3:00 pm -- Severe thunderstorms are in progress in Western and Central Kansas. Some of the storms are rotating, meaning that they are capable of producing tornadoes. No reports of tornadoes in Central Kansas, yet, although there probably still will be some. The SPC has tornado watches running from Northern Texas all the way to NW Iowa. The western 2/3 of Kansas and most of Nebraska are under watches of some sort. It could still be an interesting afternoon.
The latest convective outlook from the SPC has not yet arrived on their website. Whether that is a delay due to how their computers process the data, or whether the situation is complex enough that they want to get the changes right, I expect the next risk assessment put Topeka in a lower risk area than before. We'll see if I'm right in a few minutes.
Here in Topeka, skies are still overcast, and temperatures are still on the cool side for this time of year: 82 at Billard. Without extra heating, I'll be surprised if we have sufficient instability for significant severe weather. Why is extra heating needed? The warmer air is, the less dense it is, and the less dense it is, the more it will want to rise once it is forced upward from the surface. At 1 pm, there was still a strong inversion over Topeka, meaning that any air that is forced to rise would be cooler than the air in the region it was lifted into. As a result, thunderstorms will have a hard time developing. If this inversion (often called a cap) erodes, the energy is there for strong thunderstorms, although the tornado threat for the area around Topeka does not look significant at this time: the winds are not favorable for rotating storms.
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