Now we wait...

A lot of folks are concerned about the potential for tonight. Understandably so. After what happened in Joplin, MO the other night, a lot of folks, especially those who fear these types of weather events are a bit on edge. We understand and will try to calm some nerves with our coverage during the newscasts later this evening. However, perhaps for some of you you can use this heightened awareness for a benefit. Consider it your opportunity, IF you haven't already, to have a severe weather plan in place. Go over it with your family and practice it if necessary.

1st some decent news for the time being, no active weather is expected for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening. The complex of storms that moved across the northland has left a residual boundary of rain cooled air and stability on top of the metro and points north. Those lunchtime storms also produced a lot of reports of dark ominous clouds with all sorts of movements inside. Very interesting to see. They also produced some severe weather in the form of 50-60 MPH winds and some quarter to golf-ball size hailstones. Again, aside from some lighter showers perhaps, nothing significant is expected for the rest of the afternoon and early evening.

From there, we wait and see what comes together across the plains where tornado watches are posted. The NWS in Norman has posted an interesting statement to the effect that they're discouraging travel in the I-35 corridor. Already storms with tornados have been reported across parts of OK and the concern is as high as can be for the folks towards OK City. Already in Red Rock, 2 homes have destroyed and a massive wedge tornado is located near I-40 near El Reno. A scary situation for them!

this blog is taking awhile for me as I just watched about 1 hour of coverage from our sister station in Ok City...KFOR. They are live streaming

Meanwhile, we're watching these storms move rapidly through NC OK and SC KS...these are moving NNE and would be arriving after 9AM tonight. As the storms move oour way, a warm front to the soouth of here will be lifting towards the north This may do a couple of things, depending on how far north the front gets, as the storms move and perhaps intersect that front, there may be some isolated tornados and then the farther north the storms get, they will get, as we say in the business, elevated which means more of a hail/wind threat than tornado threat. So we'll be watching the temperatures for the next several hours.

The SPC has issued a TORNADO WATCH for Eastern KS and parts of SE NE...

The storms trajectory means that E KS will have the first issues with this before we get them in the metro later this evening.

Joe