Good Saturday morning! Well, the rain and t-storm event that we have talked about all week for the weekend showed up right on schedule and if the computer models are right...will continue through the weekend and into Monday morning as well. We had numerous reports of brief tornado touchdowns northwest of Clovis, north of Fritch, near Spearman, near Miami and southwest of Perryton, but no damage or injuries have been reported...thankfully! We can expect pretty much the same scenario today (and tomorrow) with ongoing morning showers and t-storms, then perhaps some clearing (not much and not as hot as yesterday) and then more scattered showers and t-storms developing to our northwest over the higher terrain of New Mexico and then blasting their way east and southeast with large hail and damaging winds the primary threats today. The Storm Prediction Centers forecast for our area shows nearly everyone in a Slight Risk for severe weather with a tornado threat of 2%. There is a slightly greater chance of tornadoes in an area that goes from Tucumcari to Clovis and Plainview. (Eastern New Mexico and the southwestern TX Panhandle) where the risk is 5%. Of course, we will watch the skies closely for you today and have frequent updates, as needed, on our combined Storm Search 7 Facebook page. Tomorrows weather will be much like todays with ongoing showers and t-storms in the morning....a bit of a lull from the mid-morning to the mid-afternoon hours....then another round of showers and t-storms...some severe....for the late afternoon, evening and overnight hours Sunday into the early morning hours on Monday. These storms may also be severe with large hail, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes. Heavy rainfall may be a concern as well (more about that later) and by Sunday night and early Monday, we could see some flooding issues with too much rain....wow, I just said that. The NAM Models are shown below for this afternoon, Sunday around midnight and then again for late Sunday night and early Monday morning. Note the large, rain and t-storm complexes moving through. These will no doubt produce some strong winds and some large hail, but also could produce some widespread heavy rainfall as well! Speaking of flooding issues, according to our Ashley Furniture SchoolNet network (which you can find on our website at connectamarillo/weather/schoolnet) we have now seen upward of 3-5 inches of rain in a few locations since this latest round of rain began (Bushland, Morse and Hartley, just to name a few). We could easily see .50 to 1 inch rainfall totals on average today with isolated, heavier totals upward of 2-4 with the stronger storms and more persistent downpours. Stay tuned as some areas may be placed under Flash Flood WATCHES and WARNINGS for too much of a good thing! We will start to dry out Monday afternoon into Tuesday with highs rising from the 70s tomorrow....back to seasonal normals (80s) and then the 90s for Wednesday before another chance of rain reappears for mid to late next week. More about that tomorrow. So, stay tuned, stay weather aware today and I hope that if you havent received enough rain yet, you will by the time this weekend is over! It sure is good to see rain falling again over our parched landscape! Take care and have a good and safe Saturday!
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 10:45:40 +0000