As I mentioned earlier this morning, the Storm Prediction Center has removed much of Texas from their standard risk of severe weather for Thursday. This is their new outlook they issued at 11:30 AM and continues to show that any severe weather risk will likely remain confined to extreme Southeast Texas. This graphic shows the probability of experiencing severe weather within 25 miles of your location on Thursday. As you can see, the standard 15 percent probability extends from Houston and points east with lower probabilities to the north and west. Should any thunderstorms actually occur tomorrow, the severe weather threats will be large hail and damaging straghtline winds.

This graphic comes from the 12Z (6 AM) run of the North American Model and shows it’s depiction for precipitation totals from 12 PM to 6 PM on Thursday. Notice the lack of any precipitation? That’s not a fluke. The NAM is indicating that we’re going to have a strong inversion layer, or cap, in place that will limit thunderstorm activity. In fact, this run isn’t indicating any thunderstorms across Southeast Texas tomorrow. Is that possible with a strong cap in place? Absolutely, but we can’t rule out a chance for a thunderstorm or two along a cold front that will be in Southeast Texas tomorrow. If thunderstorms do develop, instability and wind shear will be conducive for a few strong to severe thunderstorms capable of producing large hail and damaging downburst winds. However, that’s conditional depending on if we even get any thunderstorms to develop tomorrow.

Even if we do get a few storms tomorrow, the main story is going to be the temperatures! Tomorrow looks like it could be the warmest day so far in 2012 for Texas with high temperatures in the mid to upper 80s across North, Central, and South Texas on Thursday. Some locations may even get close to 90°F!