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Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Early Season Heat Outlook and Tornado Season Winding Down?


The past 60 days have been incredibly wet for most of Arkansas, especially western areas of the state.  I know the heavy rain is causing major problems for all the obvious reasons, but the more water in the ground, the less likely we'll hit 100 degrees early this summer.  The suns energy will focus on evaporation before it can be efficiently heat us to triple digit heat.  The prospects for more rainfall next week looks good and some of it could be heavy.

While severe weather can happen every month, our primary severe weather season is coming to an end soon and I hope I didn't just jinx it.  You must remember, we had a tornado outbreak at the very end of May a couple years ago and the state's 2nd biggest tornado outbreak occurred in early June in the 1910's.  So while statistically it's coming to an end, we still can have significant severe weather.

One more piece of good news... an area of high pressure will move in Thursday and Friday.  This will bring one of the coolest and driest starts to Riverfest in a long time.  We're talking about highs only near 70 with low humidity values.  Unfortunately, rain chances come back Sunday and especially Monday.


Forecast dewpoint values Thursday look low!  That should continue into Friday too with high temperatures only near 70 with rain chances less than 20 percent.  It's a much needed break because more rain will be possible next week.

Possible rainfall amounts Sunday into Monday morning could be around 1-2'' for western Arkansas.  Not good.
Rainfall amounts Monday morning into next Wednesday morning could be around 1-1.5'' more.  Again, not good.

60 day rainfall estimates by radar indicates most of the state has seen at least 10 inches with some western areas between 15 and 25 inches.



Statistically, May is the 2nd most active month for tornadoes with a sharp decrease by June.  We can't rule out tornadoes, but the chance does decrease soon.

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