After the central U.S. was slammed by severe weather that produced high winds, hail and tornadoes, AccuWeather's Guy Pearson says these destructive storms will continue toward the north-central U.S.
00:00Quite a morning there, Guy, as once again a damaging line of thunderstorms moving through the Wichita area just a couple of hours ago.
00:11I have the storm reports up here, but let's talk about what you experienced this morning in Wichita.
00:17Good morning. Certainly, it was a busy night, or busy overnight, very early this morning with that line of storms rolling through.
00:30Very impressive. I think we had 101 miles an hour reported at the airport.
00:35On the southwest side of town, over on the east side by myself, I had 85, I believe it was.
00:42On the drive-in this morning, certainly we had lots of tree limbs down, things like that.
00:51We also had reports of flooding in downtown. It was coming down more than an inch per hour rainfall rates.
00:56And so a lot of the guttering, draining through downtown was all backed up, and then power outages now.
01:03So the morning commute in Wichita, especially in downtown, is going to be a little chaotic with a lot of four-way stops in areas where you typically see streetlights.
01:12Before we get to the radar, I want to get your impression of this tornado yesterday caught by Aaron Jajak.
01:17Just a very picturesque tornado. From your experience, do you have any idea the width of that tornado? That looks like a monster.
01:28It looks like a monster. I think part of it is a little bit, as far as the distance there, is probably, you know, I would say probably certainly less than a quarter mile wide.
01:40I think he's pretty close to it. It seemed like it was pretty stationary, so I don't know if it was necessarily.
01:46It's one of those that is very picturesque. It's a full cone. You can see the entire condensation cloud with it and everything.
01:53It's really impressive, especially all the swirling right at the ground.
01:57Typically, you don't get to see something that, you know, nearly stationary with that amount of strength as well.
02:06All right, let's get your impression. I want to track that line of thunderstorms that has now moved out of Kansas.
02:12The question is, as we go forward here, certainly there's been some weakening of this line,
02:17and we expect that, you and your team, to continue over the next couple of hours?
02:24Yep, certainly we're expecting that weakening trend to continue.
02:28Right now, the last couple of reports or so have been in that sort of 50 to 60 mile an hour,
02:33and it's certainly still going to be gusty, breezy.
02:37Get your attention as it is approaching Tulsa here.
02:40But, yeah, I would still expect 60 mile an hour winds here over the next hour
02:45and then beginning to weaken after that to below severe limits,
02:50but still breezy to gusty, something to keep an eye on for the whole,
02:55probably even morning commute here for Tulsa as you're going through the morning hours
03:00and that storm moves into that area.
03:03All right, let's talk about what's yet to come.
03:06We still have a pretty vigorous piece of energy in the upper part of the atmosphere, Guy.
03:09There it is, moving out of Colorado into Kansas today,
03:13and then we'll get to tomorrow as that presses across the upper Midwest.
03:17So it's one of those things that we have a lot of heat
03:20that will continue to keep these thunderstorms thriving later today and tonight.
03:27We talk about this all the time, the nocturnal processes,
03:30and one of the biggest ingredients is the heat.
03:33Let's go to future radar here,
03:34and let's talk about how things reload later today in eastern Colorado.
03:42Yep, it's one of those things, the heat over the, you know,
03:45the western Texas up through the western high plains
03:48continue to refeed sort of that same area where storms started yesterday evening.
03:53And so we're looking at that same process as we do have that main area of storms,
03:59all that heat coming up the western high plains.
04:01You can see all the storms there from Denver all the way northeast to south of Rapid City.
04:06And then those whole complexes and areas of showers and storms are going to continue to ride east
04:11and sort of southeast again.
04:13You can certainly see what the radar is highlighting here is that area actually west
04:18and southwest of Wichita that didn't get the thunderstorms this morning.
04:23So it's a little bit more undisturbed or allele, less disturbed air, better ingredients,
04:29and so it sort of feeds in there.
04:30So this is hinting at we're going to have another complex,
04:33certainly another round of, you know, 80-plus winds,
04:37probably even greater than 90 in some pockets.
04:40And then you can sort of see here it continues through the overnight hours once again.
04:45And, you know, we end up with another round of showers and storms with damaging winds
04:50and some local flash flooding from those really heavy rainfall rates.
04:54Really quickly, Guy, we've been discussing about the possibility of about 15, 20 seconds here,
05:00about a high risk tomorrow.
05:02We haven't gone there yet.
05:03Yeah, not yet.
05:07It does, as that piece of energy ejects east across the Midwest here,
05:12we are looking at widespread, you know, showers and severe thunderstorms with winds
05:19that will be certainly probably gusting 60, 65 mile an hour, probably even 70, given the dynamics.
05:25Isolated tornadoes will be a possibility as well, and flash flooding.
05:31All right.
05:31AccuWeather Severe Weather Expert Guy Pearson.
05:33Thanks for breaking it down here on AccuWeather Early.
