Supercells With a Tornado Risk Today
Supercells with a tornado are possible today in Eastern Colorado, and more severe storms are possible across Southern Oklahoma with damaging winds and large hail.
A few areas of storms are possible this afternoon.
Storms will form this afternoon and persist into the overnight hours.
It’s going to be an active day across the Plains today. I think a tornado or two are possible in Colorado in a postfrontal airmass, with damaging winds and hail likely further south.
Southwesterly flow aloft over the southern Plains sits downstream of an upper trough sliding into the central/southern High Plains by early evening. A frontal zone, worked over by overnight convection across the eastern TX Panhandle and Oklahoma, sags south through tonight. Meanwhile, a separate shortwave trough moves into the central High Plains, with a cool front out ahead of it there too.
- OK/TX: Mid-to-upper 60s dewpoints and strong afternoon heating build moderate buoyancy. Deep-layer shear is sufficient for organized storms, with a wind and hail risk developing from afternoon into early evening. Ensemble guidance agrees on a corridor of especially strong gusts across southern OK, where very steep low-level lapse rates line up, enough to warrant a Level 1 wind area for 60-80 mph gusts.
- Central High Plains: North of the surface front, an easterly component to low-level flow holds onto 50s dewpoints. Combined with daytime heating, that's enough for moderate destabilization and scattered storms by mid-late afternoon in the postfrontal airmass. Hail is the main hazard here, along with damaging winds. However, a tornado is possible if a supercell can become well established as a dominant right mover, especially with favorable storm interactions. It’s something we’ll be watching.
- Storm mode in OK: How cleanly the shear translates into organized, wind-producing storms versus messier convection will shape how far that 60-80 mph corridor actually verifies.
- Hail size in the High Plains: Straight hodographs and solid cold-cloud-layer CAPE support a few supercells, with large hail (1-2.5") as the headline threat and isolated gusts as a secondary concern.
- Overnight extension: There's a chance this activity doesn't just fade — some lingering severe risk could develop over southeast Colorado late tonight and spread into the OK Panhandle overnight, a wrinkle worth watching if you're tracking the back half of the period.