Tornadoes reported in Illinois as severe storms blow across the Midwest

AccuWeather's Damien Lodes was forecasting live on the evening of March 19 as tornado-warned storms barreled across Illinois.

Transcript

00:00So here's the overall view of what we are going to be tracking for you here as we head into this evening.

00:04We have that center of circulation working its way across northern parts of Missouri.

00:08Now on the front side of that we are tracking this line of severe thunderstorms here

00:12working its way across parts of primarily Illinois, eventually working its way into Indiana.

00:18But we're also going to be watching the Mississippi River here as we head into this evening for some more thunderstorms.

00:22And then Anna's going to update you here on just this broad area of heavy snowfall ongoing with those blizzard conditions.

00:28But I'll go ahead and focus first here on pretty much the state of Illinois

00:31for that overall threat of severe weather that we're going to be watching here as we head into this evening.

00:36I'm going to switch the radar side over for you so you can get a clearer picture of what we are tracking.

00:40So one thing I want to point out, I'll freeze frame the very last radar image here for you.

00:44So what we are watching out for here are, you can see these warning areas primarily.

00:49So these yellow boxes, those are severe thunderstorm warnings.

00:52Those are thunderstorms that are capable of producing about one inch,

00:55which is pretty much quarter size hail, and also 50, 60 mile an hour straight line wind gusts.

01:00So those are what those boxes mean.

01:03Now, that purple box right there, it used to be a red box, but now it is a purple box.

01:08A purple box right there making its way towards Pontiac, Illinois.

01:12We'll go ahead and zoom in a little bit so you can get a closer look at this storm.

01:16That is what we call a confirmed tornado warning.

01:19That means that we have a trained storm spotter or storm chaser from the ground

01:23that actually had eyes on a confirmed tornado.

01:26So we'll see when this goes until, this goes until 45, so about another 10, 12 minutes.

01:30So it does look like that this, the primary rotation area of the storm is now outside of that box,

01:37that polygon is what we call it.

01:38So we'll see if this tornado warning is going to be extended here as we head throughout the next couple of minutes.

01:43But overall, let's go and switch over to show you the velocity signature and go ahead and track that in real time.

01:48And you can see that over the past couple of radar scans,

01:51the overall view here, I'll go and freeze frame it for you.

01:54The center of circulation for that rotation is going to be just south of Pontiac on I-55.

01:58And overall, it's going to be, it looks like the rotation signature has come down some as far as the intensity.

02:05So we'll see if they're allowed, Anna, to, they're going to extend this tornado warning here as we head into this evening.

02:10But in the meantime, I've been talking about the severe weather,

02:13and you're talking about some pretty good snowfall chances.

02:15Yeah, there's kind of two sides to this storm,

02:17both having major impacts.