Jackson's AFD:
Christmas Eve Through Christmas Day...
The merged trough will move east across the Plains states and will
bring a front into the area by late Christmas Eve into Christmas
Day. The trough is not expected to be overly potent but will be
modified by the northward drifting southern stream jet axis as a
potent jet streak shifts across Mexico into the northern Gulf of
Mexico. Current expectations are that this will create a broad zone
of lowering pressures and the relatively disorganized interactions
will struggle to properly align for robust, concentrated
cyclogenesis. The net result is advection trajectories in the
boundary layer that will generally be easterly until very near the
front itself and this will likely stifle substantial low level
moisture recovery as only partially modified continental air is
drawn westward. That said, some weak surface based or elevated
instability will likely be sufficient for thunder with the best
chances for any stronger cells to be in the southern parts of the
area. Strong to severe storms can't be ruled out at this point as
several upper features will be interacting and that will continue to
introduce higher uncertainty than is typical. Confidence should
rapidly increase, however, over the next day or two as the the
features in question become better sampled by the RAOB network and
the eventual evolution/merger begins to become more clear.
