AccuWeather's Jon Porter breaks down the forecast for severe storms that pose a risk to millions of people on the evening of May 21.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 The severe weather threat is four millionths across the plains in the Midwest.
00:03 Severe weather outbreak is possible through tonight into the overnight hours and we're
00:09 going to break down what all of this means with AccuWeather chief meteorologist John
00:13 Porter joining us now. And John, you've got to look at some of the latest here.
00:17 Dangerous setup here continues to evolve and this tornado outbreak is starting to intensify
00:27 just as AccuWeather meteorologists have accurately forecast for days in advance.
00:32 Notice all this clearing here across parts of central Iowa. This is setting up a lot of
00:40 instability and it's really going to be the fuel for these severe thunderstorms as they continue to
00:45 intensify and move to the east. This is a big concern as we move through the next couple of
00:50 hours. And of course they're working with a warm steamy air mass here. It sure is. Take a look at
00:57 the dew points here and anything in green has a dew point above 60. Very moist. This air is prime
01:04 for severe thunderstorm and tornado development and it's streaming northward from the Gulf of
01:10 Mexico in a sharp variation with dry air arriving from the west. And Melissa, right there at that
01:16 boundary is where we're going to have these intense thunderstorms. They've already been
01:20 lining up and John, what makes this threat unique is we don't necessarily know that we're going to
01:25 catch much of a break through the upcoming hours. So what has been the concern here at AccuWeather
01:30 that we've been focusing on? Right, we're going to see these individual thunderstorms and those
01:36 are the ones that are up on their own. That's going to have the greatest tornado risk early on.
01:41 And then see what's happening here on our future cast here. We have sort of an arcing line that's
01:47 going to develop by 7 p.m. central and that will be a significant damaging wind threat as those
01:53 thunderstorms congeal. And there still can be a risk for embedded tornadoes, some strong along
02:00 this line as it moves to the east toward Madison, toward Milwaukee in Wisconsin and eventually in
02:06 toward Chicago with gusty thunderstorms later this evening. And then all the way south into
02:11 portions of Arkansas, Oklahoma and far north Texas as well. So a big area at risk. Yeah,
02:18 lots to talk about here as we conclude all of those regions in this part of the country and
02:24 still talk about that risk for severe weather over the upcoming hours. John, you know better
02:29 than I even that at AccuWeather we have this scale and we use the high risk pretty limited.
02:36 Not often at all, only on the great days with a significant concern. That's why we're talking
02:42 about a tornado outbreak across parts of southern Wisconsin, much of Iowa, northern Missouri,
02:48 northwestern Illinois here that's going to amplify over the next couple of hours. So be very prepared
02:54 and if you have get warnings in these areas, be ready to move to safe shelter and that risk will
03:00 continue as well all the way down through portions of the southern plains where there'll be less
03:05 coverage of storms, but the ones that do develop will be intense. All right, thank you, John,
03:11 for that update. Chief Meteorologist John Porter there telling us some of the risks as we continue
03:17 not just through the next hour or two but into the overnight.