Although there’s snow falling across the Northern Plains at the moment, the weather map is relatively quiet at the moment across the US but that changes in a big way early next week as a major spring storm develops from an upper disturbance which swings into California from the Gulf of Alaska.

All the key ingredients will come together. The track as well as intensity of the low will be key but as well as the primary feature, it’s all the players on the field which will produce a wild storm with all sorts of results.

Here’s the 500mb vort max chart off the GFS for 96 hours or later Monday and you can see the energy roaring into and carving out a deep trough.

Notice the speed max rounding the base of the trough, expect downpours and hail-producing thunderstorms over Southern California extending east across Arizona with mountain snows and perhaps an odd tornado along with damaging winds and flooding.

Ahead of the system, some supercells may be popping out ahead as well as along the dry line as it enters the flat lands of Texas as early as Monday afternoon while southwesterly winds begin to heat things up over the Mississippi and Ohio Valley.

Here’s expected CAPE values or measure of convective energy out at 81 hrs (Mon pm)

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The area of strong convective energy appears to be central Texas up through central Oklahoma and Kansas. This will be where the greatest surface convergence and upper divergence is expected to be.

Later Monday the low will be located over southern Colorado with unseasonably cold air driving out of Canada and down the Rockies and western side of the Plains while Gulf moisture gets lifted north. As this moisture gets wrapped around the low, heavy snows will be breaking out from the Dakotas down through Wyoming, Colorado and perhaps as far south as the Four Corners.

Here’s the conditional snow chart at 81 hrs.

The easterly flow means an upslope snow for the Front Range and so Denver looks likely to see several inches from this as well as up through Wyoming, western Nebraska up into the western Dakotas.

Here’s the 500mb vort max by 114 hrs.

The area just south and east of the low will be prime for large tornado-producing supercells with lines of training thunderstorms which may produce large hail, damaging straight line winds and 1-3 inch per hour rains while heavy snows will fall from North Dakota all the way to southern Colorado, perhaps reaching all the way to the higher elevations of the Southwest.

Check out the 850mb temps and how they warm ahead of the low but significantly cool on the backside.

72 hrs

96 hrs

114 hrs

As you would expect, a very sharp thermal gradient will set up at the surface with temps 20-30 below normal ramming down the Rockies and western Plains on the backside of the storm while temps will surge 15-30 above normal east of the boundary.

Here’s the GFS predicted 2-metre temps for Mon afternoon.

Note the 30s over northern Minnesota across ND into Montana and down the Rockies while 80s and low 90s spread north over Texas with 70s reaching eastern Nebraska. South Dakota will be the centrepoint of contrasts with 20s, 30s in the NW corner while it may reach 70 in the SE corner.

Tue pm

By Tues, highs over parts of North Dakota may struggle to reach 25 and it may fail to reach 30 all the way into northern Nebraska, the day after 70s.

Chicago may push 70 while some 80s may make it into southern Ohio across West Virginia, Virginia eastwards towards DC and Baltimore.

Wed pm

As the potent boundary sweeps east, major rains with embedded storms will be running from Texas to Iowa, be aware of damagign winds, hail and an isolated tornado. Flooding rains are likely to be a major threat and watch out for a wild drop in temperature over a 1-3 hr period. Towns will likely go from from 70s or 80s to 30s within just hours with snow following.

The silver linging will be the big rains which fall over the heart of the drought stricken Plains.

Here’s the drought monitor as of April 2.

Here’s the predicted rain totals off the QPF for the next 7 days.

Will post more on this major spring storm later!

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