Nation Might Just Have Its Busiest Severe Weather/Tornado Week Of The Year

Photographer/chaser Max Olson (Twitter handle @MesoMax919) captured
  this big Texas tornado over the weekend

Things are setting up in the middle of the nation in such a way that it looks like this week could be the busiest one of the year in terms of tornadoes and other severe weather.

Nothing's guaranteed, of course, but a slow moving storm, a clash of air masses (cold to the northwest, humid to the southeast, dry to the west) are setting the stage for some wild weather.

Things got off to a bang Sunday, with 22 reports of tornadoes from Nebraska to Texas. Most of them happened over open country, so there were no major injuries and not a lot of damage, so that's good. 

It might well be a little quieter today, as the next storm is still organizing. Still, severe weather is possible, centered in Kansas. There might be a tornado or two, but it doesn't look like a widespread outbreak today

A dry line is expected to develop in western Texas. A dry line is just what the name implies. To the east of the dry line, the air is very humid. When the dry line passes through from the west, the humidity crashed downward abruptly. Supercells often form just to the east of dry lines.

Which is what is expected to happen Tuesday. I'm sure there will be LOTS of storm chasers in the Texas Panhandle Tuesday afternoon and evening. Forecasters say there is a high chance of supercells, which could easily drop tornadoes and enormous hailstones.

With visibility great across the flat Texas plains, I'm sure the storm chasers will provide plenty of photos and videos of the action.

Wednesday has the potential to be a classic Tornado Alley twister day. That dry line I talked about will be somewhere in southwestern Oklahoma and northwestern Texas.  Strong winds aloft and a developing storm system will help start up some more quickly developing supercells in Oklahoma and Texas.

At this point, large metro areas like Oklahoma City and Dallas-Fort Worth ought to keep an eye on this. The area that seems to be the Wednesday target is the classic spot in early May for big tornadoes. As I've said below, things could change, but this is almost a textbook example of tornado weather setting up in this area.

I always worry about Moore, Oklahoma, a highly populated suburb of Oklahoma City. For some reason, Moore has a target on its back. In the past 25 years, Moore has suffered through eight tornadoes. Four of those were EF4's or EF5's, the strongest, most dangerous tornadoes possible.

Thursday, as the parent storm system reaches maturity, the severe storm and possible tornado risk will probably extend over a broad region from eastern Texas to the southern Great Lakes.

Sometimes, the tail end of  Midwestern severe outbreaks result in strong thunderstorms here in Vermont. It looks like that will NOT be the case this time. The storm causing the expected tornadoes this week will probably send a good slug of rain through the Green Mountain State Thursday and Friday, but at this point, it looks there will be nothing stronger than a rumble of thunder or two.