A low pressure system will spread showers and thunderstorms out across the Central/Southern Plains today.
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Severe thunderstorms accompanied by pockets of heavy rainfall may occur from the Colorado Front Range to the ArkLaTex tonight.
Therefore, slight risks of severe thunderstorms as well as excessive rainfall leading to flash flooding are in effect for much of the Southern Plains tonight.
Large hail, damaging winds and a couple of tornadoes are possible with any severe storms that develop.
Some hourly totals of 1-1.5" may be reached across southeast Colorado into southern Oklahoma leading to scattered instances of flash flooding.
Heavy wet snow is likely to continue on the backside of this storm system over parts of the Colorado Rockies through Wednesday afternoon.
Between 1-2' of snow with isolated higher amounts will have likely accumulated by the time the snow wraps up, which may cause major to extreme impacts for many areas.
The excessive rainfall and severe weather threats ramp up over the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley on Wednesday as the low pressure system drops into Texas and begins interacting with a more substantial amount of Gulf moisture and instability.
The Storm Prediction Center issued an Enhanced Risk (level 3/5) for portions of eastern Texas due to the expectation of damaging winds and very large hail.
Pockets of heavy rain, some within severe thunderstorms, are likely to develop along and around a warm front stretched out across eastern Oklahoma/Texas and the Lower Mississippi Valley.
Rain showers and scattered thunderstorms will then shift into the Southeast on Thursday.
Marginal Risks of excessive rainfall and severe storms are in place.
Meanwhile, a weak shortwave trough moving across Florida and sea breeze boundaries is expected to produce scattered thunderstorms, with hail and/or damaging wind gusts possible within stronger storms.
Continued troughing east of the Rockies will generate below average temperatures over the next few days.
High temperatures will be 15-25 degrees below average across portions of southeastern Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, on the backside of the aforementioned Southern Plains storm system, on Wednesday.
This will result in high temperature readings in the upper 40s to 50s for many parts of the Central/Southern Plains.
Temperatures moderate a bit on Thursday over those areas.
An upper ridge will continue to bring anomalous warmth to the West over the next several days with high temperatures reaching 15-25 degrees above normal in many places.
Dry and windy conditions from southeastern Arizona to western Texas led to the issuance of a Critical Fire Weather Risk for tonight.
Elevated risk areas are in effect for southeastern New Mexico and western Texas on Wednesday. ■
Modified arctic air combined with a moisture-laden area of low pressure along the Gulf Coast will continue to allow for a broad area of winter weather impacts from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Southeast today into early Saturday morning.