ORLANDO, Fla. – The tornado season chess board has laid out all its key pieces. and Mother Nature also made her first move with the way our weather pattern is currently arranged.
While the atmosphere locally is very inviting for a Floridians standard, it’s setting us up to produce some very nasty weather.
Heat dominates the south and east United States. Subtropical ridging highest up in our atmosphere has helped sandwich us beneath an extension of high pressure reaching westward from the Atlantic ocean.
Our daytime temps are going to keep growing, and they may continue to do so from here on out. Granted, some occasional cool weather can come down still.
Those very brief phases of cooler air pushing south are the KEY. Let’s go back to the chess analogy; as warmer weather blankets the eastern half of the nation entirely, those pockets of colder air from up north put us in CHECK.
Right now, even for this time of year, we’re above average in the temperature department. We’re also seeing a classic “return flow” set up being welcomed in by high pressure over the ocean to our east.
Return flow simply means we’re yanking and pushing plentiful tropical, Caribbean air right up into the Gulf. We can feel it, and so can our neighbors through Dixie alley and Tornado Alley.
Storm Prediction Center is ahead of the curve and already has multiple days marked for increased risks of severe thunderstorms. Storm chasers are poised to hit the road, and television meteorologists across the Plains are prepped for wall-to-wall coverage.
By as early as March 5, this upcoming Thursday, our first small-scale batch of cool, Canadian air is slated to come down. It’s forecast to push right into the dome of warmth entrenched out east.
Check mate.
A collision between warm, moist air surging northward from out of the Gulf and cool, dry air racing south out of the Canadian provinces lights up our atmosphere.
Severe thunderstorms become a high risk. Damaging straight line winds, large hail, and a few to several tornadoes are thrown in the mix.
For the first half of this month, we’ve got round one coming later this week. Then, approaching Friday the 13th, an even stronger system looks doable sweeping out of the Rockies and across the rest of the lower forty-eight.
Our friends across the Plains, the Midwest, and even further east from the Gulf coast to the Mid-Atlantic states will all want to be paying attention to their weather forecasts over the coming days.
Severe weather season is only getting started.