Interesting. So looking at the latest SREF (9z, the 15z should be coming out shortly), there are some intriguing insights:
So the ingredients that get factored into the "Significant Tornadoes Ingredients" measure are ML CAPE, ML LCL, 0-1 km Helicity, 0-6 km Shear, and 3-hour probability of 0.01 in of precipitation.
For ML CAPE, there is a small (6-ish hours) window of 70% chances of > 500 ML CAPE in the Ohio MDT risk, but much larger CAPE chances further south:
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For the ML LCL, the Significant Tornadoes Ingredients looks for the probabilities of it being lower than 1.5 km...this is basically 100% across the entire area.
For 0-1 km Helicity, at 21z today (the time I'm looking at), it is near 100% chances in the Ohio/Kentucky areas, and it becomes ~100% in the Alabama area in the following hours.
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For 0-6 km Shear, it is also nearly maxed out at 100% for being over 40 knots:
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For the final ingredient - precipitation -- this is maxed near 100% chances of 0.01 in or more in 3 hours in the Ohio/Kentucky area and subsequently maxes over AL/GA at near 100% later in the evening. (Here it looks linear, but in subsequent frames, it becomes a large area over AL/GA).
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So....it looks like the Southern area has near-primed ingredients for Significant Tornadoes (based solely on the index/algorithm), and the Ohio/Kentucky area has great parameters for significant tornadoes as well -- but it's more iffy on the ML CAPE at 70%...if the CAPE doesn't get high enough, you may not see SIG tornadoes.
Definitely a high ceiling for whatever can occur! I'd be remiss not to show the results, the actual significant tornado ingredients index. I'll show first at 21z and then a little later in the South:
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