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Areas of Unsettled Weather Over the Northwest and Southeast U.S. Thursday

Heavy coastal rain and high-elevation mountain snow over the Pacific Northwest and northern California will become lighter and more scattered into Thursday. A rapidly developing coastal storm is expected to bring a period of gusty winds, enhanced rainfall and thunderstorms from the Carolinas to the Mid-Atlantic states Thursday night into Friday. Read More >

Overview

On the second anniversary of the bomb cyclone (https://www.weather.gov/ama/March13_2019_HighWinds), we were dealt another very potent upper level system which produced widespread hazards from heavy snow across the front range/Rockies to severe weather across the Southern High Plains. For us here in the Panhandles, we issued 13 tornado warnings and 10 severe thunderstorm warnings. This was the first tornado day of the 2021 convective season in our area, with eight confirmed tornadoes. We also saw three separate instances in which two tornadoes were in progress from the same parent thunderstorm at the same time.

A vigorous closed upper low was approaching the Four Corners region from the west. A warm front lifted north and northwest across all but the Oklahoma Panhandle and the northwest Texas Panhandle while a sharpening dryline was located over eastern New Mexico. The dryline preceded a Pacific cold front which was also located in eastern New Mexico and swept eastward later in the evening. A broken line of thunderstorms developed ahead of the dryline in eastern New Mexico and tracked north and east into the western and southwestern Texas Panhandle before continuing to move east across the remainder of the eastern Panhandles during the evening hours, growing upscale as the Pacific cold front swept eastward and overtook the dryline.

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