Are we now entering into severe weather season

By Damon Lane
Published On: Apr 02 2013 08:48:31 PM CDT

I'll be the first to admit that I have absolutely loved our weather here as of recent. The cold, the wet, the cold and the cold. If you can't tell I've been a fan of the cold. The constant cold fronts have done their job. It has kept our severe weather season fairly quite. Other than the hail storms from last week and the lone tornado report in Eastern Oklahoma, we have yet to see any widespread severe weather.

And if you recall reading our blogs from last month, I had mentioned that I expect our severe weather season to stay very quiet until around mid-April. I never drifted from that forecast.

Our severe weather season has been tied closely to The Arctic Oscillation. I won't jump in to all the details of what the AO means other than the more negative it is, the less likely we are to see a major severe weather event and the more positive it becomes, the higher the chance for widespread severe storms.

The image above shows the Arctic Oscillation and notice how it returns to the positive after having been negative for many many weeks. This would mean the threat for severe storms would be increasing. As long as we had something to produce lift in the atmosphere. aka, a low pressure system.  And it just so happens that lurking west during this time frame is this.

With the cold air likely staying north on Sunday, Monday and next Tuesday, we may have the chance of seeing more storms. And given the set up the potential exists for storms to become severe.

BUT, (there's always a but), there are a few things that could prevent this severe weather from happening. First of, we're still early in the forecasting here. One model seems to think that due to a cold front that moves in on Sunday, that the moisture will be pushed south and won't recover in time for there to be much to work with. This would keep the threat low. Another model however shows the cold front lifting back north as a warm front, making it to Northern Oklahoma. If this happens then we could see a threat for severe storms.

It's still early, but something worth watching. It's Oklahoma, it's April.


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