Tornado warnings in effect for eastern ND!
A very large tornado watch has been issued for all of eastern ND ahead of a cold front marching through the Northern Plains, with a tornado warning just issued at around 4 pm CDT for Barnes County, ND as a cluster of HP supercells has been gatherning strength. Conditions appear favorable for tornadoes, and especially large hail, for much of eastern ND this afternoon and evening as a 35-45 knot LLJ is punching north ahead of the advancing cold front co-located with extreme instability (3000-4000 J/kg CAPE). The SPC has outlined much of eastern ND into northwest MN with a 10% area for tornadoes, and a "30 hatch" area for large damaging hail given how the warm sector has recovered today from earlier convection. While the trend has been for clusters of HP storms, I
wouldn't be surprised if this cluster went nuts as the afternoon progresses into evening, especially given the favorable environment feeding these supercells shown on the 21Z RUC analysis. As seen here, the latest RUC analysis is showing a nose of 4-5 0-3 km EHIs feeding into the Barnes Co area associated with the LLJ nose, and an outflow boundary/warm front that could locally enhance the low-level wind shear for these storms to work with. As this storm moves east, the RUC is showing the LLJ to strengthen toward 00z, and as we lose a little heating and the weak cells die out, I wouldn't be surprised if only a few dominant, tornado-producing, and relatively classic supercells remain. Bill Doms and Eric Whitehill are currently streaming live video of these tornado-warned supercells (
click here), so be sure to check out how these cells are materializing in real-time!
http://www.tornadovideos.net/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1252-tornado-warnings-in-effect-for-eastern-nd
