Thunderstorm Wind in Red River County, Texas

Trees were downed on Highway 37 just south of the Red River.

A weak stationary front extended north of the Interstate 20 corridor in Northeast Texas east into far Southern Arkansas during the afternoon hour of May 17th, which began to drift back north by late afternoon into the evening, as a southerly low level flow developed across the broad warm sector to the south, in response to tighter pressure gradient ahead of an upper level trough that traversed northeast from the Southern Plains into the Ozarks. Ample daytime heating atop a very moist air mass along and south of the front contributed to strong instability, with increased large scale forcing ahead of the trough and along the front resulting in scattered severe thunderstorms developing during the afternoon and evening across portions of Southern Arkansas, extreme Northeast Texas, and Southeast Oklahoma. Several reports of large hail and damaging winds were received from these storms, before they shifted northeast of the area into Western and Central Arkansas by late evening.