Tornado-warned storms slammed parts of the Midwest on July 31, and the risks are expected to continue as August begins.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00All right, we're going to take you now to the top story here regarding severe weather in the Midwest and the Ohio Valley too.
00:05Here we have Lexington, Fayette County in Kentucky with gusty storms rolling through within the past hour or two.
00:11Yikes, don't want to be having to run out to the car in that weather, Jeff.
00:15Unfortunately, tracking some very heavy rain embedded within some of these thunderstorms, but that's not all, Jeff.
00:22Absolutely. We are dealing with a couple of tornado threats.
00:24Now we have a confirmed tornado on the east side of Omaha, Nebraska.
00:28Moving into more of Pottawatomie County in Iowa, and there's also a separate thunderstorm and tornado warning on the north side as well.
00:37So as we grab the velocity couplets here, we can show you that we're dealing with, again, outbound wind versus some inbound wind.
00:45Looks like the greatest risk is going to be here into an area potentially on the north side of this one warning.
00:55Again, some strong outbound signatures and inbound signatures.
00:58This is just on the east side of the Missouri River into Pottawatomie County near Gilead and Chautauqua in Iowa.
01:06That's where we have a confirmed tornado warning here in a big chunk of Pottawatomie County in Iowa.
01:12That tornado warning runs until 6.30 p.m. Also to the north, not far from the radar site here.
01:18We're only looking about 20 miles or so east to east northeast of the radar site.
01:22There's also a tornado risk as the area around Missouri Valley, Iowa is facing a tornado threat.
01:29And here you can see that we're dealing with an ongoing risk for a tornado.
01:34And I think I'm competing with the mouse there.
01:37But other areas here into Pottawatomie County of Iowa and southwestern Harrison County of Iowa under a tornado warning as well.
01:44And then also into southeastern parts of Washington County, Nebraska, still under a tornado warning here as well.
01:49So the red is outbound and the green is inbound.
01:52And we have a couple of areas where there is slightly more focused rotation.
01:56And we need to keep an eye out for all of this.
01:58So again, as we switch over to the reflectivity, very heavy rain.
02:02We've also had some intense thunderstorms to the south into parts of northern Kansas.
02:06And the storm reports have been pretty numerous in these areas as we kind of press pause on things and give you a look at some of the recent reports.
02:14Waterloo, Nebraska, in the immediate Omaha Metro, roof off of a building.
02:19Roof blown off of a commercial building there at 542.
02:22So about 21 minutes ago, roof blown off of a building in Douglas County.
02:28That's home to Omaha, specifically in the city of Waterloo, just barely to the west northwest of downtown Omaha in the western part of the county.
02:37Also in Lincoln, we mentioned the 70 mile per hour winds.
02:40And there's potential for up to 80 mile per hour winds now with that storm.
02:44And otherwise, we've seen some very large hail in parts of northern Kansas, too.
02:49So again, a lot of different concerns.
02:51Here's that four inch hail report, four inch diameter hail in Prairie View in Kansas.
02:57So lots of moving parts out there.
02:59And we're dealing with some nasty storms.
03:02So again, two tornado warnings have been in effect here.
03:05One, a confirmed tornado warning into parts of Pottawatomie County, west central parts of the county.
03:10And then again, a radar indicated tornado warning for another area, including and again,
03:16we're actually looking at the Omaha radar site here in Valley, Nebraska, up into southeastern Washington County,
03:21Pottawatomie County and Harrison County with that second tornado warning.
03:26Overall, as we take a look at the big picture farther to the north, we've had some nasty storms up into Minneapolis.
03:31And there is some severe weather off to the west.
03:33We've had some strong thunderstorms, also severe at times near Alexandria, Minnesota.
03:38And then the final stop here is going to take us all the way down into southeast Kentucky.
03:42We showed you footage from Lexington.
03:43That was earlier.
03:44Now we're dealing with a severe thunderstorm warning into McCreary County, western Whitley County, southern Pulaski, Wayne County,
03:50and then south of the state line into northern Scott County of Tennessee.
03:54That's all severe.
03:56And we have also some strong storms roaming through the D.C. metro, the western shore of the Chesapeake, and also some flash flooding.
04:02We don't want to neglect the flash flooding through parts of the New England states and parts of Vermont and in New Hampshire, too.
04:09So we do have parts of four, now five, different severe thunderstorm watches.
04:13A new severe thunderstorm watch was just issued for a chunk of central Kansas, including Topeka.
04:19And this will likely run through after 10 p.m.
04:21So we're going to update that graphic in just a bit.
04:23But areas like Topeka and Lawrence, Kansas, and all the way into west central Kansas,
04:27along Interstate 70's journey through the Sunflower State, were under a severe thunderstorm watch just added to the mix.
04:35So, Bree, lots going on out there.
04:37And tomorrow, even beyond the overnight storms that we're facing tonight, we've got more coming into a similar area.
04:42Yeah, you described it perfectly earlier.
04:44It's like whack-a-mole.
04:46You're just watching these storms pop off.
04:48And, you know, some of these storms really do mean business.
04:51It can pack quite the punch.
04:53And, unfortunately, we're still tracking a conducive or at least atmospheric variable tomorrow that line up very similar to these past few days that could help spark a few of these thunderstorms.
05:05Let's take you out to Thursday, Thursday night.
05:07Here's the list of what we're concerned about.
05:09Now, when it comes to wind and flooding, we're a little bit more concerned about more damaging or more widespread storms causing these storm reports.
05:18But as we head a little bit further down the list, hail and tornadoes are at a low, but that's not a non-zero chance.
05:25We could still see a few isolated spin-ups, very similar to what we're experiencing now and today.
05:30So, as we head into tomorrow, that's something that we definitely have to be weather-aware about, as well as some hail, even some larger hail, mid-to-larger size hail, possible as we head into tomorrow afternoon, tomorrow evening.
05:43Active local storm mags as high as 80 miles per hour.
05:46We're tracking anywhere across from southern Wisconsin, down through western Pennsylvania, through the mid-Tennessee Valley, up through the Ohio Valley.
05:55And, well, we're still tracking a lot of those same zones as we head into Friday, too.
05:59Southwestern PA down through the Virginias, West Virginia, Virginia, Richmond, Charleston, over through Knoxville, Huntsville.
06:07We could see some flooding downpours as these storms really are trying to drop some hefty amounts of rain at times.
06:14The atmosphere is very juiced up.
06:16Those dew points we've been showing you are running pretty high.
06:19Travel disruptions, of course, we can anticipate those as we do head into the start of the weekend.
06:24Continuing to track those storms, this low pushing ever so slowly east.
06:30We're still tracking that threat for severe weather as we do head into the day on Saturday.
06:35This time, though, we're keeping an eye out on the coast.
06:40Closer towards that I-95 corridor from Philly, the Delmarva, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Raleigh, even Charlotte could see some heavier downpours.