Late Friday Afternoon Update: All Hell Breaking Out In Plains, Midwest: Dust And Fires Storms, Extreme Winds, Intense Thunderstorms

Highway pileup near Canyon, Texas after a dust storm
reduced visibility to zero on Interstate 27.

 While we here in Vermont blissfully enjoyed a gorgeous, warm, sunny early spring day, the weather has turned violent across huge areas of the Plains and Midwest. 

This was expected, as you might have read in my post this morning.

But really, things have gotten insane. In a lot of places.

I'll give you a quick update now, with even more details to come tomorrow morning. Spoiler: Saturday will be an exceptionally dangerous weather day in much of the South. 

Today has been bad enough. I have plenty of examples and receipts, and I'll give you a few scary ones here. 

Dry, intense winds have gusted as high as 83 mph around Amarillo this afternoon. The winds cut power to parts of the city, and dust storms have reduced visibility to near zero on area highways. Video on social media shows several tractor trailer trucks toppling over on Amarillo-area highways. 

South of Amarillo, near the towns of Canyon and Happy, zero visibility in blowing dust caused a major highway pileup along Interstate 27.  Details are still sketchy, but as many as 50 vehicles might have been involved. No word yet on injuries or deaths. 

The dust storms extended over huge areas, including large swaths of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas. Winds were gusting to 70 mph or more in large areas of the Plains. Multiple car crashes due to bad visibility in the dust storms have also been reported in Oklahoma. 

The extreme winds are combining with incredibly low humidity to create firestorms, too. 

Visible satellite photo showing massive amounts of dust
blowing though New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma 
this afternoon amid wind gusts reaching
hurricane force in some areas.

Numerous fire warnings were in effect in Oklahoma, forcing evacuations of some towns and neighborhoods. Some of the fires were in heavily developed towns, like the Oklahoma City suburbs of Edmond and Norman. 

The anticipated severe thunderstorms just started developing mid to late afternoon. A strengthening line of severe thunderstorms extended in a curving band across extreme eastern Nebraska, southwest Iowa and western Missouri late this afternoon.

The storms were producing destructive winds and hail. Rotating supercell thunderstorms were lurking in this line, and with the storms expected to head east and get worse, a tornado watch was posted for parts of Arkansas, eastern Missouri and western Illinois.

Even without the tornadoes, some of these thunderstorms could carry straight line wind gusts of up to 100 mph. 

Strong overnight tornadoes are feared later on in much of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi

Meanwhile a blizzard warning was posted for eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota.

To give you an idea of how weird it is out there. Marshall, Minnesota was among the cities under a blizzard warning, but it was 74 degrees there late this afternoon. By dawn Saturday, heavy snow, strong winds and temperatures in the upper 20s were forecast for Marshall. 

On Saturday, a relatively rare high risk alert has been declared for expected intense tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center forecasts are usually written in pretty sober fashion, but this sentence in today's update made me sit up and take notice:

"Numerous significant tornadoes, some of which should be long-track and potentially violent, are expected on Saturday afternoon and evening."

It's going to be a long, horrible weekend for much of the United States.

VERMONT EFFECTS

Gawd, as mentioned, today was gorgeous. Typical of late April, really, not mid-March.  It got up to at least 60 degrees in Burlington today, which is a full 20 degrees warmer than average for this time of year. 

It'll be even warmer Saturday with highs in many spots in the mid-60s.

Warm, oddly humid weather is on tap for Sunday as rain and wind arrives. To nobody's surprise, the National Weather Service office in South Burlington has issued a flood watch for all of Vermont and northeast New York. 

The flood watch runs from Sunday morning through Monday evening. Rain isn't even really going to arrive to any great extent until Sunday afternoon, but the snow melt ahead of the rain could even be enough to trigger flooding. 

The most likely timing of flooding would be from late Sunday afternoon through early Monday afternoon. We're still monitoring how high rivers might rise and how ice jams might affect flooding

Watch this space for more updates.