Don't panic, for the end is nigh. New York City is right on the edge of a severe thunderstorm watch, and strong storms are moving east as they bubble up across New York and Pennsylvania. Here's what you can expect through the afternoon and evening.
May is finally acting like May across much of the country today. The odds of seeing large hail and damaging winds are 30x higher than normal in both the Mile High City and the Nation's Capital this afternoon, respectively. Some tornadoes are also possible, especially around Denver, but the risk is starting to drop a bit around D.C.
The satellite and radar images coming out of Tuesday's severe weather is approaching "map porn" caliber for weather geeks. The top of this post features a high-resolution satellite image of the central United States, showing severe thunderstorms over Iowa and Illinois, as well as a stubborn and intense supercell near Denver, Colorado.
Parts of the Midwest from Des Moines to the Ohio River are under the gun for severe weather today. While a large chunk of real estate is at risk, it looks like the worst weather — including tornadoes and hail larger than golf balls — seem to favor Chicago this afternoon.
A moderate risk for severe weather exists across parts of the Plains and Midwest today, extending through many of the population centers in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. All modes of severe weather are possible, including strong tornadoes, very large hail, and wind gusts in excess of 80 MPH.
Severe thunderstorms in parts of Texas and Oklahoma this weekend created another opportunity for some great shots by some lucky storm chasers. The supercells were mostly prolific hail producers, whiting out the ground in El Paso, Texas and producing stones up to the size of baseballs in Childress, Texas, located near the extreme southwestern corner of Oklahoma.
A developing low pressure system over southern Kansas is serving as the catalyst for a severe weather outbreak across the central Plains states today, including the risk for very large hail up to the size of tennis balls, damaging winds of 70 MPH, and possibly a few tornadoes.
Heavy rain across much of the country and the potential for a tornado outbreak in parts of the south will make for a crappy start to next week, followed shortly thereafter by a blast of cold air that could be the final gasp of the winter that won't die.
The media can't survive without a scare term to make you tune in. This winter saw the not-at-all-new-but-scary-sounding polar vortex. Sandy wasn't really a "superstorm" but hey, let's just call it one anyway. And every summer for the last few years, we've seen the derecho. It sounds new and terrifying, but what is it?
The United States saw 752 severe weather warnings issued across 25 states between last Saturday and yesterday evening. On the map above, blue boxes indicate a severe thunderstorm warning, red indicates a tornado warning, green indicates a flash flood warning, and teal indicates a special marine warning.
Among the storms involved in today's modest severe weather outbreak across the south was one supercell in south-central Arkansas that towered to almost 53,000 feet and produced hail 1.75" to 2.00" in diameter. The storm had a great presentation on weather radar and made it easy to see why it was able to produce such large hail.
The Storm Prediction Center (SPC), the National Weather Service agency responsible for severe weather predictions, plans to unveil several new categories to its severe weather forecasts this spring. These forecasts — called "convective outlooks" — will see "marginal" and "enhanced" added to the four existing categories of severe weather risk.
A strong area of low pressure developing over the Ohio Valley tonight doesn't only spell tribble for the winter fatigued from Chicago to Maine expecting as much as two feet of snow, but a powerful cold front encroaching on a warm, moist airmass over the Mid-Atlantic will help touch off a nasty line of thunderstorms that could be severe, including the potential for a weak tornado or two.
