textproduct: Springfield

KEY MESSAGES

- After 2-4 inches of rain on Wednesday, residual flooding is expected to linger in portions of the Ozarks through the day, with an Areal Flood Warning in effect for the affected corridor until 1 PM. Minor flooding is also ongoing in small tributaries and in the Little Osage and Spring River basins.

- Scattered shower and thunderstorm development possible late this morning into early afternoon, especially in south-central Missouri. If storms can develop, there would be a chance of severe hail and damaging winds, but any risk would be conditional on the development of thunderstorms.

- Severe thunderstorms expected on Friday, with an Enhanced (level 3 of 5) Risk of severe weather beginning in the afternoon and continuing through the overnight hours into early Saturday morning. All modes of severe weather possible, but widespread damaging winds in excess of 70-80+ mph will be the primary severe hazard as a squall line with several bowing segments develops along the cold front.

- Excessive rainfall concerns through the week in areas that see repeated strong storms and/or training precipitation.

SHORT TERM /THROUGH TONIGHT/

Issued at 300 AM CDT Thu Apr 16 2026

Current Conditions and Synoptic Overview: The remnants of Wednesday evening's showers and thunderstorms are pushing to the east, carried by the low-level jet streak. An upper-level shortwave trough and associated surface low are lifting across the Great Lakes region; another shortwave trough across the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles early this morning will bring modest height falls to the region into the mid-afternoon before assimilating into the flow across the Great Lakes. Upstream, a deepening trough with a closed low aloft is approaching from the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday's convection brought 2-4" of rainfall to a corridor of the forecast area, where flash flooding occurred and/or is still occurring, and an Areal Flood Warning remains in effect for much of that area until 1 PM this afternoon.

Showers & Thunderstorms Today: It's far from a slam dunk, but many CAMs indicate that additional shower and thunderstorm development may occur again this afternoon in south-central Missouri. 2500-3000 J/kg of SBCAPE builds by 18-19Z, when the cap becomes eroded. The ingredients for a similar setup to yesterday will all largely come together slightly further east in the eastern Ozarks, with the exception of an obvious forcing mechanism.

Low-level ridging slowly builds through the day, which would imply subsidence, but the 500mb/250mb waves in the Panhandles will lift northeast across the area through the morning and early afternoon, with the associated vort maxes creating divergence aloft. The last bits of convection are likely so weak that there won't be any residual cold pool/outflow strong enough to trigger anything, but widespread cloud cover will exit the area with the showers, allowing 0-3km lapse rates to approach 8C/km as the surface warms. High temperatures this afternoon are in the 77-83F range, and convective temperatures around 76-78F suggest simple differential heating may be enough to get something going. 30-40kts of bulk shear and straight hodographs suggest that if storms do develop, conditions will be sufficient for severe hail with splitting storms and/or multicell clusters.

The window for these storms to develop would be relatively short, between 18-22Z by most model consensus. By 23-00Z this evening, the upper-level support has moved east of the area, ending the window for severe storm development. HREF neighborhood probabilities of severe hail have a bullseye of 5-14% in areas east of Highway 65 and south of I-44. A broader area of 5-14% chances of severe wind remain confined to areas east of Highway 65 but extend north of I-44 into central Missouri, though a small bullseye of 15-29% probs of severe wind develop in our far southeast corner (Oregon County) and extend into northeast Arkansas. The REFS probabilities also show 5-14% chances of severe hail and wind in south-central Missouri during the same window (1PM - 5PM), further substantiating that the risk exists if a storm can develop.

LONG TERM /FRIDAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY/

Issued at 400 AM CDT Thu Apr 16 2026

Friday remains on track to be an active severe weather day. The synoptic trough approaching from the Pacific Northwest ejects into the Central Plains and overspreads a plume of warm, dry air (700-500mb lapse rates 8-9C/km). HREF mean SBCAPE exceeds 3000 J/kg, so ample instability will be in place by the early afternoon for supercell development. The cold front plunges south through the Northern Plains during the day on Friday, which appears to keep the most volatile severe environment to our north, but our environment will still be quite juicy for the storms to tap into when they arrive with the cold front. An additional, lower-confidence scenario includes discrete supercells popping up within the warm sector ahead of the cold frontal passage.

Expected evolution at this time appears to be a low chance for discrete supercells across the area in the afternoon hours, before the cold front reaches our northern edge counties in the late afternoon/early evening hours. While supercells could support large to very large hail, tornadoes, and damaging winds, our primary severe risk will be with the cold frontal passage. CAMs are in good agreement that with 50-90kts of bulk shear, the storms that develop along the cold front will nearly immediately turn into a line, with numerous embedded bowing segments. Supercells ahead of the line could locally enhance sfc vorticity as they get overtaken by the accelerating squall line, leading to areas of increased embedded tornado potential. Several CAMs also suggest that our northwesternmost counties will have a short window of locally higher tornado chances around nightfall as the low-level jet kicks in and more curved hodographs overlap in time and space with 100+ J/kg of 0-3km CAPE ahead of the front along the low-level theta-e gradient.

Now that we've gotten the tornado talk out of the way, I would like to be clear that damaging winds are by FAR the most likely severe hazard on Friday evening. Winds in excess of 80 mph will be possible along the apex of any accelerating bowing segments that develop along the front. Not everywhere should expect to see winds that high, but wide swaths of 60+ mph winds is a realistic expectation to set.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z FRIDAY/

Issued at 1242 AM CDT Thu Apr 16 2026

Deep convection is ending as widespread thunderstorms transition into a more stratiform precip deck with smaller pockets of embedded convection, leaving an isolated threat for VCTS but mostly just rainfall over the next 1-3 hours. Rain continues pushing south and east, remaining in VFR for most of the critical period with brief MVFR conditions developing around 12Z.

CLIMATE

Issued at 630 AM CDT Wed Apr 15 2026

Record High Temperatures:

April 16: KVIH: 85/2006

April 17: KSGF: 87/1937 KVIH: 86/2004 KUNO: 87/2006

Record High Minimum Temperatures:

April 15: KSGF: 63/2006 KJLN: 66/2006 KUNO: 62/2006 KVIH: 63/1976

April 16: KSGF: 66/1963

April 17: KSGF: 66/1976

SGF WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

KS...None. MO...None.