward, this will cause the surface low and attendant front to become progressive which is turn will cause stronger return flow ahead of it. This will cause a warm front to move north out of the gulf by early Friday.

All variables fit the potential for strong to severe storms Friday into Friday evening. This could be a case where nothing is occurring until around or just after 12 PM and things evolve rapidly in the warm sector during the afternoon. The most volatile time frame for all of this would be from noon to 6pm Fri. But forcing along the front would also bring another possibility of storms late in the evening, but as heating is taken away, these don’t look as strong as the afternoon storms. All modes of severe would be on the table with hail being the lowest risk. The area that looks to be most involved is along and north of the interstate 10 corridor, but there is a window during the same time frame that a few cells could pop up and become strong closer to the beach.

The cold front will actually lag behind most of this activity and will not start moving through the area until after midnight Friday night/Sat morning. The front should be through the entire area by Sat afternoon, this includes the coastal waters. Northerly winds will usher in cool dry air Saturday into the first part of the new week.