Tornado threat ramping up in the Midwest as Friday evening arrives

AccuWeather

Storm chaser Aaron Jayjack reported live from St. Louis on the evening of March 14 as the threat for tornadoes and severe storms ramped up across the region.

Transcript

00:00Aaron, this is going to be one of the areas that we're primarily watching up

00:03potential of severe weather, so give us an update.

00:09Yeah, I'm here in the outskirts of St. Louis right along I-55 and actually if you look over

00:14my shoulder you can see those storms that y'all were talking about that are a little bit further

00:17to the west. They're going through Columbia or just gone through Columbia, Missouri. I've gone

00:22through Springfield, Missouri. There was one that was tornado warned, but that whole line right now

00:26is severe warned. One of the limiting factors, I originally was in Columbia and I decided to move a

00:31little bit further to the east and down to the south, actually I'm going to work my way south

00:34into the southern part of Missouri, is meager dew points here. We've got some mixing out,

00:40not a lot of dew point moisture for these storms to work with, so that has throttled that tornado

00:45threat some, but my eye is on the higher dew points, seeing 54 dew points down in the boot

00:50heel of Missouri and vecting their way up to the north here to the St. Louis area. So as these

00:54storms come through, that moisture should rise and that tornado threat should amplify here later

00:59this evening into the overnight hours as well. Further to the south, as I mentioned, I'm heading

01:04down to that boot heel area. All along the Mississippi River down into northern Mississippi

01:08could see a threat into the late hours tonight towards midnight, so we'll be tracking these

01:12storms late here tonight and then another threat tomorrow down in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama.

01:18High risk for severe storms down there, tornadoes potential down there as well, but

01:23not to get too far ahead, we've got storms to deal with right here tonight here in Missouri,

01:27western Illinois, across the Midwest. Dangerous night unfolding here tonight, so if you do go

01:32to bed tonight and storms haven't made it your way yet, you want to make sure you keep those phones

01:36on, weather radios on, get those alerts, pay attention to the AccuWeather network because

01:40this is the worst case situation when you get those tornadoes, those supercells at night in

01:44the nighttime hours, especially in overnight hours. Back to you guys. All right, very well said there

01:49Aaron. Awareness is something that is a big problem here. When people are not aware of what's

01:55going on, they don't take action and awareness drops off to near zero when you go to sleep. That's

02:00right and as we head into this evening, Aaron was talking about the dew points, which that's a

02:03measure of moisture in the atmosphere and generally speaking, tornadoes really like to have dew points

02:09in the 60s to really get going. If you get in the 70s, that's like super octane fuel, but he was

02:14talking about dew points being in the 50s, so that's still, that's I would say a bare minimum

02:19here to get storms going, so we're going to continue to watch that here as we head into tonight.

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