Severe weather outbreak Friday; more storms this weekend

It was a second consecutive active day for thunderstorms on Thursday, centered on Wisconsin and surrounding Midwest locations. Several hundred severe weather reports have come in from Minnesota to Illinois and Michigan thus far. Several powerful tornadoes also struck the region. The primary risk area Friday shifts further southeast before another dip in the jet stream lights up the Plains this weekend.

Weather Watch

Severe storms rumble on. Daily rounds of severe weather will impact the country through the weekend into next week. Friday appears particularly ominous, with a Level 4 of 5 risk centered on western Kentucky and an overlapping Level 2 of 4 flood threat. The focus of the worst today appears to be from southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas to eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio, where strong tornadoes and numerous instances of damaging wind are threats.

(Special retort: Yesterday, news broke that a number of NWS offices are going to part time operations, including Jackson, Kentucky, where a high-end severe weather risk will approach by later today.)

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Virginia barber pole

It’s not often you see structure like this on the Blue Ridge.

Virginia played the part of the high Plains on Thursday as a belt of strong winds aloft helped stir up a pair of supercell thunderstorms in the mountains that then rolled off into the lowlands. Defined by a single rotating updraft, these are the storms that sometimes produce big-time tornadoes, when lower-level conditions are right.

None of that yesterday, but there were a couple tornado warnings and the superb structure.

Also like the Plains, this high-end East Coast structure was delivered by “northwest flow,” which is how it sounds, or when winds aloft are blowing northwest to southeast. Due to processes I only partly understand, it is often this kind of setup in the central U.S. that produces memorable structure.

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Weekday morning newsletter by a journalist/forecaster. Connecting weather and climate change dots while occasionally stirring the pot.

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