Severe thunderstorms will fire off early this week across the Plains and Midwest, bringing the potential for baseball-sized hail, damaging wind gusts, tornadoes and heavy downpours across America’s heartland.
April is typically the second-most-active month for severe weather, and this year is no exception as the month has already featured its share of damaging storms. Heading into the second half of the month, that active pattern is expected to continue.
For Monday, NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) has posted a Level 3 out of 5 risk of severe weather for nearly a half-million people across western Oklahoma and parts of northwestern Texas.
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“We’ve got rapidly moving winds aloft, which will lead to that wind shear, so we’ll have winds at the surface that are going to be coming out of the south-southeast,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Kendall Smith said. “Then they’ll be turning southwesterly aloft, and so we’ll have a little bit of that rotation in the atmosphere, as well as abundant moisture being pulled northward from the Gulf of Mexico.”
All the ingredients for a classic severe thunderstorm setup will mean the threat of large hail, damaging winds and possible tornadoes for an even greater part of the Midwest and Plains.
Some 10 million people are facing a Level 2 out of 5 risk on Monday, with the SPC highlighting severe thunderstorms likely in Oklahoma City and Tulsa in Oklahoma; Omaha in Nebraska and Wichita in Kansas.
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The FOX Forecast Center is tracking Monday evening into Monday night for the greatest severe weather potential when storms are likely to fire off along the dryline, where dry air and warm, moist air separate.
Baseball to softball-sized hail is possible on Monday in western Oklahoma, including the communities of Lawton, Enid, El Reno and Woodward.
The National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma, is forecasting maximum wind gusts between 60 and 80 mph for parts of western Oklahoma on Monday.
On Tuesday, severe thunderstorms will return with another Level 3 out of 5 risk, but this time farther north for areas including southern Iowa and northern Missouri.
The greatest threat area covers Des Moines and Ames in Iowa, as well as Columbia in Missouri and Quincy in Illinois.
Tuesday’s threat also comes later in the day with scattered severe thunderstorms likely into Tuesday night, though the most significant threat for hail and tornadoes over southern Iowa and northern Missouri is expected from Tuesday afternoon into the early evening.
While that region might face the greatest threat of damaging storms, the overall severe weather risk on Tuesday encompasses more than 52 million people from southern Minnesota and southern Wisconsin through Central and East Texas.
The FOX Forecast Center expects intense downpours with these storms through midweek, with 1-2 inches of rain possible in places like Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin. Isolated areas in northwestern Iowa could see up to 3 inches of rainfall.
This increase in moisture over a short period of time will create the ingredients for potential flooding in some areas.