Dangerous severe weather situation unfolding for this Friday and Saturday

AccuWeather

AccuWeather storm chasers and forecasters are warning of a high risk for dangerous tornadic storms in the Midwest and Gulf Coast from March 14-15.

Transcript

00:00Tornadoes, damaging winds, and flash flooding will spread from the Great Plains to the Gulf

00:04Coast Saturday, with gusty thunderstorms reaching the East Coast on Sunday.

00:08For a closer look at what to expect, we are joined now by meteorologist Tony LaVock, who's

00:12kicking off his 29th storm-chasing season as he gets into position for this weekend's

00:18severe weather coverage.

00:19Not his first rodeo, and Tony joins us live from Fort Smith, Arkansas, with his plans

00:25for the next couple of days.

00:27Tony?

00:29Yeah, Jeff, we are en route.

00:32Welcome to our road trip.

00:33Ed Grubb and I left Colorado yesterday to make the drive out to Arkansas.

00:38We're actually on our way to Little Rock, so you're going to be with us for the next

00:41hour or so as we are making that drive to get set up for what is expected to be a very

00:46active next couple of days.

00:48We're going to show you the maps here, and we'll kind of look at what you're looking

00:50at tomorrow.

00:51Notice where the high risk is.

00:52The high risk is up in the northern parts of the area that we're watching, up towards

00:57Iowa, portions of Illinois into Missouri.

01:00We're actually going to be playing the south end of this setup, so not quite in that high

01:03risk area.

01:04There are a couple of reasons why we're doing that.

01:06First of all, the high risk area is likely going to be a very fast moving squall line

01:10with the damaging wind threat and isolated tornado threat in that particular line.

01:14That is going to be a hard and heavy system for folks up that way.

01:17That system is going to be moving very, very quickly.

01:20The reason we're targeting a little further south than that is later in the evening we're

01:24expecting more isolated storm development, possibly after dark.

01:28The other reason is because really all the focus is going to be on Saturday.

01:32We shift that map over, and you see where that high risk is.

01:36The further north we would get tomorrow would put us further and further out of position,

01:40and there's certainly some concerns on Saturday that that storm's chance, those storms really

01:44start to kick off fairly early in the day, and we think that is going to be the day we

01:49are most concerned, not just with supercells with tornadoes, but we're talking strong to

01:54even violent tornado potential with a lot of the parameters that are in place for us

01:58on Saturday.

01:59That is really the big day right now that has a lot more concern in the southeast.

02:03Friday is going to be exceptionally busy, especially up further north, and as we get

02:07later in the day, that threat will shift south, and that's when Ed and I will start to be

02:11on the move, probably after about 6 or 7 o'clock tomorrow across portions of far eastern Arkansas.

02:16And then as the night progresses, we'll work our way likely somewhere into central, maybe

02:20even eastern Mississippi, where we'll set up for the night on Friday night into Saturday,

02:26get ready for the setup there on Saturday.

02:28Really concerned for folks down in the southeast for this event, having been around a few,

02:33including Chase the Super outbreak back in 2011.

02:35There's certainly some, I'm not going to say comparisons that are like, you know, piece

02:41by piece, but there are definitely a lot of similarities with this.

02:45It certainly has me concerned that we could be looking at a pretty significant severe

02:48weather, if not tornado event for us on Saturday.

02:51So busy next, say 48 hours for us here as we get set up here in the southeast for the

02:56next couple of days.

02:57All right, Tony.

02:58Yeah, we are concerned about hundreds of severe weather reports, wind, also tornadoes, dozens

03:03of tornadoes most likely with a setup like this, and the flooding too.

03:06We'll talk about this.

03:07So I'm going to break this down for Friday, and then Damian's going to take a look at

03:10Saturday and into Sunday.

03:12Ultimately, this is all coming from the interior west, a big dip in the jet stream.

03:16We had an EF0 tornado with the LA Metro early this morning, late last night.

03:21Trees down into parts of central California.

03:23A lot of delays for travelers into Vegas right now, drenching rain into western parts of

03:27Arizona, heavy snow into the mountains.

03:29But this big trough digs east here, and this is a really dynamic system.

03:33Tremendous wind energy upstairs.

03:35We have winds flowing in different directions.

03:37It's going to lead to a diffluent flow aloft, that's what we talk about when the wind's

03:40kind of separating in different directions.

03:42That means that has to be replaced by something.

03:44It almost creates a vacuum upstairs, so winds converge down to the ground.

03:48That gets the storms going here, and as this storm system begins to really unravel, 3 p.m.

03:53Central tomorrow, we'll begin to see our first few storms break out.

03:56Some of these, even into Louisiana and Arkansas, could be rotating, and we'll have more thunderstorms

04:01to the north.

04:02That's the greatest number of thunderstorms.

04:04Some of them will be really intense here.

04:05You can see them rapidly racing east here, and the fact that they're not fully attached

04:10to a squall line will allow some of these to be full supercell thunderstorms, and there

04:15we are through Friday, 9 p.m. Central time, so we're going to have a lot to track on radar

04:18tomorrow evening.

04:19This race is north, and then we're going to see the southern part of this front stall,

04:25and a second disturbance is going to kind of scare things up once again on Saturday.

04:28So we're looking at a high risk.

04:30That's 3 out of 4 on the AccuWeather Threat Level Index here for Friday.

04:35Mid to late afternoon, storms fire off, continuing through the night from southeast Iowa, eastern

04:39Missouri, western Illinois, and northern parts of Arkansas.

04:42We have our greatest risk for widespread, destructive, damaging winds, but also we're

04:46looking at flash flooding, large hail, and the obvious concern of tornadoes.

04:50Now if we were to really get a little more specific with the tornado risk, we're looking

04:54at areas from St. Louis southward into eastern Arkansas and northwest Mississippi.

04:59There will be fewer storms to the south, but those that do form are going to be violently

05:02rotating.

05:03Those to the north will be a mix of straight line wind producers and also tornadic storms,

05:08and many, many storms will be on the map to the north.

05:10So damaging winds are a most significant motivator for the Friday high risk, but also a medium

05:15to borderline high risk of tornadoes and large hail as well.

05:19If we were to give you a little more specifics on the timing, here we go into the area near

05:23Memphis, Tennessee, and again we're looking at some medium risks here for damaging wind,

05:30flooding, hail, and tornadoes, the whole circuit there.

05:34And then as we travel farther north into the St. Louis metro, here we're looking at a high

05:38risk of damaging wind, a high risk of tornadoes, and also hail, and this is going to be rolling

05:43in later in the day.

05:44You can see the timing, 7, 8, 9 p.m. through to the evening with some major problems there

05:49into the area of St. Louis.

05:51So two separate areas with power outage risk.

05:54Some of this will be totally dry and void of precipitation into the southern plains.

05:58That's just straight up because of the wind, but the damaging wind producing thunderstorms

06:01into St. Louis will be a big cause for concern there.

06:04This storm's already making itself known there into areas like the southwest, Damien, with

06:07some major delays, but we have big concerns.

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