Multiple rounds of storms the next several days

After a 3-day short respite from a rainy pattern, we’re headed right back into one that will take us through the rest of the week and also affect at least some of the weekend.

We’ll start with the next 24 hours though, which looks to include two likely rounds of showers and storms on Wednesday. Round 1 comes from storms that are ongoing this evening well to our northwest, which will approach the metro late tonight, likely after about 3am. These storms, while severe this evening, will lose some punch overnight and likely just bring the first round of rain and some thunder and lightning as they fall apart across the area around rush hour in the morning. A few brief wind gusts are possible, but severe weather threats seem quite low.

Round 2 will come from a reorganizing area of storms in Arkansas that push east into the metro after lunch and could persist through the afternoon. These storms have prompted the severe weather risk shown above – level 2 in the city and level 3 to our northwest. Strong gusty wind and large hail are the main risks with these storms, in addition to heavy rain. Rainfall totals tomorrow from both systems could be in the 1-2″ range. Prepare for the possibility of scattered power outages, and if you have a way to shelter your vehicles from hail, it wouldn’t hurt to use that option.

Additional round of showers and thunderstorms are expected through the end of the week and into the holiday weekend. The overall pattern is notoriously hard to predict, but we may need to watch Thursday and Sunday in particular for the threat of severe storms. For now, the severe storms experts at the Storm Prediction Center keep the highest threats to our west, at least until a front approaches Sunday into early Monday. A cold front will move into the region then and bring a threat of severe storms, but also likely a pattern shift that would result in more tolerable, and drier, weather for much of next week. After potentially 4-6″ of rain in the next week. we’ll all be ready for a period of dry weather! Stay tuned for additional details on our social media feeds and here on the blog!