Severe thunderstorms sweep across the central US

AccuWeather

From the High Plains to the Upper Midwest, severe storms spawned tornado and flood warnings on Aug. 29.

Transcript

00:00Our top story is a severe weather threat through the plains and the Midwest.

00:04Thunderstorms soaked Garden City, Kansas earlier.

00:06You can see right there these storms are dumping a lot of rainfall.

00:10Flooding will be a pretty big issue here as we head into this evening, Jeff.

00:13That's very true.

00:14And from western Kansas and the high plains all the way up into southeast Nebraska,

00:18western Iowa, and all the way north to Duluth.

00:21Here's the view from the Duluth Harbor Camp.

00:24Here we're a little cool and stable with the temperatures in the mid-60s.

00:29A couple of isolated lightning strikes up this way,

00:31but the fuel for storms is much richer to the south.

00:34With that said, even west of Duluth there are some strong thunderstorms out there

00:38moving up toward the Rainy River Basin.

00:40Sometimes Duluth's temperature is kind of reflecting a little bit of the influence of Lake Superior,

00:45so areas around Duluth may be a little bit warmer than that.

00:48Hey, I want to take us farther south because we do have a couple of different types of warnings here.

00:52I'm going to remove the lightning strikes because they overwhelm the view.

00:56And you can see each of the three types of convective warnings.

00:58We've got a severe thunderstorm warning to the north,

01:00a flash flood warning just issued for an area immediately east of the St. Croix River

01:06into an area of Polk County, Wisconsin.

01:08But then a tornado warning has been issued as there is an area of rotation crossing

01:12the immediate area of the St. Croix River and also the Mississippi River there

01:17in Pierce County, Wisconsin, and St. Croix County of Wisconsin as well.

01:22So switching over to the high-res radar data,

01:24you're going to get a reasonably close view of this from the Minneapolis-St. Paul radar site.

01:28And you can see some heavy rain out there.

01:30And also when we switch over to the velocity scan, there is indeed a couplet.

01:35When we say couplet, we're talking about an area within the storm

01:38where you have movement away from the radar site right up against an area of movement

01:42toward the radar site, so the green right up against the red.

01:45And in this case here, you can see there's actually a point with no real separation here between the two.

01:51Pretty strong movement in and outbound up against one another.

01:54As we use the eyedropper tool, we can get an estimate of how strong the wind is.

01:59And we have equal winds in opposing directions.

02:02So a 78-mile-per-hour contrast, we have 39-mile-per-hour wind in one direction,

02:0639-mile-per-hour wind in the other direction, so pretty healthy rotation within this.

02:10And if there is a tornado, it may be just barely west-northwest of Trimbell.

02:15And the most likely location for this might be specifically right where you have

02:20that true intersection.

02:21I want to see if any small communities pop up here.

02:23I'm not seeing any in that view, but River Falls, Martell, Baldwin,

02:27there are tens of thousands of people under this tornado warning.

02:30That's in effect for northern Pierce County of Wisconsin,

02:33southern and eastern St. Croix County of Wisconsin,

02:36and this runs for another 26 minutes until 6.30 central time.

02:40Heading back over to the more national radar puzzle assembled here,

02:45we also have some strong storms into parts of Iowa.

02:47Most of these had been severe but are not fully severe now.

02:51And, again, you can still get a lot of rain, you can get a lot of lightning,

02:54but if you're not seeing hail the size of a quarter

02:57or winds of, say, 57, 58 miles per hour or greater,

03:01it may not truly meet the definition of a severe storm.

03:04We showed you that footage from Dodge City and out near Garden City, Kansas.

03:08Nasty storms out there, not quite severe, but we do have some severe weather

03:11into the westernmost county of Oklahoma there in Cimarron County

03:14and northwestern Dalham County in Texas into the western part of the Panhandle region.

03:18Also, flash flooding into Quay County, New Mexico.

03:21It's a nasty cell here, right over San John and Bard along the interstate.

03:25I think that's I-40 moving into Amarillo, and we'll keep an eye on that.

03:30Damien says yes, he knows that area real well.

03:32Well, let's take a look at the ongoing severe thunderstorm watch

03:35in effect from International Falls down to an area of western Wisconsin.

03:38That's where we're most concerned about the severe storms that continue to push east.

03:41Again, we have flash flooding in some spots, a tornado threat for others,

03:45and it's still really steamy here.

03:4793 in St. Louis, you've had a hot stretch this week,

03:50and there's really high humidity still, a dew point of 74 in Peoria.

03:54This is fuel for thunderstorms.

03:56Until that front moves through, we're going to still see the severe weather risks,

04:00mainly western Wisconsin, northern parts of Iowa here, some parts of southeast Minnesota,

04:04with a damaging wind and hail threat, flash flooding, and still we're seeing isolated tornadoes.

04:09We've had at least one that appears to have touched down today

04:12based on visual evidence from law enforcement.

04:15Tomorrow, the risk zone goes from Chicago and into Michigan,

04:19southwest to near Kansas City and areas around Jefferson City as well.

04:24So a lot of wheels in motion here, Damien, for strong storms in the Midwest,

04:28and how's this going to impact our travel plans?

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