Weather Off The Rails For Large Sections Of Nation. Spoiler: Yawner In Vermont

Areas in yellow, orange and especially red are under
the gun for possible strong tornadoes Tuesday. 

 An intense storm is about to lash large parts of the nation with fire, wind, storms, tornadoes and flooding for the next few days. 

Spoiler: It looks like we'll have nothing extreme out of this up here in Vermont. 

We start the action today with an amazingly large section on the United States under a red flag alert for wild and rangeland fires.  

Eyeballing it on the map, I'd say a good 15 percent of the nation from Arizona, throughout the southern and central Plains is under the gun for fires today. 

It's bee a bad winter in this part of the country for fires.  There's been several instances of homes and other structures burning, and we'll probably lose more today if the forecast holds. 

This is only the start.

And those same areas, seen here especially in
yellow and red, have a substantial flash flood
risk as well on Tuesday. 

A classic, large spring storm will begin developing in Texas later today and lumber slowly toward the Great Lakes by Wednesday night.

Along its southern flank, forecasters are increasingly worried about the possibility of a substantial tornado outbreak in the South. .

The risk of severe storms, complete with tornadoes, large hail and flooding, begins tomorrow in eastern Texas. Then, it ramps up and quite possibly gets worse with the risk of long-lasting, strong tornadoes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The threat then moves to the southeastern United States coast on Wednesday. 

There's also a good chance of substantial flash flooding in the same areas under the gun for tornadoes, so it's going to be a rough few days down  there.   

The parent storm will affect us here in Vermont with some cold rains and wet snow later this week, but it won't be any kind of extreme storm. Just more icky late March weather, typical of this time of year. 

More good news: After this storm, the risk of severe weather and tornados for the nation goes on a temporary semi-hiatus for at least a week after the storms clear the East Coast on Wednesday night.