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Severe Threat May 15-16, 2025

I could see a high risk being applicable for that West Kentucky region. 11z and now 13z are pretty robust. The only thing would be is how quick those storms grow upscale or get eaten up. The HREF tornado probabilities where spot on with the HRRR on the 11z and 13z it seems
Yeah, I think a high risk for western KY is very much plausible at this point. There is just so much agreement in robust supercells in southern IL and western KY, and the environment itself is favorable for intense tornadoes.
 
It has the look of a high risk on simref but there are environmental limiting factors that likely will prevent it from going high.
Agree, don't see any way this goes high without widespread backed surface winds. I think the high end tornado potential is going to be within more localized mesoscale features like any boundary left over from this morning or what the HRRR was depicting earlier with a secondary low backing winds over a localized area. If we have southwest surface winds we are going to see the same issues we saw two weeks ago with storms unable to maximize the helicity and outflow dominant storms.
 
I have my doubts about a significant tornado outbreak today. The storm mode is going to be messy and likely lean towards multi-cell clusters. I think one of the main detractors is related to the wind shear being mostly speed shear as opposed to directional shear. Most of the models show a fairly unidirectional wind profile along the entire column and hodographs are mostly straight and don't have that classic sickle shape to them.

Damaging winds seems to be the dominate threat to me. However, I will say that if an isolated storm can develop ahead of the main cluster(s), then it would have a higher chance of a tornado, but even then I question the longevity of those tornadoes. Kinda goes back to the wind profiles, I worry the mesos will get stretched and tear a lot which would limit long-lived tornadoes. We could be in for more short-lived tornadoes instead of long-track ones. (Again, not ruling them out, but definitely doesn't seem to be the primary evolution right now.) Large hail is also a concern, but even that may be hampered if the mesos gets stretched and torn too much, which may lead to more "pulse" hail events instead of long swaths of big hail.

While high CAPE can overcome some of this, I don't think it will be a slam dunk. It may come down to localized/storm-scale interactions with any boundaries or maybe even terrain to help enhance low-level directional shear (i.e. surface winds coming out the south or southeast instead of the southwest.)
 
If some of the smaller scale details that may prevent a significant outbreak from occurring play a massive role in what happens today, I still wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to see at least one or two strong tornadoes, even if said tornado(es) are short-tracked. The instability is nuts.
 
Hey guys, I haven't checked the weather in a while. I wonder what the next week looks like, maybe it's interesti-
No Way Omg GIF
 
Pretty nasty run for my neck of the woods. I think Central KY has a chance of seeing some tornadic supercells today. As they move eastward they’re going to run into some barren kinematics over in Eastern KY but could still have a high wind threat attached. May do some chasing today depending on how those storms fire up.
Has eastern Kentucky ever had a higher end tornado outbreak? Maybe the Wheelersburg event?
 
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