Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Little Rock, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Area Forecast Discussion · National Weather Service Little Rock (LZK) · issued Sunday, August 23 at 12:23 PM CDT.
Messages
-Relatively cooler temperatures will be seen from today through much of the upcoming week, especially compared to the brutal temperatures felt across Arkansas last week.
-A Heat Advisory is in place across southern Arkansas for today as heat index values are expected to reach and exceed 105 degrees.
-A Marginal Risk for severe weather is present on Sunday across the northwestern quadrant of the state for a few storms which may produce damaging wind gusts on Sunday evening into the early morning hours on Monday.
-Northwesterly flow positioned over Arkansas will continue to allow multiple frontal boundaries to impact the state resulting chance of rain chances on multiple days during the forecast period
Discussion
As of 2 AM CDT, storms are exiting the southeastern portion of the state and moving into Mississippi.
A Heat Advisory has been introduced for today across southern Arkansas where heat index values are expected to peak between 105 and 109 degrees during this afternoon. It is expected during today for southern Arkansas to remain dry overall which will allow heat index values increase into advisory territory. A chance does exist that the Heat Advisory may need expanding northward along the I-40 corridor, but latest guidance does not warrant this.
A Marginal Risk (level 1 of 5) will be in place across the northwestern quadrant or northwestern fourth of the state with the main hazard of damaging wind gusts possible with storms that become severe. A mid-level jet streak over southern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas will result in the right entrance region of the jet to be positioned over northeast Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas. The entrance region will promote or enhance lift which will lead to storm development and the storm motion of east-southeast will result in scattered storms moving into a modest, but conditionally unstable parameter space across the northwestern fourth of Arkansas with projected shear values of 30 to 45 knots to support healthy updrafts along with DCAPE values of 500 to 1,000 J/kg which would support isolated instance of damaging wind gusts. The timing of the storms moving into Arkansas will be Sunday evening into Sunday night.
In the upper lvls, northwesterly flow will continue to be present over Arkansas leading to several days over the forecast period in which chance of rain will be present across parts of the state. Important to note not all locations will experience appreciable rainfall. chance of rain will be present across eastern Arkansas on Monday night, a large part of the state on Wednesday into Wednesday night (associated with a series of weak frontal boundaries progged to move across the state from north to south), and isolated parts of the state into the next weekend (associated with a boundary which is progged to become stationary across Arkansas).
Temperatures overall during the forecast period will be lower than the brutal temperatures experienced over the last week, but a few days, especially those which lack chance of rain chances and increased cloud cover will allow high temperatures to reach 100 degrees across many location and on the trend of temperatures above normal for this time of the year will continue overall.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Little Rock discussion at /o/LZK/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.