Damaging winds threaten Ohio Valley

AccuWeather Network Chief Meteorologist Bernie Rayno breaks down the midweek storm that brings a threat of tornadoes.

Transcript

00:00and there's a couple of things that we can take from it. First of all you can see that surface

00:03storm moving across Iowa but on the eastern side you're getting this belt of the increasing winds

00:09you see the dark purple and the tightening of the white lines showing you increasing winds.

00:15Dark purple showing about 40 to 50 mile per hour winds. Notice what's going on down here

00:20in downstate Illinois you're getting winds up over 60 miles per hour so not only do you have

00:25winds fast winds but they're increasing as they move north which gives you a little extra upward

00:31motion and with the unique set of conditions as the storm tracks across Illinois I think there

00:38will be tornadoes on the ground. Those unique conditions are what we call changing wind

00:43direction with height directional wind shear low level flow coming in out of the south southeast

00:48in this area upper level flow coming out of the west southwest and what happens is that allows

00:54thunderstorms to rotate. Let me show you if I'm a parcel of air at the surface I start at the

01:00surface with a southeasterly wind so I'm pushed I'm being pushed from the southeast then to 3,000

01:06feet south west southwest is 6,000 feet west at 9,000 feet you see what's happening I'm rotating

01:12that's what I think these thunderstorms are going to be able to do and when you look at the structure

01:16of the storms on future radars what do you see these individual storms and you see how these

01:21storms are like stretched out and bent a little bit the one south of Peoria I think those are

01:26tornadic I could also see tornadoes with those thunderstorms in northern Illinois although it

01:30should stay south of Chicago then later today those thunderstorms lift north and you get what

01:35we call a line linear thunderstorms these are damaging winds all right so I think the tornado

01:40threat's going to be across east central Illinois in the western parts of Indiana we that's right

01:45where we have the moderate risk I do believe there will be more reports of damaging winds and

01:51hail than tornadoes but I think there's a few to several on the ground here and look at that

01:55AccuWeather local storm act with so much wind energy any thunderstorm will have the ability

02:00to produce damaging wind gusts.