Severe thunderstorms are expected to sweep through Minnesota and the Dakotas on the evening of Aug. 26, bringing damaging winds, large hail, and even the potential of tornadoes.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00John, every severe weather setup is different.
00:02This one has some pretty aggressive teeth deep into the night.
00:06Right, and that's always a concern when you have severe weather lasting into the overnight
00:10hours.
00:11People are sometimes less aware of that, which is why we want people to download the free
00:15AccuWeather app.
00:16Turn on those push notifications.
00:18Looks like a long night of multiple rounds of severe weather across parts of Minnesota
00:23and also into the Dakotas as well.
00:25You can see two areas right now where those thunderstorms, those deep white clouds here
00:30on the visible satellite are organizing across the north central part of Minnesota right
00:34now.
00:35That's round number one.
00:36And then the second line of storms just about at the Wyoming-South Dakota border heading
00:41eastbound.
00:42And these are the two main areas of concern here with the multiple rounds into tonight.
00:47And John, we have some high octane fuel here.
00:49You know, we've been talking a lot about the heat, but the moisture content is about as
00:53high as it gets in some of these northern latitudes.
00:55Right, this is about as high octane as it gets when you have dew points in the middle
01:00and upper 70s.
01:02I saw a dew point a little while ago across southern Minnesota of 79 degrees.
01:06This is an extremely high level of moisture in the air.
01:09Of course, we have very mature corn crop, lots of moisture evaporating off those corn
01:14crops this time of the year.
01:16And that's a factor in how so much low-level moisture here is present.
01:20This is a lot of fuel for severe thunderstorms.
01:24And John, we are dealing with some storms that will be firing east here through the
01:27night.
01:28You mentioned the two clusters, one entering western South Dakota, another one already
01:31in its formative stages in parts of Minnesota.
01:34We have highlighted that area from just south of Aberdeen, north of Sioux Falls.
01:39High risk, that's three out of four on the AccuWeather Threat Level Index.
01:42We haven't used this category for the severe weather threshold for, I don't think we've
01:46done it for a few weeks here.
01:48No, this is, and we did this earlier today after AccuWeather had been warning for days
01:53ahead of other sources about the risks for severe weather in this part of the country.
01:57But that includes Minneapolis and the entire Minneapolis metro area back toward portions
02:02of South Dakota.
02:03The big problem with this is it's all of these threats, flash flooding, large hail, destructive
02:10winds and the tornado risk as well, which in this situation, the other issue with the
02:16concern here is that the damaging winds can be more widespread than just a certain portion
02:21of town.
02:22We could be dealing with a long track of damaging winds with wind gusts 65 to 75 miles per hour.
02:30That's enough to do damage and bring down trees and power lines and an AccuWeather local
02:34storm max of 105 miles per hour.
02:37That is rare for us to use.
02:39Just highlights just the high end potential of some of these winds and how damaging they
02:43may be.
02:45And John, sometimes for a little more context, I'm glad that we took this fool because sometimes
02:49the color of the graphic behind you there, that deep red gets lost on certain monitors
02:53there.
02:54You can clearly see the Twin Cities, eastern South Dakota, clearly in the red there.
02:57That's the high risk.
02:58John, the timing of this here, you can see these clusters of storms will press pause
03:02around two or three a.m.
03:03So tell us about what's going to go on after many go to sleep.
03:06Well, that's where there can be this additional line here that makes its way across, rapidly
03:11across South Dakota and toward portions of western Minnesota.
03:16Notice this is a 2.30 central time and then across the Minneapolis metro in the pre-dawn
03:22hours.
03:23So again, this is always a concern why it's important to have multiple ways of getting
03:26weather warnings.
03:27And then this trouble heads to the Great Lakes states here on Tuesday.
03:32So Chicago over toward Detroit, problems there as well.
03:35And awareness always decreases when people go to sleep, obviously.
03:39So we want to have multiple ways to get connected and stay connected even deep into the night.
03:44That is so important.
03:45And again, don't underestimate the power of your own voice and your people who live busy
03:50lives.
03:51If you have friends or family that live in this part of the country, give them a call.
03:54Send them a text message.
03:55Make sure they know about how serious a threat this can be overnight tonight with the severe
04:01weather.
04:02And of course, download the AccuWeather app, turn on push notifications.
04:06We'll send you those severe weather warnings that can be issued for your community.
04:09And of course, we have a great feature there, AccuWeather Premium Plus, that you can engage
04:13within the AccuWeather app.
04:15That is a service that complements and extends the benefit of government weather warnings
04:20when AccuWeather experts can provide extra advance notice and even greater accuracy.
04:25We do.
04:26So that's another resource that you can use in this type of a situation as well.
04:29And of course, we'll keep you updated here at the AccuWeather Network.
04:31All right.
04:32AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter.
04:33John, thanks again for all of that insight.
04:35It's going to be a stormy night here in the north central U.S.
04:38Indeed.
04:40All right, John.