Stormy week - difficult forecast

This is just the beginning of a stormy week for the Plains. Monday evening, we had a couple of tornado warnings and a few reports of storm damage. We will likely have more watches and warnings to get through before we reach the 4th of July.

Storm near Leoti - courtesy U of M chasers

What amazes me about summer storms are the different cloud features and storm structure that you don't always get to see with spring storms. Mainly because spring storms can produce so much rain it hides the interesting features. Just look at this storm as it rolled into Scott and Wichita counties around 7 p.m. The lack of rainfall allows us to see more of the structure.

And look at the amazing shelf cloud near Hillsboro. Shelf clouds are generally associated with very strong winds.

We know there will be more storms coming this week. The forecast is challenging, but we are fairly certain that storms tonight (Tuesday night) will mostly stay in Nebraska. They will move east with a hail and wind threat.

The chance for severe weather is back Wednesday evening, once again with the main focus being to the north. Our Future Track is developing storms along the cold front by 6/7 p.m. Hail and wind is the main threat. 

Thursday -

Severe weather concerns will be at their highest Thursday evening and into the night. Strong winds and some hail will be possible with storms that fire up in western and northern Kansas first, then move to the southeast into the night. We may issue a Weather Alert Day for this event, but I'm waiting to see how the new data looks as it comes in this morning.