Dangerous Storm Threatens Thunderstorms, Tornadoes in Parts of US

The second major outbreak of dangerous thunderstorms and tornadoes is poised to sweep across parts of the United States in the coming days, following quickly on the heels of a storm that produced more than 1,800 severe weather reports earlier this week, including 66 tornado reports.

The severe weather is expected to be most widespread on Sunday. The Storm Prediction Center, comprising the government's thunderstorm and tornado forecasting experts, has outlined a large area from the Plains to the Midwest and parts of the South as a potentially dangerous region on Sunday and Sunday night.

The threat includes damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes.

Major metropolitan areas in the risk area on Sunday include Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Dallas and Little Rock, Ark. The Storm Prediction Center warns of a moderate risk for dangerous storms in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Illinois.


(Image courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Dangerous thunderstorms are also a threat across significant portions of the Plains and Southeast on Saturday, with one region of concern stretching from southern Wisconsin and southern Minnesota to eastern Kansas and a second ranging from the southern Ohio Valley to the Carolinas.

Isolated tornadoes are also a threat today and tonight from the Missouri Valley eastward in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The atmospheric factors contributing to the dangerous weather will be similar to the factors that produced the severe weather earlier this week.

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An intense north-to-south temperature contrast will combine with strong upper-level winds that can come to the ground in the form of damaging wind gusts. Atmospheric wind shear -- which creates turbulence in planes -- will provide the spin necessary for tornado development.

Warmer weather will precede the approaching storm system, with temperatures climbing well into the 80s in Little Rock on Saturday and Sunday and to near 80 as far north as Chicago and Des Moines, Iowa, on Sunday. And the change to cooler air behind the storm will be dramatic; temperatures will be 15 to 25 degrees cooler by early next week.

The storm system will lose some of its punch by the time it moves from the eastern Ohio and Tennessee valleys to the Eastern Seaboard on Monday; however, dangerous thunderstorms are still a threat there. Temperatures will jump into the 80s along the Eastern Seaboard on Monday and then drop to the high 60s by the middle of the week.

The severe weather seen earlier this week was centered farther to the south and east than the expected weekend outbreak, but the regions will overlap in parts of the Midwest and South.

From early Monday through early Tuesday, 1,471 preliminary reports of severe weather were tallied, which is believed to be a 24-hour record. The reports remain preliminary and are therefore subject to change as more information arrives, and the records for such statistics have been kept only since 2000.