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• We need constant communication with the E911 center. I hope to have that soon. We are meeting with E911 Director Jeff Presley next week to address this challenge. We have constant communication with the National Weather Service, but there was no tornado warning at the time it touched down. If we had constant communication, we would have instantly had the report from the Jonesboro police officer that first spotted the tornado. Radar is great, but nothing beats human eyeballs.

• We need to never discount the siren. I'll take that blame on that. There was no tornado warning from NWS, no reports (sent to us), or substantial radar data to support a tornado. We had no reason to believe there was a tornado at the time. From now on, if there is a siren, we are to assume it is a tornado and trust the E911 center that it is a valid threat. They have a great E911 director, Jeff Presley, and we are going to make sure that we have point #1 covered in the future.

• Take Severe Thunderstorm warnings seriously. We were already on-air for the storm because it had dangerous winds and large hail, but everyone needs to realize that if a storm is that strong, it can put down a tornado. It's never impossible.

With limited information, we did the best we could. I'm not completely satisfied, but we're going to learn from yesterday's event, meet with city officials, and resolve the problem to make sure everyone is in constant communication in the future. I always feel there is room for improvement and yesterday was an example of how we can spot a communication breakdown and resolve the problem.

I apologize for that 3-4 minutes that the sirens sounded in which we did not have that report. We will all work to improve that communication breakdown. I hope that you will still depend on the Region 8 Storm TEAM in the future. I just praise God that nobody was seriously hurt or killed. As I type this, the latest death toll from the outbreak across the south sits at 269. Pray for those in the hard hit areas and praise God that we were not hit as hard.

Have a good day,
Ryan

A Severe Thunderstorm Watch may be issued soon for Region 8 as the upper-level energy passes overhead. Now, the tornado threat may be low, but we still need to take severe thunderstorms seriously. I have learned within the last hour that we had a fatality in Sharp County last night. This may have been caused by straight-line winds. The NWS will be surveying the damage soon to determine what happened. My point is... do not let your guard down today either. Here's the position of the upper-level energy now:
Warnings have already been issued in parts of NW AR as I type this at 9:15. This "vorticity" max will move east with the trough and spread the threat of hail producing storms East as well. Here's the position later this afternoon:
As this energy pushes East, the threat of severe weather will END.

NO SEVERE WEATHER FOR THURSDAY OR FRIDAY. Amen?

I'm signing off to go program weather radios at Barton's in Paragould. Watch my Twitter feed on this page or at @ryanvaughan for updates!

Ryan

I think most of you can see the hook in the storm as the tornado was coming into Vilonia. Click the image to enlarge. This was a massive tornado and at this point, we had confirmation that it was on the ground doing damage. In fact, look at the purple areas in the "ball" of the hook. That is debris from the tornado. Since this was so close to the radar site, the angle of the radar beam was about 700 feet above the ground. Seeing a debris signature from storms far away from a radar site is almost impossible. The void spot north of that ball is the inflow around the counter-clockwise circulation of the tornado. Notice how it wraps over and around the circulation, forming the hook signature. This next image is what I tweeted before it hit Vilonia...
This is the wind velocity image. The bright reds are winds moving away from the Little Rock radar site. The bright greens are winds moving toward the radar site. Can you see the rotation? Here's the next radar image before it hit Vilonia...
Click the radar image and look at it closely. Look how tight the rotation is on radar. Very scary image to see when covering the storms on air. This was one county outside of our viewing area. Of course, we went on as it moved NE into White County. Big thanks to Robert Rowland in White County for his calm and accurate reports of the storm as it passed through. We've got some great wx watchers in Region 8!

I'm heading out to run some non weather related errands and then back in studio for more severe weather and flooding tonight. Stay tuned!

Ryan

Most data suggests that we are going to be tracking severe storms again tomorrow. Timing and position varies among different datasets, but I feel pretty confident in more watches and warnings to be issued. The above image shows storms erupting between 4-7PM within some unstable air. These storms would likely be severe.
Between 7PM and 10PM, these storms move NE.Tornado warnings will be possible again and more heavy rain will aggravate the flooding problems.

I'm tired and I don't feel like posting much more, so GOOD NIGHT!

Ryan

We have had some heavy rain fall across parts of Region 8!Look at the radar estimates so far:

If you notice, over 5" of rain has fallen in parts of the area! As if that were not bad enough, we have MORE rain coming. In fact, some of the heaviest rain will come over the next 3 days. I have a HUGE concern about the area rivers! Some places may see some flooding that ranks in the Top 5. While we run the risk of severe storms with tornadoes, please take the flooding threat seriously.
High resolution model data suggest heavy storms again this evening. Some of these storms will be severe and as you see in the image above, they could drop over 3" of rain. It gets even worse tonight...
More rain over the same areas! It may shift a little farther south, but still a huge impact. While all of this is going on, some parts of Region 8, like Cross and Mississippi Counties are missing most of this rain. The rivers across all of Region 8 will be on the rise regardless of how much rain any particular place received.

Be safe and stay tuned into the Region 8 StormTEAM over the next few days.

Ryan

Every now and then, a interesting phenomenon occurs on radar when a storm has large hail. It's called a Three-Body Scattered Spike.In the above image, can you spot the "spike" of blue shooting out from the NW part of the storm from last Tuesday? That is not a line of light rain, but rather a line created from the returns of large hail. As the radar beams goes out, it hits the precipitation, and comes back. The time or duration indicates how far the precipitation is from the radar.

At times, large hail sends the signal from radar in all kinds of directions. The reason for the spike is because the radar "thinks" the rain is farther away because it took the signal longer to get back to the radar dome. Therefore it thinks the rain is farther away.
So instead of the signal hitting the precipitation and going back to the radar, it hits the hail, reflects to the ground, reflects back to the hail, and THEN back to the radar. Therefore the "spike" appears. We saw this a few times last Tuesday night. (explanation image from several online sources)

I'm heading to Church! Have a great day as we celebrate the Resurrection!

Ryan

Here's the radar image at 10:33 PM on Tuesday night as severe storms started to slam into parts of Mississippi County. There were tornado warnings and we were on the air, but straight-line winds ended up being the greatest threat. As in the previous blog post, let's look at the velocity data. This radar image is from 10:42 PM. Click to enlarge:
This image shows HIGH winds from Keiser to Marie, Bassett,and Joiner. The northern edge of this blast of air is in the Osceola area. Much like the previous blog post, we have some aliasing issues in the above radar image. Do you see the bright reds inside the bright green? That's another aliasing issue. Those bright red areas near Dyes and Tyronza can be assumed to be bright green. If you notice, the worst of it is going into Keiser and Osceola. This matches up well with the damage we have been seeing in that area.

In addition to the straight line winds, look at the MO bootheel. We had some funnel cloud reports near Holland and Cooter at this time.

I would type more, but I'm tired and I'm going to sleep!

Ryan

A tornado warning was issued shortly before 9:00 pm on Tuesday Night for some rotation near Bono. I am going back through some radar data to see what was happening in the atmosphere during this event. The above radar image is from 9:06. It's  the "Reflectivity" data or the "where it is raining" mode. While this is great, the "what are the winds doing" mode is more important at this point. This is known as velocity mode. Here is the velocity data at the same time as the above image:
I have circled the area that prompted the warning. While this was seen on radar, we had a corresponding report of a funnel cloud from a storm spotter, Let's go over a few things that will be needed for this blog and for the next blog post. When we show this to you on air, we talk about seeing "reds and greens" close together, but it much more than that. Sure, the greens show the winds "TOWARD" the radar site and the reds show winds "AWAY" from the radar site. But there are some things to watch out for! For example, in the above image, that bright shade of red in that circle is not wind going away from the radar. That is a velocity aliasing problem. It should be bright green, but the wind speeds are exceeding the given scale for the program, so when you see bright colors in the middle of the opposite colors, just assume it is also bright green. This is something we constantly need to watch for when covering severe storms. The rotation is just NE of that bright red.... or upper-right hand corner of that circle. This is the rotation when it was around the Lorado/Finch area. We had some tree damage in this region.
At 9:11, we see that rotation coming into SW Paragould. Notice, we do not have an aliasing problem in this radar image (click to enlarge). While radar showed some rotation, the damage that occurred at GCT was from straight-line winds. It was extensive, but it was caused from a downdraft in this storm. If you notice, the rotation went south of GCT. I surveyed the damage and so did the NWS and we both concluded it was straight line wind damage.

Later today, I'm going to blog about the storm that caused damage in Craighead and Mississippi County.The winds were FIERCE in that storm! I'll show the radar images in my next blog post.

I'm going shopping and out to lunch with my wife. Have a great day!

Ryan

Fast forward to 9PM and the threat goes up:

Dry air coming in behind the front to the west and Satellite shows that storm still appear possible once we get a little more sunshine and once the pool of colder air aloft movies in from the upper-low. If these storms fire, we should start to see them flare up before 1PM. We're tracking it!

Ryan

Sad to hear that we had some people die in Arkansas last night int he storms, especially hearing about the kids. Let's not let our guard down just yet. The image below show radar and satellite, WRF data, and RUC data. The data continues to show that we are going to see redevelopment in NE Arkansas and SE MO between NOW and 1PM:

We're going to be watching it closely and I'll be posting updates on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter at @ryanvaughan

Take care,
Ryan

J-Lo takes over the StormCenter shortly and I'm going home to sleep! I still think we are going to see more storms sometime from mid-morning to the lunch hour. Here are three models and notice all three shows an increase in CAPE or instability.

This would be sometime between mid morning and lunchtime. Now, while we may be unstable... we may be capped enough to suppress storms. See next image...
Once again, three models. Some show the storms firing before the front clears the river, others show the storms firing East of the river. We're going to be on standby, just in case.

On that note, I'm going home to sleep and J-Lo is taking over.

Take care,
Ryan

Here's a quick update on tonight and tomorrow's weather. As I type this, the storms are becoming a squall line west of us. There is a large swath of rain coming our way, but I think the tornado threat is going down fast. The upper-left corner shows model data in the morning and it looks stormy. The lower-left image is the SPC Severe WX outlook and it shows that the greatest risk will be SE of us.

I'm going to take a quick 1 hour nap before the storms get too close.... I hope. J-Lo will be here at 2AM to take over the Storm Center. I'll be back around 9AM.

Stay tuned to my Twitter Account for frequent updates.

Take care,
Ryan

First off, most of Thursday will be dry. The storms are expected Thursday night into Friday. While the threat for severe weather is high in parts of Oklahoma and Western AR tomorrow evening, the risk greatly drops off as the night goes on! Here's is the Tornado Potential as indicated by our in-house computer model for tomorrow evening:

Notice that the greatest risk is in Oklahoma at 6PM tomorrow evening. If I were chasing tomorrow, I would be setup about 25 miles East of Tulsa. There will be a lot of chasers in that area tomorrow evening! As the storms move East, they will lose their daytime heating. We will still see thunderstorms, BUT the tornado threat should go down. Here's the tornado potential for 1AM on Friday according to StormCAST:
Big difference, huh? As I said, storms are still likely Thursday Night into Friday morning, but we're hoping they have more bark than bite! As the storms move East of us, they will intensify AGAIN in TN, MS, and AL on Friday.

Stay tuned for any changes!
Ryan

PS- For those wondering, the above product is the EHI product. It combines the "Spin" and "Instability" to come up with the tornado risk.

Quick blog before I head to Church. I fully expect to see storms tonight and/or tomorrow morning. The greatest risk for severe weather is north of us. As I type this, there are tornado warnings in Wisconsin on some NASTY looking storms. Storms will fire along the cold front tonight southward from where the storms are now. This will form a line that will come across Region 8. Timing is a little questionable, but it will at least be after 2AM for most of us... if not after daybreak.

I'm heading out to Church. I may blog more about it later. In the meantime, watch Justin in a few minutes and again at 10 for the latest.

Take care,
Ryan

This is a quick blog post. We have a SLIGHT risk in the northern part of Region 8 tonight for severe storms. Why you ask? Well, if you click the above image to enlarge, you will see that there is a Tornado Watch in OK and KS and some data suggests that these storms will move into Southern MO and maybe even Northern AR. We'll watch it closely and I'll have a LIVE update at 10:00 on Region 8 News. See yah then!

Ryan

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the winds at 3PM (left) and the winds at 9PM (right). The blue contours indicate the spots that had winds 20-30 mph and that included us at 3PM! The frame on the right is the 9PM winds and notice the lack of blue gradients. SO, why was it windy this morning and why have the winds eased back this evening? Take a look at the side-by-side comparison of the surface pressure (click either image to enlarge):
The reason it was windy today was due to the pressure gradient OR the difference of pressure over a given distance.The lines above are lines of equal pressure or isobars. The closer they are together, the greater the change in pressure is over that area. So, look at Region 8. At 3PM, we had almost 4 isobars over our area. Now look at 9PM. We only have 2 isobars over the Midsouth, indicating that the pressure gradient is not as high. When the isobars are tightly compacted, it is windy. I call it the Shar Pei effect because it looks like wrinkles over us when it is windy. Get it?

Anywho... Enjoy the break from the wind right now. Have a great night.
Ryan

Here's a quick update. We have had a few wind damage reports from Sharp County, some hail reports throughout, and several reports of blinding rainfall. Overall, we are doing pretty good though.

In the above image (click to enlarge), we have temps and winds in the big window. I think you can easily spot the cold front. Notice how the winds shift around and much colder air moves in!

The lower-leftt window shows the strongest storms in Region 8 at 10AM. Those storms will be in TN and KY within 30 minutes.

And finally, the upper-left window shows the temperature drop. To decode, look at the upper-left number... that's the temperature of each station.

I'm still concerned about TN and MS.

Watching,
Ryan

*Breaking*: Damage reports coming in from Sharp County. Trees and Powerlines down, 7:55*

Click the image to enlarge. As I type this, strong storms are moving through parts of Region 8. We have Severe TS warnings from in the areas outlined in yellow. The larger map shows the big picture. A broken line of storms is moving East. As the day goes on, we are likely to see these storms get strong and that is what parts of TN, MS, and AL are in a moderate risk zone as outlined with a red line.

As I type this, we are starting to get a look at visible satellite, which can only be used in daylight. Because thunderstorms build up high, we can see the tops of the storms and the shadows they are casting on surrounding clouds. That will never get old to me... :)

Sarah is tracking the storms the storms this morning and I'm heading to work shortly.

Take care,
Ryan

I've been meaning to blog about tomorrow, but I've been enjoying my birthday. I just walked in from the fire pit where a friend and I were solving the problems of the world. Anywho, let's chat about tomorrow. This first graphic is an attempt to nail down the timing of the squall line. Click to enlarge after reading...

I'm pretty confident that the line of storms will pass through Region 8 by 1PM or at least through the Jonesboro/Paragould area. And the rest of Region 8 shortly after... The three windows are three different model's precip output. This timing is good because I am hoping we get the front through here before we really see the heating that could take place during the daytime hours. Points eastward may not be so fortunate and run a higher risk of severe weather. I expect us to have some brief heavy rain, some strong winds, but hopefully a low tornado threat. We'll watch it! What about later in the day? Next graphic....
You can click the above image to enlarge. These three images are for 7PM tomorrow. Severe storms from KY to TN, to MS and AL are likely during the afternoon and evening hours. Here in Region 8, the upper left graphic shows the north winds across the Region. That's the cold air advection behind the cold front. The lower left graphic shows the temperatures at 7PM. Notice that the cooler air will be with us as the storms rumble to our East. We should see temperatures around 50 after the front clears.

So, in summary.... I expect a squall line to enter Region around 7-9AM. It should move through Jonesboro/Paragould between 10AM-1PM. And it should cross the river intoTN between 1PM-3PM.

Let's see how those times play out tomorrow. Points eastward should really be prepared. TN, AL, MS, KY.

That is all. Bring on the week!
Ryan