Incoming!

Haven't posted for awhile, as I figured I'd leave the hurricane talk near the top for a bit, but had to throw this in here today, as we're witnessing one of the more impressive thunderstorm complexes I have seen in quite some time rolling across Missouri and headed into northern Arkansas and western half of Tennessee and Kentucky. These "MCS"s (mesoscale convective systems) are common in the spring when you get impulses in the upper levels interacting with a very warm, moist (and thus unstable) air mass, but this one has been exceptionally strong, with gusts estimated as high as 100 mph when it passed through eastern Kansas this morning. Baseball size hail and a couple of tornadoes have occurred as well in Missouri. Just glancing at radar / satellite imagery, you'd think a hurricane was moving through the region! What is also fascinating is that some of the strongest winds have actually occurred behind the strongest line of thunderstorms, as high as 85 mph as much as 30 minutes after the worst of the thunderstorms has passed! Very wild and impressive stuff! I've seen plenty of damage reports coming in from the affected areas, so hopefully everyone stays safe who is in the path of this over the next few hours.


Here is an image from around 8:00 central time this morning. Wow!