“A multiday severe weather episode,” the Storm Prediction Center called it, in their key message this week.
Bringing with it a threat of damaging wind gusts, large hail, tornadoes and thunderstorms, a powerful cross-country storm and its associated cold front are expected to unleash widespread severe weather from the middle Mississippi Valley to the Lower Ohio and Tennessee Valleys beginning Friday.
While the effects are expected to be significant, Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center, said a storm of this strength is not unusual for this time of year.
“It is a very textbook early spring disturbance.” Mr. Kleebauer said. Winds high in the atmosphere are pulling warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico northward, where it will collide with colder air to the north. “That’s going to cause heavy rain and a severe outbreak across the South.”
The Storm Prediction Center expects the greatest risk of severe storms to develop late Friday afternoon into Friday night, especially across parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Mississippi and Alabama.
The system fueling this outbreak already made its mark on other parts of the country earlier in the week, starting as an atmospheric river that slammed into California, unleashing rain, snow and flash flooding. As the system moved east, it brought the threat of blizzard conditions and powerful winds to the Great Plains and Upper Midwest.
At the same time, the storm’s trailing cold front swept across the central United States, creating dry and gusty conditions that fueled critical fire weather across parts of New Mexico and Texas. By Thursday and Friday, that fire risk had expanded across much of the central and southern High Plains.
The severe weather threat began affecting parts of the South late Wednesday, when the Storm Prediction Center warned of thunderstorms producing hail and severe gusts across parts of the South, in an area stretching from northwest Texas and the Midwest across to northern Florida, through Thursday.
However, Friday draws the greatest concern, with the risk for widespread damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes increasing significantly as the storm intensifies over the Rockies.
Forecasters say the storm is likely to undergo rapid cyclogenesis, making it a “bomb cyclone” because its central pressure is expected to drop rapidly in 24 hours, creating a more volatile system.
Although the core strength of the storm will remain well to the north, its influence will be felt in the Southern states.
“Some of the severe thunderstorms are going to be displaced from the center of the storm,” said Bob Oravec, the lead forecaster at the Weather Prediction Center. These storms will develop along the cold front as it moves eastward, creating a line of severe weather stretching across large portions of the South and Midwest.
Heavy rain is also a growing concern, especially across parts of the lower- to mid-Mississippi Valley into parts of the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, where the Weather Prediction Center has noted a marginal risk for excessive rainfall from Friday through Saturday.
The threat of severe weather is expected to continue into the weekend, as the front pushes eastward.
“There is a slight chance of severe weather anywhere from North Florida all the way up along the East Coast to the Washington D.C., area, Philadelphia and just outside New York City,” Mr. Oravec said. “It’s not going to be as great a risk as areas farther to the west.”
On Saturday, the Storm Prediction Center highlights parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as areas facing the greatest severe weather risk, including damaging gusts, hail and “significant tornadoes.”
The storm is expected to move offshore on Monday.
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