Storm threat targets Southeast this weekend

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Severe Weather Expert Guy Pearson warns of the threat of severe storms for the southeastern region of the U.S. Storms could bring damaging wind gusts, flash flooding and even tornadoes.

Transcript

00:00Right now, we turn to Guy Pearson, who is joining us from our Severe Weather Center in Wichita.

00:05Guy, thanks for being with us and are you ready for Severe Weather 101?

00:11Oh, we are. It's with, you know, the first sort of big push in severe weather this year,

00:17we're ready to talk about the basics here. All right, so let's get to our graphic here and

00:22we're going to work on filling this in together and talk about all the ingredients we need for

00:26severe weather, the warmth, the moisture, the energy, and we'll assign some categories to it.

00:31First, let's start with the warmth that starts to move through as we head into the day on Saturday.

00:39Yep, so on Saturday, we get, you know, the main storm system kicking out of the southwest here.

00:45We get our temperatures, you know, really climbing back looking well into the 80s and a lot of places

00:50bringing a lot of that warmth out ahead of this storm system coming out of the southwest. So

00:56that's going to be check mark number one for our severe weather. Yeah, high some 20 degrees above

01:01the historical average, much warmer than the temperatures right now, and it's really dry

01:05right now, but that's going to change as well. Yep, certainly. Like typically we see with systems

01:12coming out of the southwest like this, you have that strong southerly, southeasterly winds really

01:17bringing that moisture from the gulf back to the north, and certainly as, you know, the last piece

01:22we sort of talk about here, we have all that moisture ramp up, moving north all the way

01:29up into the, you know, central Mississippi Valley there. So we have plenty of moisture to work with

01:34in this scenario as well, and that would be check mark number two. All right, and then we measure the

01:40energy with wind. Take a look at the scale there and the darkest colors that start to show up. What

01:45do you see when you look at this? So when I see this, you know, there's lots of, you know, we're

01:52looking in that higher end range of 80 to 100 miles an hour, 80 to 95 in that sort of wind speed,

02:02and anytime you're talking that strong, that's a lot of dynamic energy. You know, when we initially

02:06saw this system come into the west coast, it had all kinds of synoptic wind with it. It's, you know,

02:12bringing that energy. It's traversing the southern Rockies, and as it starts to eject out here,

02:18that energy is going to ramp back up, especially as the surface low then starts to develop very

02:23late in the day tomorrow, and especially tomorrow night. So all the check marks are listed when we

02:29look at the warmth, moisture, and energy. Some of these you could argue may be more of a medium high,

02:34but when we look at our severe weather risk, we do have the high risk there, especially central

02:40into Mississippi. Yep, certainly. You know, we do have, you know, all the main ingredients we need

02:48for severe weather to occur, and then most like most often, it's how do all those come together

02:53at the time, and then how, which then determines how big an event unfolds. So we have everything

02:59sort of put together here, and certainly northeastern Louisiana across Mississippi

03:05into even southwestern Tennessee near Memphis there. That's going to be the primary area that

03:11will be towards later in the day. So we're, you know, I know the sun's up a little bit later now.

03:17Sunset's not quite as early, but still we're talking, you know, as the severe weather is going

03:22to start to ramp up, you know, probably more in the four to six o'clock time range across the western

03:28half of that high area, but as it moves east across, it will be nightfall, and so you certainly

03:34want to be aware of what's going on in the evening hours, eight to ten o'clock across this area,

03:40because that's really when it's going to be moving through. It will be dark. You need to be paying

03:45attention to the AccuWeather app and understanding what's going on with the weather around you,

03:49as well as, you know, other sources as well. And Guy, when we talk about tornadoes, all tornadoes

03:56can be deemed strong, but when your team warns of strong tornadoes, exactly what kind of strength

04:02are we looking at? Yeah, typically you're talking potentially EF1, EF2, EF3 type tornadoes. This is

04:11probably one of those scenarios. It's probably more, if we had one of the strongest tornadoes,

04:16it's probably going to be EF2, EF3, would be my initial thought with this. I don't think certainly,

04:23I don't think we're going to have all the right conditions, you know, to have something that may

04:27be the top end of the scale, but certainly a little bit more. I know we talked earlier today

04:31about a weaker EF0 tornado from a couple days ago. We will certainly have, in all likelihood,

04:37some stronger tornadoes than that, that'll, you know, certainly be a category or two above that.

04:43Severe weather expert Guy Pearson, thank you so much for all your knowledge on the

04:47topic here and keeping people safe as we head into the weekend.

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