Arkansas Storm Team Weather Blog: Heavy rain/severe weather risk next week

Written By ApurbaDa February 10, 2023 Add Comment

Our extremely active weather pattern will continue well into the middle of February. The next systems we are watching won't bring any winter weather, but more heavy rain and the risk for severe weather.

Active weather means a constant stream of storms impacting an area, and we have definitely seen that. Since the beginning of the year, we haven't gone more than a three days stretch without any precipitation. Little Rock has received well above average rainfall for December, January, and so far in February.

This will continue. We will stay dry through Monday (2/13). Our first storm will bring rain on Valentine's Day. This first storm doesn't have the ingredients needed for severe weather. The second stronger storm will impact Arkansas Wednesday night into Thursday morning. This storm will have the ingredients to bring us severe weather. Below is the timing of the two storms.

The tracks of both storms are very similar, and will usually bring damaging thunderstorms. The reason we aren't concerned about severe weather for the first storm is that it won't have enough storm energy (CAPE). The second storm will. Leading up to the second storm, we will see temperatures in the 70s and humid air.

The area with the highest storm energy matched up with the Storm Prediction Centers risk area. They have issued a level 2 risk for severe weather for Wednesday night into Thursday morning. This means we could see damaging winds, hail, or tornadoes.

We also could be looking at another scenario where flooding could occur. The ground is already completely saturated and we could see another 1 to 2 inches of rain with these storms.