Rare High Risk Tornado Alert In Midwest as Wild Weather Hits Much Of Nation

The map on the home page of the National Weather Service
is getting colorful again, which means there's a wide
variety of weather hazards in the nation today. 

 UPDATE 1:15 PM

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has issued a rare high risk alert for two areas in the nation's middle, as fears grow of violent, exceedingly dangerous and long lasting tornadoes.

The high risk zones center in one area near the Iowa/Illinois border and another one in northern Mississippi, southwestern Tennessee and eastern Arkansas 

High risk alerts like this are rare and basically a hair on fire alarm that powerful, deadly tornadoes are likely,

This is the first high risk tornado alert NOAA has issued since March, 2021. On average, a high risk alert is issued  two or three times a year, but some years  have none and a few years can have as many as six. 

A "Particularly Dangerous Tornado Watch has been issued for parts of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, and one will probably be issues soon further south. Numerous supercells were poised to erupt in Iowa as of this writing. 

Also, the moderate risk area, the second highest severe weather alert, has been greatly expanded to include a broad area centered on the mid-Mississippi Valley. 

Pink areas are high risk areas today for violent, long-lasting
tornadoes. It's the first high risk alert since March 2021.
The red area is moderate risk for dangerous tornadoes and
severe weather, level four out of five levels of risk.
That's an unusually large area to be under moderate risk 

It's going to be a dangerous, potentially deadly afternoon and evening across the nation's middle.  We can only hope the strongest tornadoes stay in very rural areas and avoid cities and towns. 

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

A classic spring storm is bringing a huge variety of sometimes dangerous weather to much of the United States today. 

The biggest threat continues to be the possibility of some large, long lasting and intense tornadoes. The most likely targets for this are Iowa, western Illinois, and a big circle centered just about on Memphis, Tennessee.

There could be other tornadoes between these two higher danger areas, too.  I would say anybody who lives in the highest tornado danger area today and live in mobile homes or other comparatively weak structures should just move out today and hang out in someplace safer until the threat passes tonight. 

Large hail and destructive straight line winds in this region will get at some people who are fortunate to miss any tornadoes. I'm hoping we don't have a death toll like we had in Mississippi last Friday. 

Elsewhere, it's not quite as dangerous but still hair-raising. Outside the tornado risk zone, I'd give South Dakota the nod for the worst place to be today. 

This was the earlier severe weather outlook from this morning
showing only two patches of moderate risk, which is level
four out of five. Compared to the new map, you can see
how much worse things have gotten. 

The eastern half of South Dakota, except for the far southeastern corner, is under a blizzard warning today into tomorrow morning. Up to a foot of snow with gusts up to 55 mph are expected. 

To make matters worse, parts of the blizzard zone are in an ice storm warning, too.  Freezing rain threatens to pile up on trees and wires enough to make them break just before the blizzard conditions hit with those winds. Power outages and tree damage look to be pretty inevitable. 

Well south of this zone, strong, dry winds threaten to set off grass and rangeland fires in vast areas of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and western Missouri. 

Humidity will be in the bone-dry 10 to 20 percent range today as winds gust to over 50 mph. Meanwhile, flooding looks to be a problem in parts of the South today. 

Wind advisories and warnings cover probably a quarter of the nation from New Mexico to Pennsylvania. 

As you'll see in a separate post this morning that here in Vermont, the weather will be wonky as heck for the next couple of days. But at least it won't be super dangerous, so we can count our blessings.