Crazy January Weather

First to start out locally, this week we are looking at a week with solid precipitation, starting tonight with freezing rain on into Thursday. Then Th into Th night we are looking at snow, up to 2". It's not much but with the 40" we've already had and with the freezing rain that will create a blanket of ice we are looking at a pretty serious situation.

Next we go to CA, there are a number of systems brewing in the Pacific as the Polar & Subtropical Jets are closing in on each other in the upper Pacific. These systems are creating rare severe storms (El Nino systems) over the state of CA. They are experiencing flooding, severe T-storms, water spouts, tornado warnings, winter weather advisories, and cloud to ground lightning at the same time.

Last but not least AR & LA. Later on in the week the systems that have impacted CA are moving on to the mid south region and going to create some severe storms. Any storms during this time frame will tend to be elevated; that is, they will develop over a stable layer near the ground (updrafts feeding the storms will not be surface based). This greatly reduces the odds of damaging winds or tornadoes. They will however create  heavy rain in some areas and a lot of lightning. The CAPE is only supposed to be 750 J/Kg  (very low considering most tornado potential CAPE should be at 2000+) so tornado potential is almost non existent.