Dangerous weekend of severe weather for Central US

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Jon Porter warns of a triple threat facing the central U.S., which include fire danger in the South, blizzards in the North and damaging winds and tornadoes in the heart of the nation.

Transcript

00:00John, it was last week that our long-range team first alerted us that we were going to

00:05have a very busy end of the week.

00:08I want to first talk about Friday.

00:11And what we're going to see is what we're calling the triple threat, just a lot of extreme

00:17weather as we go through tomorrow.

00:19And you know what, John, certainly the severe weather is going to highlight our coverage.

00:23But what's going to happen in West Texas and the Southwest Plains tomorrow is as bad as

00:29it gets.

00:30It is.

00:31I was just talking with AccuWeather long-range expert and crystal ball Joe Lumberg here just

00:35a moment ago and he said that he thought this was going to be a historic event in terms

00:40of the fire risk and the wind across the Southern Plains.

00:44So especially West Texas and of course a major severe weather outbreak over the coming days

00:49here each year, each day with different risks and a blizzard across the far Northern Plains

00:54as well.

00:55So we're going to see three dangerous, life-threatening situations as we head through Friday and into

00:59the weekend.

01:00And whenever you have a storm that's producing this much, you know you're going to have the

01:04wind.

01:05Just take a look at the strength and the widespread nature of the wind tomorrow.

01:11From the Canadian border all the way down to the Rio Grande, we're talking about wind

01:15gusts of 40 to 50 miles per hour, 60 to 70 across the Southern Plains.

01:20This is going to kick up a lot of dust and burning in addition to the power outages,

01:24the wildfire risk.

01:26We're expecting that some of that dust can be lofted and even head all the way up into

01:31parts of Missouri and even toward Chicago as well, creating haze in the sky and perhaps

01:36some air quality concerns across other parts of the central U.S.

01:40You know, you and I were talking about this.

01:42I have a theory and you and I talked about this theory that whenever you get winds that

01:48are this strong, whether it's in Southern California or whether it's in the Plains,

01:53the one thing you can count on, unfortunately, and I really hope I'm wrong about this, is

01:57fire.

01:58I have no doubt tomorrow we're going to be dealing with large and rapidly expanding fires

02:04because of the wind and the fire danger being so high.

02:08That's the point is that any flame that gets going is going to can result in a fire spreading

02:13very fast because of these very gusty winds and the extremely dry vegetation in these

02:18areas, drought conditions in many parts of West Texas.

02:22This is a very serious situation here as we head through the day tomorrow.

02:25So be aware of any fire warnings that are issued and evacuation notices.

02:30You're going to want to move quickly on those, not only just across West Texas, but up toward

02:34parts of Oklahoma City, parts of Oklahoma and up into Kansas as well.

02:38A serious wildfire concern.

02:40All right.

02:41Let's look at the energy, John, that's going to be prompting all of this extreme weather

02:46as we go through tomorrow here.

02:48And the one thing I'm going to do, I'm going to stop this as we get into it.

02:53Look at the spin in Kansas as we get into Friday and you and I were talking about this.

02:59When it comes to severe weather, the atmosphere never holds back in intentions.

03:04It shows you exactly right where the worst of the severe weather is going to be, John.

03:08It's like an arrow pointing.

03:10You can see the wind flow around this jet stream disturbance.

03:13It's pointing right at this corridor.

03:15And that's where we're expecting the most severe weather here tomorrow, the widespread

03:19risk for damaging winds and yes, some tornadoes, large hail as well.

03:23So the atmosphere is telling us this is our experience here, decades of experience of

03:28our team that really helps us to identify that's the biggest risk area pointing exactly

03:33at where the upper air pattern shows us.

03:35Our experience is one part of the equation of the AccuWeather Advantage.

03:39Now let's take a look at the tools.

03:40This is one of our favorite tools.

03:43It's called the low level jet.

03:44It's the wind at around 5,000 feet.

03:46And remember, when you're talking about energy, you're talking about wind.

03:50And this low level jet, John, is as widespread and as strong as I've seen it.

03:56I'm going to stop this right now at five o'clock.

03:58Watch this.

03:59Look at that gray area where we're looking at wind gusts over 70 miles per hour.

04:05Watch it expand through the night.

04:07That's the concern.

04:08It expands through the night and really amplifies as that whole system, that upper level area

04:13of low pressure intensifies in the plains.

04:16And when the winds are screaming this much, over 100 miles per hour, 120 miles per hour

04:21at 5,000 feet, that's a lot of wind energy that can be transported to the surface in

04:27some of these severe thunderstorms.

04:29That's why we're concerned about widespread damaging winds of perhaps 75 miles per hour

04:34in some places with AccuWeather local storm max of 100.

04:37And Bernie, this also results in a problem for increased tornado risk too.

04:41Yeah, we're going to get to that in a second.

04:43One more ingredient, John, and this was brought up by our severe weather expert, Guy Pearson,

04:48the diffluent flow aloft.

04:50Now that sounds complicated, but like most things in meteorology, it's actually a pretty

04:55simple explanation of what that is.

04:57Right.

04:58Watch the wind direction.

04:59The wind's flowing around this area of upper level low pressure, and it's spreading out

05:03and fanning out.

05:04And when that happens, that means there's going to be significant lift in the atmosphere.

05:09That's what produces these intense thunderstorms.

05:11So that kind of pattern is one that catches our eye very quickly for something that can

05:16produce intense thunderstorms.

05:18And then it also produces this directional wind shear.

05:22It does.

05:23And when you've got that wind changing speed and direction with height, look at near the

05:27ground coming into the southeast, south at 3,000 feet and southwest at 6,000, that creates

05:34a twisting motion in the atmosphere.

05:36And those intense thunderstorms can capitalize that and produce tornadoes.

05:41That's why we're so concerned about both the damaging wind risk and the tornado risk.

05:45We think there's going to be hundreds of reports of damaging winds, especially within that

05:51moderate and high risk area.

05:53The tornadoes, John, listen, there could be tornadoes anywhere in that area, but we're

05:57zoning in on one area.

05:59We have been consistent with this.

06:01Downstate Illinois, southeastern portions of Missouri, including the St. Louis area,

06:07down to Little Rock, Tupelo, and also over toward Memphis.

06:10This is the greatest risk for tornadoes.

06:13Again, they occur in other parts of that high risk area and moderate risk area, but this

06:17is where the risk is greatest.

06:19And Bernie, the big concern that we have about this is a lot of this is going to be happening

06:23after dark.

06:24Yeah.

06:25Great time to download the AccuWeather app, turn on push notifications, and let people

06:28you know who live in this area, let them know about this risk.

06:32You can help save lives doing that.

06:34And you know, coming up, Ari is going to be talking about, we're concerned about even

06:38a higher number of tornadoes possible as we head into Saturday.

06:43AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Portijohn, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather

06:46Early.

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