Chilly air across much of the central and eastern U.S. has kept a lid on severe weather potential over the past few days, but that is about to change as the jet stream pattern undergoes a major shift across the country.

The jet stream – the band of winds some 30,000 feet aloft that influences large-scale weather patterns – will plunge south across the Western states in the coming days. Meanwhile, southerly winds will start to bring moist air from the Gulf of Mexico northward into the southern and central Plains and eventually parts of the Midwest and Southeast.

Eventually, as the disturbance in the West starts to push east into the moist unstable air, severe thunderstorms are likely to develop. The questions are exactly where, when, and how much – and there are still some uncertainties in that part of the forecast.

Sunday, there is a chance for thunderstorms in east Texas, Louisiana and western Mississippi.  The threat for severe weather remains fairly low with these.

By Monday evening we could start to see some severe weather erupt in parts of the Plains, as shown in the inset map on the right.

After that, severe thunderstorms will be possible every day of the workweek, starting in the central and southern Plains states Tuesday. Computer model forecasts differ on how quickly this storm system will move east, so the day-to-day details are not clear yet. Eventually parts of the Ohio Valley, mid- and lower

Mississippi Valley, and the Southeast could be implicated in some sort of severe weather threat during the Wednesday-to-Friday time frame.

We will continue to update this situation on this page as it unfolds. You can find the initial day-by-day details by checking out our TOR:CON analysis from Dr. Greg Forbes.

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/severe-weather-tracker-page