A broken line of storms lurks around Killeen and Waco. Expected contact more like 3 am than earlier as originally thought. I'm becoming more suspicious...
Area Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Houston/Galveston TX
1022 PM CDT Mon Apr 10 2017
.UPDATE...
A challenging forecast continues to unfold for Southeast Texas
this evening with surface analysis showing a nearly stationary
cold front draped north and west of the region (roughly along a
Dryden- Lampasas- Mount Pleasant line). Regional radar mosaic
shows thunderstorms continuing to develop and intensify along this
line, possibly aided by upper level lift from a disturbance
lifting into West Texas from New Mexico.
With these aforementioned
features remaining well removed from the region and aircraft
soundings out of Houston showing a persistent capping inversion
around 700 mb, shower and thunderstorm activity near the region
diminished with loss of heating earlier this evening and has
remained minimal. Have lowered rain chances and rain totals
through the remainder of the evening as a result. Other changes to
the forecast include updating temperatures and dew points based on
hourly trends with overnight lows in the 60s to near 70 under
mostly cloudy skies.
Convective evolution for the overnight period and through most of
the day Tuesday still contains
considerable uncertainty. High
resolution guidance has been indicating that the disturbance over
West Texas may provide enough lift to allow thunderstorms along
the front to grow upscale and generate a strong enough cold pool
to allow this complex to propagate away from the front and into
Central or Southeast Texas tonight and into tomorrow morning.
However, this guidance continues to struggle with placement and
timing of this feature... likely owing to the presence of the
strong cap in place across Southeast Texas. Were this system to
develop, anticipate it to lose much of its intensity during the
early morning hours as it approaches the Interstate 10 corridor
as a result of the cap in place.
The frontal boundary north of the region is not expected to make
much southward progress overnight, but maintaining the Flash Flood
Watch in place across the northern two tiers of counties given the
potential for activity along the stalled frontal boundary to move
off of the boundary. Environmental conditions still remain very
favorable for a flash flood threat to materialize across these
areas (SPC Mesoanalysis showing precipitable water values across
the Flash Flood Watch area 1.5-1.7 inches), but the focusing
mechanism for thunderstorms capable of heavy rain development is
still uncertain at this time with the front still north of the
region and any potential thunderstorm complexes having not yet
developed.
With the disturbance over West Texas reaching East Texas sometime
during the day tomorrow (possibly as late as tomorrow afternoon),
the stalled frontal boundary should receive enough of a push to
move into the region. This would result in another round of shower
and thunderstorm development (especially if the front were able to
move through late enough in the day to take advantage of any
destabilization from diurnal heating) but
timing for this
potential round remains uncertain at best... sometime Tuesday
morning or later, depending on the speed of the disturbance.
Drenching now is uncertain. Hope this is not be a bust.