“It’s dry. Very dry. Oh, God, it’s too dry. It’s raining! Rain! More rain? Ahh, tornado! Whew, back to rain. Too much rain! Make it stop! Ah, sun.” Thus continues the dramatic play that’s been the weather over the central United States for the past few months, with many more inches of rain on the way over the next seven days.
Fresh off of Wednesday’s calamity in Oklahoma City involving supercells and tigers, the region is preparing for another two full days under the threat of a significant, multi-day tornado outbreak. Some of the tornadoes that form on Friday and Saturday could be intense and long-lived, accompanied by hail larger than baseballs and destructive wind gusts.
If it's daytime in mid-April, it means that there's a risk for severe weather somewhere on the Plains. Texas will be ground zero for the storms for the next few days—today, cities like San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Amarillo could all see hail larger than golf balls, damaging winds, and possibly a tornado or two. Insert your favorite "everything's bigger in Texas" joke here.
Things are going to get interesting in a hurry across the central part of the country this evening as severe thunderstorms rapidly develop in the moist, unstable air pumping in from the tropics. These dangerous thunderstorms even have the potential to produce a few tornadoes, some of which could be strong and stay on the ground for a while.
The Storm Prediction Center is forecasting a major severe weather outbreak in the Central Plains and Midwest today, which could include strong tornadoes, damaging winds, and large hail. There's some uncertainty in the forecast, but severe weather indices are off the charts and if the storms form, they could mean business.
A strengthening low pressure system in western South Dakota is the source of a major blizzard that's expected to ramp up over the northern Plains today and tomorrow, bringing with it the potential for up to two feet of snow, wind gusts of 60 MPH, and cause temperatures to plummet into the single digits with wind chills as low as 15 degrees below zero.
