Forecasters tracking a multiday threat for severe storms across the central US

AccuWeather

From Oct. 16-19, severe storms are possible across a large swath of the U.S., including chances for tornadoes and damaging hail. AccuWeather's Damien Lodes has the details.

Transcript

00:00Welcome to the forecast feed. This is where we give you a behind the scenes look at where the

00:07forecast comes from and more specifically our thinking and what goes into our forecast product.

00:12So the first thing I'm going to show you here is going to be and what I'm going to be tracking

00:16will be an elevated risk of severe weather here as we head throughout pretty much every single day

00:20as we head throughout not only two but also through the weekend. So the first thing I want

00:26to point out for you here is as we look at our tornado occurrence by day from since 1950 through

00:312020 a couple things stand out. Now normally you would anticipate that most of the severe weather

00:37obviously happens in the springtime but also want to point out that we do see a pretty good number

00:40of severe weather chances in tornadoes here between September, October, and November and that is going

00:46to be the case here as we head throughout the next couple of days because as we head into Thursday

00:50we're going to be watching out for an elevated risk of severe weather here from the high plains of the

00:55Texas Panhandle all the way through South Dakota. You can see all those cities right there with large

00:59hail, damaging winds, and flash flooding being possible in the forecast. Heading into Friday that

01:04risk of severe weather is going to slowly shift its way off to the east so as that happens we're going

01:09to be watching out for areas Wichita Falls, Oklahoma City, the I-44 corridor, even I-35 from Wichita,

01:15Kansas City, up through Des Moines. We'll be watching out for that risk of severe weather but it does look

01:20like the highest potential for severe weather in the forecast is actually going to be on Saturday.

01:25You can see on Saturday pretty much centered right around Little Rock, Arkansas there along I-40.

01:30That's where we're going to see an elevated risk of not only large hail and damaging winds but Saturday

01:34is going to be when we see the highest potential of tornadoes in the forecast. So this is what we're

01:39going to be tracking here as we go forward and then even after that heading into Sunday there's even

01:43going to be a threat of severe weather there across parts of the southeast. So you can slowly see that

01:49progression of the storm starting off to the west and then slowly shifting the way off to the east and

01:53that's going to be the case here as we go forward. So one of the things I mainly want to show you is

01:57what we're looking at for here as meteorologists is the first thing we look at we kind of do a

02:02top-down approach which means we start off higher in the atmosphere and then we slowly work our way

02:07down to the surface levels. So what you're looking at right here is pretty much the energy available

02:11at about four to five miles up in the sky and as we head throughout the next couple of days

02:16those colors that you see really bright on the map that's where we have a lot of energy in the

02:21upper levels or the mid levels I should say of the atmosphere just a couple of miles above the

02:26ground and you can see as we head into Saturday see that big ball there that works its way across

02:30Texas that is what's going to lead to that elevated risk of severe weather. So that's the

02:36the upper levels of the atmosphere as we go closer to the surface you can see that what we're looking at

02:42right now is the pretty much the moisture in the low levels of the atmosphere. So in this color

02:47or in this map whenever you start to see blue on the map especially right here as we head into

02:51Saturday morning into Saturday afternoon there's definitely going to be a lot and enough moisture

02:56in the atmosphere to support severe weather development and storms to pretty much explode

03:02whenever they develop. So what you're looking at right now is pretty much the amount of energy

03:07available in the atmosphere to produce those severe thunderstorms. So anytime you start to see

03:12colors on this map is whenever there will be a risk of severe weather. So as we head throughout

03:16Saturday Saturday afternoon you can see eastern Oklahoma into western parts of Arkansas is where

03:21we really see that risk of severe weather starting to jump up and what you're looking at right here is

03:25what we call our supercell composite parameter. This is basically the weather model's interpretation of

03:33all the ingredients there to produce supercell thunderstorms and as you look at right here

03:37as we head throughout that timeline across the Red River from Oklahoma and Texas there's going to be an

03:42elevated number of supercell thunderstorms possible in the forecast and this also means that whenever

03:47we look at the tornado potential as we head throughout Saturday right along the I-35 corridor south of

03:53Oklahoma right around it looks like Ada Oklahoma we could be watching out for an elevated risk of not only

03:58severe weather but tornadoes as well.

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