Some Showers Early Saturday, Mainly Dry Sunday, Stormy Monday

If you watched any of the local weather programs at noon, you cancelled any outside activity for tomorrow as they all indicated numerous showers/T-Storms with a level one risk for heavy rain/flooding.  What bothered me was they showed where the Storms clusters were at noon, but their models didn't have that location.  Bad initialization.  So if the models aren't correct to begin with, why should we believe all the rain they predict at 6, 12, 24 hours?  None of them pointed that out.  Let me show you what I'm seeing. We have a weak upper low north of Houston with an upper trough down over the Gulf.  There are 2 separate areas of T-Storms.

WPC's 3 day rain totals lift the Texas system to our north & east while the Gulf storms stay south of our coast.  The burst in severe storms across east Texas & SW LA. surprised SPC.  They quickly issued a Tornado Watch & updated their 1 day Severe Outlook.

SPC does NOT bring the Texas disturbance over us.  Rather, they weaken it overnight as it slides to the east.  So from my viewpoint, some showers may move over us before daybreak, might be some thunder & brief downpours, but then some sun will come out making it warm to 80+.  An afternoon shower could spring up, but all in all, not a bad Saturday.  But this is just the opinion of a retired forecaster who doesn't have access to all the neat computer models with their pretty colors.  Watch your favorite weathercaster tonight.  See if the CURRENT radar matches the initial model location.  If not, why buy into the model solution?  Now looking ahead...

I applaud how our local NWS office is "monitoring" the potential severe threat on Monday.  Here's the SPC's thinking beginning with Saturday's risk on top. They weaken the Texas system with a new disturbance coming out of the Rockies.

The level 2 risk on Saturday is expanded and increased to a level 3 for Sunday PM.  Note, there is a level 1-2 risk north of Lake P.   Where is that coming from?

The system approaching us weakens and lifts out tonight with the initial energy over the Rockies this afternoon heading towards the central plains.  But look off the West coast.  There is a much stronger system with greater energy that will catch up with the Rockies system  Could there be another wide spread tornado outbreak Sunday PM into Monday?  Absolutely!  What we need to "monitor" is whether that risk extends farther down to the Gulf coast.  Too soon to tell.

It's a very Spring looking surface map with 80s up into South Dakota.  The northern Plains will realize Winter is not over as a snow storm will develop on the north & western side of the developing surface low.

So to repeat, I feel the Texas storm energy will weaken over night with the Gulf storms staying off the coast.  I don't feel Saturday will be a bad weather day.  We'll see who's correct.  Enjoy your weekend & stay tuned!