Tag: severe weather

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CNN
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Numerous tornadoes – including a few intense ones – are possible Tuesday afternoon and evening for parts of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi as severe storms rake the area, a situation that moved forecasters to issue a special tornado watch alerting residents to an unusual level of risk.

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A “particularly dangerous situation” tornado watch, reserved for the most significant severe-storm threats and used in only 3% of watches, was issued for some areas in those states by the Storm Prediction Center.

The watch, covering nearly 2.5 million people in far southeastern Arkansas, northern and central Louisiana and central Mississippi, was set to be in effect from shortly after noon to 7 p.m. CT.

This comes as severe storms could hit a much wider area of the United States from Tuesday into early Wednesday, from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest, with tornadoes, damaging winds and hail, forecasters said.

But prediction center forecasters focused especially on Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, saying “parameters appear favorable for strong and long-tracked tornadoes,” meaning ones that stay on the ground for an extended period, Tuesday afternoon and early evening in the watch area.

“Numerous tornadoes (are) expected with a few intense tornadoes likely,” along with scattered large hail and scattered damaging wind gusts up to 70 mph, forecasters said in the special tornado watch.

Overall, more than 41 million people from southeastern Texas eastward to Georgia and northward to central Indiana and Illinois are under at least a marginal threat of severe weather Tuesday, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

Separate from the special tornado watch, the prediction center laid out an area where it believed the largest potential for severe weather, including tornadoes, existed – covering 1.6 million people in east-central Louisiana; a sliver of southeastern Arkansas; much of Mississippi, including Jackson; and northwestern Alabama. The threat for that area – a Level 4 of 5, or moderate – is relatively rare for this time of year, and tornadoes, though they can happen year-round, are more frequent in the spring and summer.

“Severe thunderstorms in the fall and winter can be extremely impactful and may sometimes catch people off guard as thunderstorms tend to occur less frequently during the cooler months,” Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the Storm Prediction Center, told CNN Weather.

A Level 3 of 5, or enhanced, risk zone encircles that area, covering 2.8 million people across parts of Mississippi and Louisiana as well as a small part of eastern Texas, southeastern Arkansas, southwestern Tennessee and western Alabama.