AccuWeather's Damien Lodes was forecasting live on the evening of March 19 as tornado-warned storms barreled across Illinois.
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00:00So here's the overall view of what we are going to be tracking for you here as we head into this evening.
00:04We have that center of circulation working its way across northern parts of Missouri.
00:08Now on the front side of that we are tracking this line of severe thunderstorms here
00:12working its way across parts of primarily Illinois, eventually working its way into Indiana.
00:18But we're also going to be watching the Mississippi River here as we head into this evening for some more thunderstorms.
00:22And then Anna's going to update you here on just this broad area of heavy snowfall ongoing with those blizzard conditions.
00:28But I'll go ahead and focus first here on pretty much the state of Illinois
00:31for that overall threat of severe weather that we're going to be watching here as we head into this evening.
00:36I'm going to switch the radar side over for you so you can get a clearer picture of what we are tracking.
00:40So one thing I want to point out, I'll freeze frame the very last radar image here for you.
00:44So what we are watching out for here are, you can see these warning areas primarily.
00:49So these yellow boxes, those are severe thunderstorm warnings.
00:52Those are thunderstorms that are capable of producing about one inch,
00:55which is pretty much quarter size hail, and also 50, 60 mile an hour straight line wind gusts.
01:00So those are what those boxes mean.
01:03Now, that purple box right there, it used to be a red box, but now it is a purple box.
01:08A purple box right there making its way towards Pontiac, Illinois.
01:12We'll go ahead and zoom in a little bit so you can get a closer look at this storm.
01:16That is what we call a confirmed tornado warning.
01:19That means that we have a trained storm spotter or storm chaser from the ground
01:23that actually had eyes on a confirmed tornado.
01:26So we'll see when this goes until, this goes until 45, so about another 10, 12 minutes.
01:30So it does look like that this, the primary rotation area of the storm is now outside of that box,
01:37that polygon is what we call it.
01:38So we'll see if this tornado warning is going to be extended here as we head throughout the next couple of minutes.
01:43But overall, let's go and switch over to show you the velocity signature and go ahead and track that in real time.
01:48And you can see that over the past couple of radar scans,
01:51the overall view here, I'll go and freeze frame it for you.
01:54The center of circulation for that rotation is going to be just south of Pontiac on I-55.
01:58And overall, it's going to be, it looks like the rotation signature has come down some as far as the intensity.
02:05So we'll see if they're allowed, Anna, to, they're going to extend this tornado warning here as we head into this evening.
02:10But in the meantime, I've been talking about the severe weather,
02:13and you're talking about some pretty good snowfall chances.
02:15Yeah, there's kind of two sides to this storm,
02:17both having major impacts.