Huge hail, ripping winds—PDS severe weather watches are relatively rare

Sunday was quite the day on the southern Plains as forecasters tracked a severe weather outbreak capable of producing giant hailstones and destructive wind gusts.

The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) issued two relatively rare particularly dangerous situation (PDS) severe thunderstorm watches for a large swath of the region through Sunday evening.

How rare was this setup?

Extreme instability fueled an unusually robust risk for severe thunderstorms across northern Texas and southern Oklahoma on Sunday. As we see with so many severe weather outbreaks, it was a one-two punch: first supercells with a threat for tornadoes and huge hail, then a squall line capable of producing widespread damaging winds. 

Given the setup, the SPC pulled no punches in their severe thunderstorm watches. Forecasters advised that the strongest storms could produce hail up to 5 inches in diameter—larger than a DVD—as well as wind gusts in excess of 100 mph.

Large hail and damaging winds were common throughout the northern half of Texas as storms progressed through the afternoon and past sunset. While many communities made it through the day unscathed, not everyone was so lucky.

A nasty supercell southeast of Amarillo, Texas, produced softball size hail near Claude and a 90 mph wind gust near Lakeview. A little farther down the road, a weather station near the town of Goree measured a 100 mph wind gust. 

The SPC adds the phrase "particularly dangerous situation" to severe thunderstorm or tornado watches during setups that could pack unusual intensity across the region.

A PDS tornado watch is issued when forecasters are confident in an outbreak of strong, long-lived tornadoes. A PDS severe thunderstorm watch is reserved for the potential for widespread destructive hail or winds—much as we saw on Sunday.

Including the two issued this weekend, we've only seen 168 PDS watches since the Iowa Environmental Mesonet began keeping track in 2006. This equates to about 5 per year. 142 (85%) of those were tornado watches, while the remaining 26 (15%) were severe thunderstorm watches.

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