(NEW YORK) — More than 30 million Americans are on alert for severe weather this Easter weekend, as several states in the Heartland have already been slammed with tornadoes, hail and damaging winds.
The National Weather Service’s office in Omaha, Nebraska, confirmed 5 tornadoes in the area on Thursday. The strongest of these was an EF-3 tornado that tracked across portions of Northern Douglas County and Southeast Washington County (about 11 miles north of Omaha). Two more tornadoes were confirmed in Nebraska, and the other two tornadoes were confirmed in Iowa.
On Friday, hail larger than tennis ball size was reported in Evansville and Edgerton, Wisconsin, with hail larger than golf ball size hail being reported elsewhere across southern Wisconsin. Downed trees and power lines were reported across portions of southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, southern Missouri, northwestern Arkansas, central Oklahoma, and northern Texas.
The severe weather threat for Saturday shifts focus to central Texas, southeast Oklahoma, northwest Arkansas, and southwestern Missouri, including the cities of Dallas and Abilene, Texas; Fort Smith and Texarkana, Arkansas; Norman, Oklahoma; and Springfield, Missouri.
The primary hazards for these thunderstorms will be damaging wind gusts and large hail, with a few isolated tornadoes possible, primarily for central Texas and southeastern Oklahoma.
The current batch of heavy rain and severe weather will continue across the area stretching from central Texas up to north-central Illinois until about midday Saturday, by which point it’ll fizzle out.
By early evening Saturday, more storms will begin to fire up across central Texas, west of Dallas, and central Oklahoma.
Later Saturday, these broken lines of storms will start transitioning into messy bands of storms and showers. For the rest of the overnight from here, the main concern will shift from severe storms to heavy rain and potential flash flooding in the region.
The severe weather activity ramps up on Sunday for areas to the east. The severe weather threat for then will be focused on parts of far northeastern Texas, far northwestern Louisiana, eastern Oklahoma, most of Arkansas and Missouri, and southwestern Illinois.
The primary threats for Sunday’s severe weather will be damaging wind gusts, large hail, and tornadoes, with the greatest damaging wind gust and tornado potential centered over portions of northern Arkansas into Missouri and far west-central Illinois.
Flash flood threat for Plains, Mississippi Valley
Because of the slow nature of this storm system, an increasing flash flooding threat will be present throughout the holiday weekend for parts of the Plains and Mississippi Valley as heavy rain will track over the same areas for a few days.
Flood Watches are in effect across portions of northern Texas, east-central Oklahoma, northwestern Arkansas, southeastern Kansas, south-central Missouri, and southwestern Illinois.
Winter storm and fire weather threats
The same system that is bringing wet and stormy weather for the Plains and Midwest is also bringing a blast of winter weather across parts of the Four Corners and Central Rockies. Winter weather alerts remain in effect cross multiple states for total snowfall between 6-12 inches with locally up to 20 inches in the higher elevations.
Meanwhile to the south of the wintry weather, yet another day of a critical fire weather threat across the Southwest U.S. Fire Weather Warnings are in effect for southeastern New Mexico and western Texas for Saturday for very low relative humidity (as low as 4%) and wind gusts up to 50 mph.
An elevated fire weather threat is also present for the western Florida panhandle for Saturday because of low relative humidity (25%-35%) and wind gusts up to 20 mph.
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