The Storm Prediction, in collaboration with the National Weather Service offices in Jackson and Mobile, has parts of the Pine Belt under a HIGH risk for severe weather (5/5).
Our main concerns will be long-tracked, violent tornadoes, winds in excess of 70+ mph, and large hail.
Unfortunately, our tornado threat index has been consistently running extreme. We are running between an 8-9 on tornado threat index which indicates that we have an 80%-90% chance of seeing a tornado within a 50-mile radius of the Pine Belt.
We can see that all modes of severe weather are possible, but tornadoes, wind, and hail are running in extreme range. This is because supercell thunderstorms are going to be the main problem with this event versus the last few times when we had squall lines and embedded tornadoes. That is why this threat is much worse than the last few times we have had severe weather.
We are anticipating supercell storms to start firing up by 11am Saturday morning, which in all likely hood will be supercells coming out of Louisiana into southwest Mississippi before moving into the Pine Belt. Our atmosphere unfortunately is very primed to firstly, generate these storms and to sustain these storms. We have plenty of wind shear, instability, moisture, and lift to make these storms happy.
This will be a long event as supercell thunderstorms will fire up and move thru the Pine Belt throughout the afternoon hours, into the evening.
We are anticipating this event to last from 11am-9pm…