Oklahoma Continues To Have An Extremely Rough Autumn. Today Will Be Third Day In Row With Tornadoes

Huge board pierced this car in this weekend's 
Oklahoma tornadoes. Twisters can fling things quite a
ways, as was the case here. Notice the lack of 
damage in the background, this board was ejected
some distance from the tornado.

Saturday night and early Sunday, Oklahoma endured a series of intensely destructive tornadoes.

Sunday and Sunday night, a new round of tornado warnings blared across the state amid clusters of severe thunderstorms and flooding downpours. 

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An even more widespread outbreak of tornadoes and severe weather seems likely today in Oklahoma, northern Texas and western Arkansas. 

The tornadoes early Sunday focused on the southeastern part of the Oklahoma City metro area, hitting Newcastle, Moore, Valley Brook and Hurrah.  You might recognize a couple of those towns as seemingly always being hit by tornadoes, so I guess it happened again. 

This time, eleven people were taken to hospitals with tornado-related injuries. Dozens of homes were damaged or destroyed.  Other storms produced damaging straight line winds and flash flooding. 

Sunday afternoon, tornado warnings blared around Oklahoma City again, as severe thunderstorms and additional flash flooding. More than four inches of rain poured down on Oklahoma City Saturday night and Sunday. 

Today, if anything looks potentially worse.  The area under the gun for severe weather is more widespread than it has been for the past two. The atmospheric at least as of this morning look favorable for a variety of hazards including tornadoes, a couple of which might be quite strong, intense straight line winds, large hail and flash flooding.

In anticipation of the bad weather, dozens of Oklahoma schools and some colleges have canceled classes today. Oklahoma Municipal Court has also canceled sessions today. 

Already, this morning and early afternoon, there's been a couple of tornado warnings in Oklahoma, and that's ahead of the main show expected this afternoon and evening. 

Tornado and severe thunderstorm outbreaks are usually creatures of the spring and summer. Strong storm systems combined with strong daytime heating from the sun combine to create those big storms in the spring.

However, there's sometimes a smaller second season in the fall.  The sun's heating is pretty lame this time of year. But storm systems are stronger this time of year than in the summer. That strength  can overcome the weak daytime heating to produce dangerously stormy weather. 

What makes this situation unusual is that the rough weather has been sitting over or near Oklahoma for three days, if you count today. 

Usually, autumn storms that produce severe storms and tornadoes are in and out quickly. You get a  round of damaging storms on one day, and the next that storm system is hundreds of miles to the east. 

This storm will finally move on tonight and weaken as it moves east, greatly diminishing the severe storm and tornado threat 

This time is different. 

Less than 24 hours after tornadoes in Oklahoma metro area, mid-afternoon severe t-storm warnings: