Areas of Excessive Rainfall and Severe Thunderstorms for Friday
Heavy to excessive rainfall may produce areas of flooding Friday and Friday night from central Texas into the lower Mississippi Valley. Scattered strong to severe thunderstorms are expected from central Texas to middle Tennessee and central Kentucky Friday afternoon into early Friday night. Large hail and damaging winds are the main threats.
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Severe weather has been a stranger to the Panhandles so far this spring. In fact, before June 11, this year marked the sixth latest date without a report of a tornado since 1950. However, that changed as a diffuse retreating warm front, a series of weak upper-level disturbances, and a moist surface upslope flow conspired to ignite thunderstorms across the Oklahoma Panhandle and the northeastern Texas Panhandle during the late afternoon hours of June 11. A favorable combination of instability and wind shear allowed severe supercell thunderstorms to develop quickly. These supercells were prolific hail producers, even dropping softball size hail 5 miles southwest of Beaver and 8 miles southwest of Darrouzett. The tornado drought ended as well. A storm survey crew from the National Weather Service in Amarillo confirmed that four tornadoes occurred in the area, including an EF-1 tornado near Tyrone, OK, an EF-0 just north of Boyd, OK, an EF-0 tornado near Darrouzett, TX, and another EF-0 tornado near Follett, TX. It was determined that very strong straight line winds up to 95 mph were responsible for overturning irrigation pivots and snapping a power pole near Forgan, OK. We would like to thank everyone that provided invaluable severe weather reports during this event!