AccuWeather's Ariella Scalese and Kristina Shalhoup take a look at the top story for Aug. 3
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Our top story today is that potential for life-threatening flash flooding as well as
00:04 severe weather occurring across Missouri and Illinois this morning.
00:08 A stalled storm system has been dumping heavy rain and thunderstorms around that region
00:12 for the past few days.
00:13 And right now, more than 25,000 people are without power this morning in Missouri because
00:17 of the strong winds and those thunderstorms.
00:20 The threat of severe weather and flash flooding are going to continue even through Saturday
00:24 for a wide swath of the central United States.
00:27 Accurate News Extreme Meteorologist Dr. Reid Timmer was tracking the storms on the ground
00:31 last night and filed this report.
00:33 You can see strobe lightning off to the south of Jefferson City, Missouri where a flash
00:39 flood warning is in effect and a severe thunderstorm warning.
00:42 There are also tornado warnings in the area as well.
00:46 But incredible strobe lightning, very prolific rainfall rates happening down there.
00:50 You can see the occasional cloud to ground lightning and a continuous roar of thunder
00:54 as a fire hose of convection is setting up into central and southeastern Missouri just
01:00 to the southwest of St. Louis.
01:02 And it looks like it's going to be very close to Jefferson City for the time being.
01:06 It has sagged just to the south of the city, but it does look like it's building back to
01:10 the north as the low-level jet is starting to intensify.
01:13 And this first storm definitely tried to produce a tornado.
01:16 It had some pretty strong low-level rotation on it and it had a severe thunderstorm warning.
01:21 It continues to move off to the southeast and might actually produce a tornado off in
01:25 the rural areas to the southeast of Jefferson City.
01:28 Eventually this band of very heavy rain producing storms are going to settle down toward the
01:33 I-44 area, but it looks like it's also back building as the low-level jet continues to
01:38 increase.
01:39 Rainfall rates exceeding three inches per hour in the core of that convective band and
01:45 that's why the flash flood warnings have already been issued from west to east.
01:49 And there's a high risk by the Weather Prediction Center that's only reserved for those most
01:54 dangerous flash flooding events.
01:57 And it looks like life-threatening flash flooding is almost going to be a certainty here in
02:01 central Missouri.
02:03 Definitely heed those evacuation orders if they are issued by local officials.
02:07 Stay safe and turn around.
02:09 Don't drown.
02:10 Incredible information this morning from Dr. Reid Timmer.
02:13 Thanks, Reid.
02:14 All right, folks, let's take you out to Nashville here, looking around the downtown loop.
02:18 And boy, oh boy, is it going to be a busy day in Music City.
02:22 And it all begins with that heavy rain moving into the Mid-South, but it's really been plowing
02:28 right through the state of Missouri as well as southern Illinois.
02:31 On that note, we'll take you live to Radar.
02:33 I do want to show you first our lone flash flood warning here in East Tennessee, looking
02:37 just out of the Smokies into parts of Hancock County, Granger County and Claiborne County
02:43 as well, right around Tazewell and just to the west of Rogersville.
02:47 If you live in that area, make sure you're getting to higher ground as flash flooding
02:50 is happening at this moment.
02:52 More of the same, some widespread areas of flash flooding just as you're getting to the
02:56 Illinois state line right around Evansville here.
02:59 We have multiple flash flood warnings, one for Wayne County, Illinois, one for Marion
03:03 County and then into Gibson County, Indiana as well.
03:06 Now we're going to take a look a little further to the west, and it's just bad news bears
03:10 from here.
03:11 Let's turn off the lightning.
03:12 It's just hard to see Cape Girardeau underneath all that lightning.
03:16 Remember, the lightning is a show of power from Mother Nature just saying, "Hey, these
03:19 storms mean business."
03:21 Ballinger County, Missouri, you have a flash flood warning this morning as well as Phelps
03:24 County into Miller County and all the way up into Osage County as well.
03:28 Osage County waking up yesterday with flash flooding, so this is no surprise.
03:32 I also want to bring you in closer here to St. Clair and Sullivan just as you're getting
03:36 into Washington County, Missouri, Franklin County, Crawford County and Jefferson County.
03:41 We do have a severe thunderstorm warning in that area, so looking at some damaging gusty
03:46 winds and large hail.
03:48 Get to that safe space if that's where you live.
03:51 We are expecting more of this as we move through the morning.
03:53 You can see the flash flood watches and the flood watches as well that stretch across
03:58 Missouri into southern Indiana and Illinois into western Kentucky around cities like Paducah
04:03 and then back into the Tennessee Valley as well into Huntsville and to northern Alabama
04:09 as well as southern Tennessee, Lincoln, Franklin and more counties in Tennessee.
04:13 Looking at those flood watches as we wake up this morning.
04:15 You can see the reason why.
04:16 Not only is the rain still pouring, check out the video on your screen from yesterday,
04:21 but we had plenty of it and that's just one round.
04:24 So yesterday, places like Sullivan in central Missouri with more than three inches of rain,
04:29 Jefferson City with more than two, and then we add the rain today, it's just a bad situation
04:35 here.
04:36 We're going to see more rain continuing to come into the same places as we move through
04:38 the afternoon and then moving on South in through Tennessee and through central Alabama
04:44 and even into parts of Georgia as well.
04:45 It's going to be quite heavy.
04:47 The other thing I do want to mention is we have severe weather on tap today for parts
04:50 of the Mid-South Nashville, Memphis, Huntsville, Atlanta.
04:53 We are looking at some severe storms with those flooding downpours and damaging gusty
04:57 winds as we move through your Thursday and Thursday night.
05:00 So stay weather aware.
05:01 The threats continue tomorrow.
05:02 We just keep going with the rain.
05:04 I feel like we're on repeat from yesterday.
05:06 You know, we've just shifted the days here, but the stalled frontal boundary so stalled,
05:10 meaning not much change here in the pattern with more in the way of thunderstorms producing
05:14 the heavy rainfall.
05:16 Watching this again as we head into Friday, we're going to continue to watch these storms
05:19 just kind of die farther South.
05:21 So from southern parts of Illinois into central Tennessee, and then it looks like even as
05:25 we head into Friday evening again, St. Louis, you're going to get hit with another round
05:29 of heavy rainfall, strong storms that moves into western Kentucky and eventually we'll
05:33 see more in the way of that moisture again for Saturday.
05:36 No big pattern change here, at least as we start the weekend.
05:38 So that flooding risk continues through Saturday morning and those locally damaging wind gusts,
05:43 St. Louis over to Knoxville, all included in this as we head into the rest of our week
05:48 into the weekend.
05:49 Still looking at those same amounts there.
05:51 Spots like St. Louis into Missouri, into parts of Knoxville, we were talking about
05:56 four to eight inches of rainfall.
05:59 So flash flooding a main concern, Accuther local storm max all the way up to 12 inches
06:03 of rain.