Severe weather this spring - what to watch

As always, thanks for spending a few minutes reading the blog. Our first week of March is in the books and it's been a wild ride so far. Record cold, snow, dangerous wind chills, and then some tornadoes in the southeast US.

Kansas is running about 20-30° below average (thanks to the REALLY cold weather we had at the beginning of the week)

Severe weather thoughts right now:

We had an EF4 tornado hit in Alabama last weekend and now we are seeing TWO more severe setups in the coming days. One setup will come Saturday east of Kansas and another early next week off to our south. Is this a sign of a bad tornado season coming up?

As I've said before, we don't really know how bad the season will be OR how many tornadoes Kansas will have. The science isn't quite there yet. We can look for patterns and trends, but how strong tornadoes are going to be isn't something we can predict.

I still feel like our severe weather season will be slow to start this year because our temperatures remain so cool. When the cooler than normal weather goes all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico (see the images above), you would typically expect few severe weather events. So the cool weather that continues to overwhelm the Plains should keep our tornadoes and hailstorms at bay for awhile. If the reverse were to happen (warmer than normal in the south - cooler to the north), there would be that chance of having more severe events.

Another factor that would argue against having a very busy storm season: El Nino!!

The El Nino is weak right now, but research has shown that during El Nino events, tornado and hail storms tend to be LESS frequent. Now that may not necessarily be the case for every El Nino event, but it does give us something to consider as we move forward.

I do expect the wet weather in Kansas will continue through spring, so we won't have any shortage of green when the temperatures finally warm!

Some heavy rainfall arriving Tuesday/Wednesday:
A quick look at forecast rainfall next week shows much of the Plains could be in for 1-2 inches of rain beginning Tuesday and continuing through at least Wednesday morning.