Severe storm threat poses a risk for extreme winds in the Northern Plains

AccuWeather

Severe thunderstorms are expected to sweep through Minnesota and the Dakotas on the evening of Aug. 26, bringing damaging winds, large hail, and even the potential of tornadoes.

Transcript

00:00John, every severe weather setup is different.

00:02This one has some pretty aggressive teeth deep into the night.

00:06Right, and that's always a concern when you have severe weather lasting into the overnight

00:10hours.

00:11People are sometimes less aware of that, which is why we want people to download the free

00:15AccuWeather app.

00:16Turn on those push notifications.

00:18Looks like a long night of multiple rounds of severe weather across parts of Minnesota

00:23and also into the Dakotas as well.

00:25You can see two areas right now where those thunderstorms, those deep white clouds here

00:30on the visible satellite are organizing across the north central part of Minnesota right

00:34now.

00:35That's round number one.

00:36And then the second line of storms just about at the Wyoming-South Dakota border heading

00:41eastbound.

00:42And these are the two main areas of concern here with the multiple rounds into tonight.

00:47And John, we have some high octane fuel here.

00:49You know, we've been talking a lot about the heat, but the moisture content is about as

00:53high as it gets in some of these northern latitudes.

00:55Right, this is about as high octane as it gets when you have dew points in the middle

01:00and upper 70s.

01:02I saw a dew point a little while ago across southern Minnesota of 79 degrees.

01:06This is an extremely high level of moisture in the air.

01:09Of course, we have very mature corn crop, lots of moisture evaporating off those corn

01:14crops this time of the year.

01:16And that's a factor in how so much low-level moisture here is present.

01:20This is a lot of fuel for severe thunderstorms.

01:24And John, we are dealing with some storms that will be firing east here through the

01:27night.

01:28You mentioned the two clusters, one entering western South Dakota, another one already

01:31in its formative stages in parts of Minnesota.

01:34We have highlighted that area from just south of Aberdeen, north of Sioux Falls.

01:39High risk, that's three out of four on the AccuWeather Threat Level Index.

01:42We haven't used this category for the severe weather threshold for, I don't think we've

01:46done it for a few weeks here.

01:48No, this is, and we did this earlier today after AccuWeather had been warning for days

01:53ahead of other sources about the risks for severe weather in this part of the country.

01:57But that includes Minneapolis and the entire Minneapolis metro area back toward portions

02:02of South Dakota.

02:03The big problem with this is it's all of these threats, flash flooding, large hail, destructive

02:10winds and the tornado risk as well, which in this situation, the other issue with the

02:16concern here is that the damaging winds can be more widespread than just a certain portion

02:21of town.

02:22We could be dealing with a long track of damaging winds with wind gusts 65 to 75 miles per hour.

02:30That's enough to do damage and bring down trees and power lines and an AccuWeather local

02:34storm max of 105 miles per hour.

02:37That is rare for us to use.

02:39Just highlights just the high end potential of some of these winds and how damaging they

02:43may be.

02:45And John, sometimes for a little more context, I'm glad that we took this fool because sometimes

02:49the color of the graphic behind you there, that deep red gets lost on certain monitors

02:53there.

02:54You can clearly see the Twin Cities, eastern South Dakota, clearly in the red there.

02:57That's the high risk.

02:58John, the timing of this here, you can see these clusters of storms will press pause

03:02around two or three a.m.

03:03So tell us about what's going to go on after many go to sleep.

03:06Well, that's where there can be this additional line here that makes its way across, rapidly

03:11across South Dakota and toward portions of western Minnesota.

03:16Notice this is a 2.30 central time and then across the Minneapolis metro in the pre-dawn

03:22hours.

03:23So again, this is always a concern why it's important to have multiple ways of getting

03:26weather warnings.

03:27And then this trouble heads to the Great Lakes states here on Tuesday.

03:32So Chicago over toward Detroit, problems there as well.

03:35And awareness always decreases when people go to sleep, obviously.

03:39So we want to have multiple ways to get connected and stay connected even deep into the night.

03:44That is so important.

03:45And again, don't underestimate the power of your own voice and your people who live busy

03:50lives.

03:51If you have friends or family that live in this part of the country, give them a call.

03:54Send them a text message.

03:55Make sure they know about how serious a threat this can be overnight tonight with the severe

04:01weather.

04:02And of course, download the AccuWeather app, turn on push notifications.

04:06We'll send you those severe weather warnings that can be issued for your community.

04:09And of course, we have a great feature there, AccuWeather Premium Plus, that you can engage

04:13within the AccuWeather app.

04:15That is a service that complements and extends the benefit of government weather warnings

04:20when AccuWeather experts can provide extra advance notice and even greater accuracy.

04:25We do.

04:26So that's another resource that you can use in this type of a situation as well.

04:29And of course, we'll keep you updated here at the AccuWeather Network.

04:31All right.

04:32AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter.

04:33John, thanks again for all of that insight.

04:35It's going to be a stormy night here in the north central U.S.

04:38Indeed.

04:40All right, John.

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