thunderbird12

5-inch diameter hail reported northwest of Levelland, TX at 625 PM CDT. That storm could affect Lubbock a little later this evening.

Looking back, my GR2 had a couple base-velocity pixels of 160 kt (184 mph) at around 700 feet above ground when the tornado was south of Cambridge, IA. Even discounting that, there were several scans where it had 120-140 kt base velocity at multiple tilts, which is impressive. Looks like that particular tornado has finally weakened, thankfully.

The NAM/GFS might be a little too aggressive with moisture return on Monday, with potentially lots of convection and related outflow across Texas the rest of tonight into tomorrow. However, even if the moisture isn't quite as pristine as the NAM/GFS would suggest, Monday still looks like a big severe day. Seems like there has been a trend (especially in the 00Z NAM) for a somewhat stronger secondary shortwave and jet max approaching Oklahoma near and after 00Z Monday evening. That would be an ominous scenario if it verifies.

Up to 2" Hail at the Red Rocks concert venue in CO last night resulted in 90+ injuries and 7 transported to a hospital, per a recent BOU LSR and recent media reports. Definitely some high-impact storms yesterday. Tough luck to have two Panhandle/west Texas towns take a direct hit from a big tornado in one week. Tough day for the CAM guidance yesterday, especially across Texas. As alluded to in the tweet above, there was some signal for the Houston area eventually getting hit, but I don't think any model came close to getting the timing or evolution of those storms right. Several HRRR runs did a good job yesterday showing the potential for an intense supercell cluster across the Panhandle and South Plains area...until it completely gave up on that scenario a few hours before the event began. Weakly forced scenarios with huge CAPE are always going to be a challenge.

12Z HRRR is the odd model out, showing essentially no development on the dryline this afternoon. Of the other 12Z HREF members, the FV3 and WRF-ARW have development into northern OK, and the 3km NAM and WRF-NSSL have development all the way into southwest OK (and the 3km NAM all the way into northwest TX). Definitely a trend toward more dryline storms compared to the 00Z guidance. Still probably a close call either way as to whether storms go or not on the dryline.

Survey says...no tornado: https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php?pil=PNSLZK&e=202204162236

Occasional moderate-to-heavy sleet in Norman this morning. Heard a couple rumbles of thunder as well. It's not often that you get to hear thunder when it's 12 degrees outside.

It's been a wild event, but the softball-sized hail report in northeast KS might be the most unexpected report of the day.

100 mph Russell KS just gusted to 100 mph.

The bulk of guidance suggests the tornado threat will maximize across extreme eastern NE into western and central IA between 4-7pm CST, as effective SRH increases ahead of the line. It will be interesting to see how the line evolves as low-level shear becomes quite intense by early evening.

The streaks are hourly-maximum 2-5 km updraft helicity, basically an indication of where stronger midlevel rotation has tracked over the last hour. The streaks on that plot are unusually long due to insane storm motions.

Over 1,000,000 power outages in Louisiana now, and outages starting to climb (40,000+) in MS as well. KMSY is reporting again after a 2+ hour hiatus. Wind gusts to "only" 55 mph (after several hours of hurricane-force gusts) on the 11:15 PM ob. Hopefully that trend continues, since the wind needs to abate help the ongoing rescue efforts. The original eye is nearly gone on radar. Looks like Ida's time as a hurricane is finally about done.

It was just a position update, not a full advisory where wind speeds are specified in knots, so no reason it couldn't be done, I guess.

KMSY sustained 62 mph gusting to 90 mph as of 8:37 PM CDT.

Wind obs available again from KMSY as of 8:16 PM CDT...sustained 56 mph gusting to 85 mph. Edit: Looks like there was a peak gust of 87 mph at 8:05 PM.