A severe weather threat is brewing for millions in the Central U.S., as flash flooding, hail and tornadoes are possible. The worst of the threat stretches from St. Louis down through Louisiana.
ST. LOUIS – A brewing cross-country storm that’s expected to gather strength as it moves into the Plains and Mississippi Valley could trigger a potentially dangerous severe weather threat for millions of people across the region this weekend.
According to the FOX Forecast Center, as the system pushes out of the West Coast and into the Rockies this week, severe weather will be possible, but that risk is relatively low.
However, as the system continues to advance across the central U.S. this weekend, the threat of severe storms will increase.
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The system is expected to grow stronger as it heads into the Plains. Scattered showers and thunderstorms could form from Oklahoma up to Missouri, and a few of those storms could be on the stronger side. The main threats would be damaging wind gusts and hail.
On Friday night and into Saturday, warm, humid air will surge northward into the Ark-La-Tex region, the Ozarks in Missouri and the Mississippi Valley.
That, the FOX Forecast Center said, will set the stage for a more widespread severe weather threat.
By Saturday afternoon, the atmosphere will become increasingly unstable, and wind shear could be strong enough to support the development of supercell thunderstorms.
Those storms will be capable of producing large hail, damaging wind gusts and tornadoes.
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Forecasters say, however, that the exact severity of those storms will depend on just how much the atmosphere can recover from thunderstorms that develop earlier in the day on Saturday.
If the air is able to heat up again during the afternoon hours, those developing thunderstorms could become intense.
The extreme weather threat is then expected to shift eastward into the lower and mid-Mississippi Valley on Saturday evening and night.
Currently, NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) placed the region in a Level 2 threat on its 5-point severe thunderstorm risk scale.
Cities in that threat zone include Shreveport in Louisiana, Fort Smith and Little Rock in Arkansas, Memphis in Tennessee and Springfield in Missouri.
