Posted on 04/28/2006 9:58:21 AM PDT by sully777
By AccuWeather.com News Director Steve Penstone
(STATE COLLEGE) - AccuWeather.com is forecasting strong storms will develop over Texas and Oklahoma later today.
The three ingredients necessary for the development of severe weather will be over the Lone Star State today. Southeast winds will bring ample amounts of moist air from the Gulf, cold air will move in behind the system as it heads east, and a powerful jet stream is in place to stir everything together.
The system will rocket out of the southern Rockies and into the southern Plains, and by late afternoon or this evening thunderstorms will develop over western and central Texas. AccuWeather.com is forecasting the heaviest storms will hit the area that includes Abilene, San Angelo, Midland and Odessa. Tornadoes and large hail will be the major threats across the region.
Texas will not be the only target of this massive spring storm. It will be a slow-moving storm, and as a result, heavy rain will fall across the central Plains states. AccuWeather.com is forecasting eastern Kansas and western Missouri will receive 1 to 2 inches of rain, with some localized 4 to 5 inch totals. The constant, heavy rain will lead to flash flooding across the central Plains.
The storm's push to the east will be held up by a blocking high pressure system parked over the Northeast. Most of the Northeast will be dry and mild through the weekend; however, a storm moving into Atlantic Canada could allow for some showers to back into eastern New England late on Sunday.
The ocean system will create some problems along the Southeast coast. Onshore winds will gust up to 40 mph, and the northeast flow will create 10-foot waves and dangerous rip currents.
April has been a very wet month in California, but a major change is in store over the next several days. Already this month Oxnard has recorded six times the average rainfall for the month, while Santa Barbara has received seven times the normal April rain.
The marine influence will bring morning clouds and fog to coastal areas, and daytime highs along the coast will be kept in the 60s; however, the highs will soar into the 80s farther inland in the Central Valley and the 90s across the desert areas. It will also be warm in the mountains, with highs around Lake Tahoe forecast to reach the 60s. The increasing warmth across California will increase the snowmelt from the massive snowpack in the mountains. The California Department of Water Resources reports statewide the water content in the snow pack is running close to 200 percent above normal.
Skywarn is a volunteer weatherspotter program administered by the National Weather Service. Many of the spotters are ham radio operators using mobil radio gear. Many NWS personnel are also ham operators so they can easily communicate with spotters in the field.
http://www.skywarn.org/default.htm
smooch
As you may know, tornadoes are common place on the Texas High Plains and Lubbock has had its share of really bad ones, e.g., the F5 tornado of 1970. While we lived there we lost a roof to a hail storm which is something I worry more about than tornadoes. In all though, Lubbock is still one of the best cities in Texas and is a good place for families.
Muleteam1
Spike - the difference between a hurricane and a tornado is the waiting time. A tornado is fast - you grab the closest thing and duck.... a hurricane is just a wet tornado that takes days to approach.
What city in Texas isn't?
Very few.
I now see some tall thunderheads off to our southeast here in west Texas so it looks like we will get something this evening. We sorely need more moisture. Even the weeds are brown this year.
Muleteam1
Man am I glad I read this.I am right in the center,and the wind is starting to whip around.Need to go and nail some stuff down.
So it's going to hail pistols?
Me too. Let it rain and rain and rain and rain...:)
Howdy neighbor. What time is our storm supposed to get here? I'm a night owl, anyway, so I'm up - but I thought we were supposed to start seeing *something* on radar by about now - 2-3AM. They did say it is slow-moving, so maybe it will be closer to sunrise.
I just saw on IWIN that two homes were destroyed in Waco and some horses injured right after midnight, just by a T-storm, no funnels. Big hail all over Central TX last night and this morning, though, and 60-70mph winds.
Sorry you're leaving our little SW Houston neighborhood. Hope you enjoy Lubbock!
Oh, great - all morning. Well, at least we can see it and know if there are any twisters. Just look towards Sugar Land, that's where they'll be, if there are any.
Yeah, isn't Dynasty great? Everyone I know eats there or orders from there at least once or twice a week. Guess we've all paid for the most recent expansion (a few years old now, actually).
I love Salt Grass, too - and Outback and James Coney Island and Hobby Lobby. Oh, and La Madeleine and Cafe Express. Both of those are great for meeting people who are coming from elsewhere, just to have a quick bite--good food, nice places to sit and talk.
The Plaza was so bleak for so long - do you know that I was there for the grand opening, about '57? My family lived down the street when I was a little kid - then many years later, I happened to move across the street from that same house, unintentionally. I got off my school bus the day the shopping center opened and the neighborhood kids were waiting to scoop me up and go down there, en masse.
We'd never seen an escalator before and wound up getting locked in the old Meyer Bros. Dept store when it closed for the evening. Cops came and found us - my mom had called 'em. The other 6 kids were all from one family whose mom didn't care if they ever came home, lol.
Back to present-day, Borders and BedBath&Beyond are long-time favorites of mine; the Kinkos used to be my office-away-from-home-office, but don't go there anymore. OfficeMax is always handy, too - but I don't dare spend any time at Circuit City.
Target was a nice addition and I really like the lineup in back now - with Pier 1 and Stein Mart, Hallmark, Old Navy. It's just too bad the movie theater closed, because Meyer Park is such a headache - the people factor, I mean. Intensely dislike that Wal-Mart, too.
Meyer Park has always been where it is; the Meyerland Plaza theater was much smaller, 4-5 screens, I think. It went through several incarnations - the last one they remodeled it and put the original sign from the shopping center in front, like old-time 1950s "downtown" theaters.
The '57 Chevy club had a rally for the opening and I did some displays for them. They usually got 2-3 of the main run shows, then 1-2 specialty movies, not quite art house, but just "smaller" ones. And they'd have special nights - would do things like Gone With The Wind and older movies like that which most people hadn't ever seen on a big screen.
Then, one day it closed. Then a few months later, it opened as some other chains' theater and one day, it was gone again.
The Meyer Park one is so bad that the very first time I went out to the movies, the last time I moved back here, I was going to meet friends there in my own car. When we came out, two of my tires had been slashed. Luckily, since I had just moved, I had two spares - those little donut ones - but the cops put them on for me and I got home - late at night. I kept going to movies there, but mostly matinees and almost never alone.
I did like that Luby's in the same center - and that Randall's was my grocery store for a long time. Now I avoid it all.
Memorial City was close to where I grew up - later than the house we lived in when I was in grade school, near M'land Plaza. It used to be much smaller - they have expanded it enormously over the years. I like the Galleria much better at Christmas, but then, I haven't seen Memorial City at the holidays in a few years.
There was a movie theater in there, about in the middle, farther south from where the parking garage entrance was. It was always sold out, so I didn't go there very often - except I had some friends who lived near there. We kind of gave up. There was another stand-alone theater there - no, wait, that was at Town & Country - on West Belt.
All my old "stomping grounds". I'm seeing the storm on the radar now - getting close to Bryan/College Station. And a few smaller pockets of heavy rain closer to town here, around Katy to the west and Conroe to the north - not the main line of the front, though.
Here in Gainesville we recieved a couple inches of rain, 50-60 mph winds and some quarter sized hail which fortunately didn't last long.
We have a lot of rain here in Houston right now.
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