Climate forecasters urge alert for Tuesday after 18 tornadoes across five states on Monday
- Environment
- May 21, 2019
After 18 tornadoes swept through five states on Monday, forecasters say Tuesday’s severe weather threat warrants caution but lacks the same potential.
At least some tornadoes, damaging winds and hail are possible Tuesday in parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas and Illinois, said Jared Guyer, lead forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center.
In excess of twelve serious thunderstorm warnings and a couple of tornado alerts stayed dynamic medium-term, Guyer included. Streak flooding from heavy rains that went with the tempests additionally represented a worry.
Flooding threats will also not be as great Tuesday, but eastern parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri may face heavy rainfall issues, said Brian Hurley, senior meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center.
Tornadoes in meagerly populated territories harmed homes and stables in Oklahoma on Monday, however no wounds were reported.
Starter reports show 18 tornadoes had generated in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arizona since Monday morning, as of 12:55 p.m. EST Tuesday, as per the Storm Prediction Center.
One afternoon tornado hit parts of the southwestern Oklahoma town of Mangum. Glynadee Edwards, the Greer County emergency management director, said roofs of homes were damaged and the high school’s agriculture barn was destroyed. The livestock survived, however.
“The pigs are walking around wondering what happened to their house,” she said.
Another tornado seriously harmed a house and annihilated a barn in the northern Oklahoma unicorporated community of Lucien.
The expectation focus set pieces of the eastern Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma under a “high risk” zone for extreme climate, the most genuine of SPC’s five hazard categories.
The entire Oklahoma City metro area was within the “high risk” area.
“I’d certainly label this the ‘nightmare scenario,'” meteorologist Mike Smith tweeted, with a display of the storms that are predicted for later Monday.
The noontime gauge from SPC has expanded the tornado probabilities from 30% to 45% from northwest Texas into focal Oklahoma. This implies there’s a 45% shot of a tornado framing inside 25 miles of any spot in the area.
The last time a 45% tornado viewpoint was issued was before a flare-up in Oklahoma and Kansas on April 14, 2012, when 122 tornadoes framed, killing 6 individuals.
Schools shut crosswise over Oklahoma in front of the terrible climate. A considerable lot of the biggest educational systems in the focal point of the state (as well as the University of Oklahoma campus) closed all day Monday, which appears to be the first time such a mass closure has occurred in central Oklahoma on the night before severe weather, according to the Weather Underground.
Tinker Air Force Base close Oklahoma City emptied a few planes to other army bases fully expecting tempest harm.
Environmental researcher Roger Edwards tweeted Monday that “this is the rare kind of event that may take many lives. Pray I’m wrong.”
The wild weather Monday will continue a pattern of severe storms that have battered the region: Nearly 40 preliminary tornadoes were reported across Nebraska and Kansas to end this past week, and the severe weather continued on Saturday, AccuWeather said.
Forecasters say four tornadoes struck parts of West Texas in severe weather that damaged some homes and businesses in the San Angelo area on Saturday, the National Weather Service said.
Looking ahead, more bad weather is forecast the rest of the month for the central U.S.: “It looks like there is no end in sight to this very active pattern of severe weather into the end of May,” AccuWeather Extreme Meteorologist Reed Timmer said.
High heat will also be another big weather story as May continues: As the Memorial Day weekend rolls in, look for a “death ridge” of heat in the Southeast, forecasters warned.
“Extreme heat and very dry conditions for extended period of time. Days 6-10 averages are 8-10°F above normal in the ensemble mean,” meteorologist Ryan Maue tweeted. “Huge signal for record highs – and long duration!”