AccuWeather storm chasers and forecasters are warning of a high risk for dangerous tornadic storms in the Midwest and Gulf Coast from March 14-15.
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00:00Tornadoes, damaging winds, and flash flooding will spread from the Great Plains to the Gulf
00:04Coast Saturday, with gusty thunderstorms reaching the East Coast on Sunday.
00:08For a closer look at what to expect, we are joined now by meteorologist Tony LaVock, who's
00:12kicking off his 29th storm-chasing season as he gets into position for this weekend's
00:18severe weather coverage.
00:19Not his first rodeo, and Tony joins us live from Fort Smith, Arkansas, with his plans
00:25for the next couple of days.
00:27Tony?
00:29Yeah, Jeff, we are en route.
00:32Welcome to our road trip.
00:33Ed Grubb and I left Colorado yesterday to make the drive out to Arkansas.
00:38We're actually on our way to Little Rock, so you're going to be with us for the next
00:41hour or so as we are making that drive to get set up for what is expected to be a very
00:46active next couple of days.
00:48We're going to show you the maps here, and we'll kind of look at what you're looking
00:50at tomorrow.
00:51Notice where the high risk is.
00:52The high risk is up in the northern parts of the area that we're watching, up towards
00:57Iowa, portions of Illinois into Missouri.
01:00We're actually going to be playing the south end of this setup, so not quite in that high
01:03risk area.
01:04There are a couple of reasons why we're doing that.
01:06First of all, the high risk area is likely going to be a very fast moving squall line
01:10with the damaging wind threat and isolated tornado threat in that particular line.
01:14That is going to be a hard and heavy system for folks up that way.
01:17That system is going to be moving very, very quickly.
01:20The reason we're targeting a little further south than that is later in the evening we're
01:24expecting more isolated storm development, possibly after dark.
01:28The other reason is because really all the focus is going to be on Saturday.
01:32We shift that map over, and you see where that high risk is.
01:36The further north we would get tomorrow would put us further and further out of position,
01:40and there's certainly some concerns on Saturday that that storm's chance, those storms really
01:44start to kick off fairly early in the day, and we think that is going to be the day we
01:49are most concerned, not just with supercells with tornadoes, but we're talking strong to
01:54even violent tornado potential with a lot of the parameters that are in place for us
01:58on Saturday.
01:59That is really the big day right now that has a lot more concern in the southeast.
02:03Friday is going to be exceptionally busy, especially up further north, and as we get
02:07later in the day, that threat will shift south, and that's when Ed and I will start to be
02:11on the move, probably after about 6 or 7 o'clock tomorrow across portions of far eastern Arkansas.
02:16And then as the night progresses, we'll work our way likely somewhere into central, maybe
02:20even eastern Mississippi, where we'll set up for the night on Friday night into Saturday,
02:26get ready for the setup there on Saturday.
02:28Really concerned for folks down in the southeast for this event, having been around a few,
02:33including Chase the Super outbreak back in 2011.
02:35There's certainly some, I'm not going to say comparisons that are like, you know, piece
02:41by piece, but there are definitely a lot of similarities with this.
02:45It certainly has me concerned that we could be looking at a pretty significant severe
02:48weather, if not tornado event for us on Saturday.
02:51So busy next, say 48 hours for us here as we get set up here in the southeast for the
02:56next couple of days.
02:57All right, Tony.
02:58Yeah, we are concerned about hundreds of severe weather reports, wind, also tornadoes, dozens
03:03of tornadoes most likely with a setup like this, and the flooding too.
03:06We'll talk about this.
03:07So I'm going to break this down for Friday, and then Damian's going to take a look at
03:10Saturday and into Sunday.
03:12Ultimately, this is all coming from the interior west, a big dip in the jet stream.
03:16We had an EF0 tornado with the LA Metro early this morning, late last night.
03:21Trees down into parts of central California.
03:23A lot of delays for travelers into Vegas right now, drenching rain into western parts of
03:27Arizona, heavy snow into the mountains.
03:29But this big trough digs east here, and this is a really dynamic system.
03:33Tremendous wind energy upstairs.
03:35We have winds flowing in different directions.
03:37It's going to lead to a diffluent flow aloft, that's what we talk about when the wind's
03:40kind of separating in different directions.
03:42That means that has to be replaced by something.
03:44It almost creates a vacuum upstairs, so winds converge down to the ground.
03:48That gets the storms going here, and as this storm system begins to really unravel, 3 p.m.
03:53Central tomorrow, we'll begin to see our first few storms break out.
03:56Some of these, even into Louisiana and Arkansas, could be rotating, and we'll have more thunderstorms
04:01to the north.
04:02That's the greatest number of thunderstorms.
04:04Some of them will be really intense here.
04:05You can see them rapidly racing east here, and the fact that they're not fully attached
04:10to a squall line will allow some of these to be full supercell thunderstorms, and there
04:15we are through Friday, 9 p.m. Central time, so we're going to have a lot to track on radar
04:18tomorrow evening.
04:19This race is north, and then we're going to see the southern part of this front stall,
04:25and a second disturbance is going to kind of scare things up once again on Saturday.
04:28So we're looking at a high risk.
04:30That's 3 out of 4 on the AccuWeather Threat Level Index here for Friday.
04:35Mid to late afternoon, storms fire off, continuing through the night from southeast Iowa, eastern
04:39Missouri, western Illinois, and northern parts of Arkansas.
04:42We have our greatest risk for widespread, destructive, damaging winds, but also we're
04:46looking at flash flooding, large hail, and the obvious concern of tornadoes.
04:50Now if we were to really get a little more specific with the tornado risk, we're looking
04:54at areas from St. Louis southward into eastern Arkansas and northwest Mississippi.
04:59There will be fewer storms to the south, but those that do form are going to be violently
05:02rotating.
05:03Those to the north will be a mix of straight line wind producers and also tornadic storms,
05:08and many, many storms will be on the map to the north.
05:10So damaging winds are a most significant motivator for the Friday high risk, but also a medium
05:15to borderline high risk of tornadoes and large hail as well.
05:19If we were to give you a little more specifics on the timing, here we go into the area near
05:23Memphis, Tennessee, and again we're looking at some medium risks here for damaging wind,
05:30flooding, hail, and tornadoes, the whole circuit there.
05:34And then as we travel farther north into the St. Louis metro, here we're looking at a high
05:38risk of damaging wind, a high risk of tornadoes, and also hail, and this is going to be rolling
05:43in later in the day.
05:44You can see the timing, 7, 8, 9 p.m. through to the evening with some major problems there
05:49into the area of St. Louis.
05:51So two separate areas with power outage risk.
05:54Some of this will be totally dry and void of precipitation into the southern plains.
05:58That's just straight up because of the wind, but the damaging wind producing thunderstorms
06:01into St. Louis will be a big cause for concern there.
06:04This storm's already making itself known there into areas like the southwest, Damien, with
06:07some major delays, but we have big concerns.