SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press
HEAVY WEATHER | WARNINGS IN 20 STATES
Forecasters said a seemingly unrelenting series of severe storms, likely complete with deadly tornadoes, will sweep across parts of the Midwest and southern United States over the next few weeks, particularly on Friday.
An unusual weather pattern has set in that sparked last week’s devastating tornado that struck Rolling Fork, Mississippi, and forecasters fear this Friday will be one of its worst days, with many more to come. The National Weather Service said 16.8 million people live in the highest-risk zone and more than 66 million people overall should be on alert as of Friday.
“It’s pretty damn clear someone’s going to pick it up on Friday,” said Victor Gensini, a northern Illinois professor of meteorology, tornado expert and tracker. “It’s just a matter of where and when exactly.”
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The Weather Service is warning a large portion of the country – including parts of Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, West Virginia, Georgia and Kansas — to watch for violent thunderstorms, tornadoes, and other damaging winds. Major cities in the areas at greatest risk include Memphis, St. Louis, Des Moines, and Little Rock.
Gensini fears Friday’s attack will be deadly.
The storms are expected to start Friday afternoon and drag overnight, which is particularly dangerous because people don’t see them coming and often don’t seek shelter, weather service Storm Prediction Center weather forecaster Matt Elliott said on Wednesday.
“The storms will move very quickly,” Elliott said. “So you won’t have much time to respond to alerts either. So now is the time to prepare.”
While all the ingredients for dangerous storms are there, it’s possible they don’t combine precisely enough to represent the threat meteorologists are warning of, Elliott and others said.
Another series of severe storms, driven by a “fire hose” of unstable waves in the atmosphere streaming from the frigid west and combining with humid air from the east, could hit next Tuesday and the next few days after, Walker Ashley said . another professor of meteorology in Northern Illinois and Gensini’s partner in storm chasing.
“You could see these things days in advance,” Ashley said. They will be “continuous beats, one, two, three, four”.
The Weather Service is forecasting another string of intense storms in the same general area as Friday with fairly high confidence as soon as next Tuesday, Elliott said.
At least the first 10 days of April will be rough, Accuweather meteorologist Brandon Buckingham said.
The current ongoing pattern of storm components reminds Gensini of the April 2011 tornado attack that killed 363 people in six states and hit Alabama hardest. It was one of the largest, deadliest, and most destructive tornado outbreaks in American history, the weather service said.
As of Friday, “it was the most active we’ve seen in several years,” beginning around last November, with a large number of winter storms this year, Elliott said. The deadly storms that hit Rolling Fork were part of this pattern.
Buckingham and the other meteorologists said the current conditions only occur every few years to create the potential for a train of supercells that produce the worst tornadoes and hail.
At its heart is a fast-moving, roller-coaster-like jet stream, the shifting airflow that moves weather systems like storms from west to east. On the west side of the jet stream is extremely cold air and to the east, parked off Florida and the Caribbean, is a very warm and dry high-pressure system.
“When you combine the two, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up,” Buckingham said. “The ingredients are here. You are prepared for the extreme end of things.”
In addition, the Gulf of Mexico, which provides moisture, warmth and energy for storms, is about 2 to 5 degrees warmer than average or more, forecasters said — “on fire,” as Ashley put it.
“The extra warmth and humidity really makes these thunderstorms burn,” Buckingham said.
The worst weather will be “under the clash” of hot and cold air, a kind of battlefield, Gensini said. The midday forecast for Friday in Storm Lake, Iowa is about 67 degrees, but just 140 miles northwest, Brookings, South Dakota is expected to be just above freezing.
“The greater the temperature gradient, the stronger the storm systems,” Gensini said.
Winds swirling in opposite directions to the west and east of the jet stream battlefield are contributing to the problem, the meteorologists said.
Ashley said the current conditions are mostly random weather variations, although he said the hotter Gulf of Mexico and human-caused climate change may have been a small contributor.
“These events have always happened,” Ashley said. “The question is, do we turn the knob a little by adding more moisture, more heat, more instability?”
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