Another springtime warm-up is followed by a chance of severe weather

As high pressure builds to our east over the southeastern U.S. the next few days, warm air from the Gulf of Mexico will be drawn up into the region on gusty south wind.  This will lead to much more cloud cover beginning late tonight and lasting through the weekend, but also a nice warm-up.  In fact, it will actually get quite warm and muggy this weekend, feeling more like early summer than spring!  We'll be watching highs climb into the mid 80s Friday through Sunday with almost no chance of rain, outside of a few sprinkles here and there. Breezy south wind will continue as well. With the cloud cover and wind, also watch for overnight lows to be very mild to downright warm - in the mid 60s to near 70 Friday through Sunday mornings.

By late Sunday, the next major weather system will be moving into the region from the west, bringing a good shot at rain and thunderstorms. For a few reasons, I do not believe we'll be seeing anything as severe as we experienced on Monday, however the chance of strong to severe storms, particularly wind and hail, will be possible. Long-range computer models are still several hours apart of when an expected line of storms will pass through, but the window of opportunity right now appears to be from Sunday evening through early Monday morning.  We'll continue to monitor and bring you the latest on the blog, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as the MWN Forecast.

GFS model solution indicating a line of storms in the Memphis area around midnight Sunday night

For now, enjoy spring!  Put on some shorts, open doors and windows before air conditioner days return, and be grateful for some time to let MLGW and their mutual response crews restore power to all of those still affected from Monday's storms (which as of this writing at 3:45pm Wednesday still number more than 11,000).

Recap of Monday's severe weather event
For a brief overview of Monday's "derecho" that affected the Mid-South, visit this NWS page.  Here are some interesting stats on the severe weather outbreak that affected the southeast U.S. on Monday and Monday night (see plot below):

* 1377 total storm reports - highest number of single day reports since at least the year 2000
* 1245 high/damaging wind reports - more than the average MONTH of April
* 43 tornado reports (unusually low for this widespread of an event)
* reports from at least 19 states
* 85 reports in the Memphis NWS warning area (north MS, east AR, west TN, MO Bootheel)

Map plotting all severe weather reports from Monday 6am to Tuesday 6am

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