While the Middle Mississippi Valley portion of Monday's threat seems pretty robust, I have a lot of questions about the southern extent of the threat, and many of these same factors probably have to do with why the SPC has pulled that D4 highlight is moved so far north. There will definitely be a severe threat with any convection that happens in the Deep South, to be sure, but how exactly that plays out is still a little bit of a head-scratcher to me. GFS has been pretty consistent with a line of convection moving from northwest to southeast across the Gulf Coast states early Tuesday morning, and then an additional wave of storms Tuesday afternoon. It's also consistently depicted basically no instability accompanying these late night/early morning storms, which I find a little hard to believe. Kinematics still look good from 00Z to 12Z Tuesday, but after that, dynamics pull away and there's relatively meager shear for the Tuesday afternoon storms to work with.
Again, I do think the threat is still there, and
folks in the Southeast should definitely still be watching it closely, but it's a much bigger question mark that's leaving me with much less forecast confidence than the situation further north. I do think in terms of the actual threat geography, CSU's model is doing a good job at depicting it properly. I'm most concerned about Tennessee, northern Mississippi and northwestern Alabama for the overnight activity in the Southeast. If convection remains robust overnight, then the kinematics definitely support a strong tornado threat in the MS/AL/TN/GA area. Tuesday afternoon into the evening, most of the Gulf states are in play for what I'd have to imagine becomes much more of a wind and hail threat, though small, curved hodographs could support some limited tornado threat.
Late tonight through Sunday morning could also be an active period for strong storms, with multiple waves of convection forecast. I wouldn't be surprised to see the introduction of wind and hail probabilities across the Southeast for the D2 forecast. Regardless of the exact outcome, it seems pretty clear that we're in for a pretty unsettled and stormy period, that will continue even after this system passes through. It'll bring some much-needed rain, that's for sure.