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As of April 21, storm surveys have confirmed at least 71 tornadoes from last week's severe weather outbreak in the Midwest. AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno says more storms are on the way this Thursday.
Transcript
00:00And welcome back to the feed. Severe weather will be returning to the plains on Thursday after a few days
00:06hiatus after what was the biggest tornado outbreak of the season. I'll show you the numbers here in a little
00:12bit. I want to show you this though. This is what we're looking at as far as the severe weather
00:16is concerned for Thursday, Thursday night, a pretty elongated area from Winnipeg all the way down the middle in Odessa.
00:25And then we've included this, the moderate risk.
00:28I think this is mostly going to be for large hail and damaging winds. I do believe there is a
00:34tornado threat. I do not believe it's going to be anywhere near the amount of tornadoes that we saw Friday,
00:39Friday night. But I do think there's a tornado threat and I'll show you why here in a second. I
00:43do want to show you, Jeff Cornish has been crunching the numbers here for the tornado outbreak that we did
00:49see on, let's see here, I want to get rid of that, that we did see on Friday, Friday night.
00:57I mean, this is a lot of tornadoes. Right now confirmed 71, 71. The majority of them was across Illinois
01:05with some damage. There was two EF2s and six, two EF3s, two EF2s and 43.
01:13Well, if you count the EF1 and EF0, there was about 60 of them. So a lot of tornadoes with
01:21this. A lot of tornadoes with this. So yeah, what an outbreak we had. All right, let me show you
01:28the storm that we're tracking. It's this upper low. Anytime you have upper lows in the California this time of
01:34the year, two days later, you get severe weather in the plains.
01:37That's just the way it works. And you can see it spinning here. Boy, thunderstorm, soaking rain we've already seen
01:44in Central California. About one to three feet of snow in the Sierra up above 7,000 feet, much needed.
01:50Now, this is going to be coming out into the intermountain west tomorrow. And as a result, there's going to
01:59be severe weather with this as early as Wednesday night. Let me show you the area. It's not a big
02:07area, certainly, but nonetheless, some severe weather across the high plains.
02:11And in this part of the country, there's always two impacts. Thunderstorms here are never run of the mill this
02:16time of the year. They always have wind and hail. I think the tornado threat is pretty low. However, I
02:21start to get worried on Thursday.
02:24Let me show you why. I want to show you the high temperatures across the country on Thursday. Here you
02:33go. I mean, you've got the 70 line all the way up to Minneapolis. Lots of 70s, even some 80s
02:39showing up here.
02:40So you're pretty much about 10 degrees above historical averages in most locations here across the Midwest. So it's really
02:48a taste of May.
02:49All right. Let me show you some of the modeling here that we're looking at. First, let me show you
02:54the upper levels as we go through Wednesday and Thursday. So here's the upper low, intermountain west. You can see
03:00it on Wednesday.
03:01I'm going to show you Thursday morning. Here it comes. Right now, it's what I call positively tilted. See, it's
03:08tilted from northeast to southwest. You see that? So that's a positive tilt.
03:13What that tells you is most of the energy is on the western side of the trough. Okay. Let's go
03:19forward as we go in the Thursday afternoon. Here we go. Right here, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.
03:26You can see the trough go slightly. Notice the tilt now. Instead of like this, positive, it's now like this,
03:34negative.
03:35And that's because of this piece of energy coming across southeastern Colorado. That's causing a negative tilt, which now you
03:42have all of the energy on the warm side of the trough, right, where it's warm and it's humid.
03:48Let me show you the—watch how the low-level jet—well, let me show you the warmth. I showed you the
03:53warmth. Look at the humidity. Look at that green. This is your 60-degree dew point temperature.
03:58Watch it go up. 60 degrees, the threshold that we look at for severe weather just by itself. There it
04:05is. That's in the morning. Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening, you're even getting a little spoke of 65-degree dew point
04:13air, but the 60 goes all the way up.
04:16Look how far north it goes. That's why you've got enough juice with the warmth and low-level dew point
04:22temperature, 60 or greater, for severe weather, way up into the Dakotas—I should say in the Minnesota.
04:28In the southern Manitoba. But the best energy is going to be down in here where we saw the upper
04:36-level feature here. One of the things I've really learned that is a good indication of where the severe weather
04:42is going to be is the low-level jet. Winds are around 5,000 feet. Not only where they're strongest,
04:47but where they increase. Thursday morning, watch this. Thursday afternoon. All right. We're looking at about 30 knots, so you
04:54have a belt of wind in here, but watch how it increases.
04:57Watch how this increases. 2 o'clock Thursday, 8, and then watch this. Boom. Right here. Now, you have enough
05:07wind for severe weather up here, but where do you see the biggest increase? It's in here. Southeastern Kansas, southeastern
05:16Missouri. Because you go from here. Let's go. 2 o'clock Thursday, 2 a.m. Friday. Watch this. Boom.
05:24Boom. That's a big increase.
05:26That's from 30 knots to what looks like almost 60, 65 knots of wind in here. Right in here. Where
05:35you have the dew point temperatures in the 60s, you have plenty of warmth.
05:42And when you look at the surface pressure here. Let me go back. You've got a little area of low
05:48pressure right in here. Well, let me go back. Next one. This is it. Watch this. Thursday, right in here.
05:55Boom. Right there. See that? You've got a little area of low pressure that goes in here.
06:00Which tells me, when you see that, you have enough twisting and turning directional shear for some tornadoes. Small area.
06:09While I can't roll out tornadoes in the northern part, I think your tornado threat's down in here.
06:15In that moderate risk. But I really think it's in here. So as a result, I don't think we're looking
06:22at lots of tornadoes. I think we're looking at lots of wind and hail. Right now, if you have to
06:26ask me, how many tornadoes do you think we're going to get?
06:29I think it's under 12. I think it's like 5 to 10. But it's likely going to be in southeastern
06:37Kansas, southwestern Missouri. Large hail and damaging wind are the biggest threats. And much of the severe weather is probably
06:44going to be Thursday night. Thursday evening into Thursday night. And that's the feed.
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