TORNADO EMERGENCY ISSUED FOR DODGE CITY, KANSAS! (credit: GR-2 Analyst via Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz)

DISCUSSION: As strong to severe thunderstorms erupted across Central Oklahoma and Southwest Kansas earlier this afternoon and now into this evening, a serious situation has developed!   The intense combination of strong daytime heating, strong vertical wind shear, and the interaction of one of these storms with a nearby outflow boundary (i.e., colder air which moves away from strong thunderstorms and can sometimes act as a trigger for new convection to develop and/or rapidly strengthen under the right conditions) induced this particular storm to the southwest of Dodge City, Kansas to cycle into a powerful supercell thunderstorm already with a history of producing strong/damaging tornadoes.  The images below are screen-shots of this storm from a radar analysis program called GR-2 Analyst and you can denote the hook echo (i.e., the curved hook-like feature positioned within the black-circled region) which indicates the approximate location of the destructive tornado currently still on the ground just to the southwest of Dodge City, Kansas where a TORNADO EMERGENCY (purple-outlined figure with black striping through it) has officially been issued as of 15 minutes ago!  To learn more about other high-impact weather content from across the United States, click here!