AccuWeather's Jon Porter warns of a triple threat facing the central U.S., which include fire danger in the South, blizzards in the North and damaging winds and tornadoes in the heart of the nation.
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00:00John, it was last week that our long-range team first alerted us that we were going to
00:05have a very busy end of the week.
00:08I want to first talk about Friday.
00:11And what we're going to see is what we're calling the triple threat, just a lot of extreme
00:17weather as we go through tomorrow.
00:19And you know what, John, certainly the severe weather is going to highlight our coverage.
00:23But what's going to happen in West Texas and the Southwest Plains tomorrow is as bad as
00:29it gets.
00:30It is.
00:31I was just talking with AccuWeather long-range expert and crystal ball Joe Lumberg here just
00:35a moment ago and he said that he thought this was going to be a historic event in terms
00:40of the fire risk and the wind across the Southern Plains.
00:44So especially West Texas and of course a major severe weather outbreak over the coming days
00:49here each year, each day with different risks and a blizzard across the far Northern Plains
00:54as well.
00:55So we're going to see three dangerous, life-threatening situations as we head through Friday and into
00:59the weekend.
01:00And whenever you have a storm that's producing this much, you know you're going to have the
01:04wind.
01:05Just take a look at the strength and the widespread nature of the wind tomorrow.
01:11From the Canadian border all the way down to the Rio Grande, we're talking about wind
01:15gusts of 40 to 50 miles per hour, 60 to 70 across the Southern Plains.
01:20This is going to kick up a lot of dust and burning in addition to the power outages,
01:24the wildfire risk.
01:26We're expecting that some of that dust can be lofted and even head all the way up into
01:31parts of Missouri and even toward Chicago as well, creating haze in the sky and perhaps
01:36some air quality concerns across other parts of the central U.S.
01:40You know, you and I were talking about this.
01:42I have a theory and you and I talked about this theory that whenever you get winds that
01:48are this strong, whether it's in Southern California or whether it's in the Plains,
01:53the one thing you can count on, unfortunately, and I really hope I'm wrong about this, is
01:57fire.
01:58I have no doubt tomorrow we're going to be dealing with large and rapidly expanding fires
02:04because of the wind and the fire danger being so high.
02:08That's the point is that any flame that gets going is going to can result in a fire spreading
02:13very fast because of these very gusty winds and the extremely dry vegetation in these
02:18areas, drought conditions in many parts of West Texas.
02:22This is a very serious situation here as we head through the day tomorrow.
02:25So be aware of any fire warnings that are issued and evacuation notices.
02:30You're going to want to move quickly on those, not only just across West Texas, but up toward
02:34parts of Oklahoma City, parts of Oklahoma and up into Kansas as well.
02:38A serious wildfire concern.
02:40All right.
02:41Let's look at the energy, John, that's going to be prompting all of this extreme weather
02:46as we go through tomorrow here.
02:48And the one thing I'm going to do, I'm going to stop this as we get into it.
02:53Look at the spin in Kansas as we get into Friday and you and I were talking about this.
02:59When it comes to severe weather, the atmosphere never holds back in intentions.
03:04It shows you exactly right where the worst of the severe weather is going to be, John.
03:08It's like an arrow pointing.
03:10You can see the wind flow around this jet stream disturbance.
03:13It's pointing right at this corridor.
03:15And that's where we're expecting the most severe weather here tomorrow, the widespread
03:19risk for damaging winds and yes, some tornadoes, large hail as well.
03:23So the atmosphere is telling us this is our experience here, decades of experience of
03:28our team that really helps us to identify that's the biggest risk area pointing exactly
03:33at where the upper air pattern shows us.
03:35Our experience is one part of the equation of the AccuWeather Advantage.
03:39Now let's take a look at the tools.
03:40This is one of our favorite tools.
03:43It's called the low level jet.
03:44It's the wind at around 5,000 feet.
03:46And remember, when you're talking about energy, you're talking about wind.
03:50And this low level jet, John, is as widespread and as strong as I've seen it.
03:56I'm going to stop this right now at five o'clock.
03:58Watch this.
03:59Look at that gray area where we're looking at wind gusts over 70 miles per hour.
04:05Watch it expand through the night.
04:07That's the concern.
04:08It expands through the night and really amplifies as that whole system, that upper level area
04:13of low pressure intensifies in the plains.
04:16And when the winds are screaming this much, over 100 miles per hour, 120 miles per hour
04:21at 5,000 feet, that's a lot of wind energy that can be transported to the surface in
04:27some of these severe thunderstorms.
04:29That's why we're concerned about widespread damaging winds of perhaps 75 miles per hour
04:34in some places with AccuWeather local storm max of 100.
04:37And Bernie, this also results in a problem for increased tornado risk too.
04:41Yeah, we're going to get to that in a second.
04:43One more ingredient, John, and this was brought up by our severe weather expert, Guy Pearson,
04:48the diffluent flow aloft.
04:50Now that sounds complicated, but like most things in meteorology, it's actually a pretty
04:55simple explanation of what that is.
04:57Right.
04:58Watch the wind direction.
04:59The wind's flowing around this area of upper level low pressure, and it's spreading out
05:03and fanning out.
05:04And when that happens, that means there's going to be significant lift in the atmosphere.
05:09That's what produces these intense thunderstorms.
05:11So that kind of pattern is one that catches our eye very quickly for something that can
05:16produce intense thunderstorms.
05:18And then it also produces this directional wind shear.
05:22It does.
05:23And when you've got that wind changing speed and direction with height, look at near the
05:27ground coming into the southeast, south at 3,000 feet and southwest at 6,000, that creates
05:34a twisting motion in the atmosphere.
05:36And those intense thunderstorms can capitalize that and produce tornadoes.
05:41That's why we're so concerned about both the damaging wind risk and the tornado risk.
05:45We think there's going to be hundreds of reports of damaging winds, especially within that
05:51moderate and high risk area.
05:53The tornadoes, John, listen, there could be tornadoes anywhere in that area, but we're
05:57zoning in on one area.
05:59We have been consistent with this.
06:01Downstate Illinois, southeastern portions of Missouri, including the St. Louis area,
06:07down to Little Rock, Tupelo, and also over toward Memphis.
06:10This is the greatest risk for tornadoes.
06:13Again, they occur in other parts of that high risk area and moderate risk area, but this
06:17is where the risk is greatest.
06:19And Bernie, the big concern that we have about this is a lot of this is going to be happening
06:23after dark.
06:24Yeah.
06:25Great time to download the AccuWeather app, turn on push notifications, and let people
06:28you know who live in this area, let them know about this risk.
06:32You can help save lives doing that.
06:34And you know, coming up, Ari is going to be talking about, we're concerned about even
06:38a higher number of tornadoes possible as we head into Saturday.
06:43AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Portijohn, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather
06:46Early.