Dangerous Severe Weather Event Expected on Saturday in Midwest US

A potentially dangerous severe weather event is expected to occur on Saturday in the US midwest, according to AccuWeather meteorologists.

As oppressive heat baked the southern Plains and East Coast, severe thunderstorm activity has been patchy lately. However, AccuWeather meteorologists say a noticeable shift in that pattern is projected by Saturday.

La Troy Thornton, a meteorologist from AccuWeather, said that a hazardous severe weather event could be produced by the Saturday atmospheric configuration.

Thunderstorms, Tornadoes, Damaging Wind Gusts, Floods

From central parts of Minnesota to northern Wisconsin, storms are expected to form by early afternoon. Thunderstorms are expected in Minneapolis, but they are not expected to be particularly powerful at that time. All hazards will be possible as the storms intensify and move to the south and east.

Thornton continued by saying that thunderstorms bearing the potential to produce strong wind gusts, large hail locally, and lone tornadoes could happen on Saturday.

When storms first develop, there is the greatest risk of tornadoes. This will be because storms are probably discrete cells when they first form. If the storms are separated enough from one another, they won't interfere with one another and may start to spin.

Wind shear, or the alteration in the speed and direction of breezes at various levels of the atmosphere over the ground, is another factor that could lead to the formation of a tornado. Individual thunderstorms have a higher likelihood of producing tornadoes and damaging wind gusts when winds change direction and speed from close to the ground for about a mile or two up in the atmosphere.

The storms carry risks beyond just tornadoes, hail, and damaging wind gusts.

According to Thornton, some of the storms may produce flash flooding due to an abnormally high amount of moisture.

This will be especially true if several storms pass over the same region at once, but even a single storm has the potential to produce flooding by dumping a lot of rain quickly.

Pattern Shift

Late in the day and into the evening, the storms will move east. The exact extent of the storms' southern reach is still uncertain as of Thursday, according to meteorologists. Even in the face of some uncertainty, it appears likely that cities like Green Bay and Madison, Wisconsin, are just a few places where the likelihood of violent storms is higher. It would only take a small change in the pattern, though, to bring severe storms to the Chicago region.

Then, as the thunderstorms move eastward, they should cross Lake Michigan and enter the Lower Peninsula of Michigan overnight.

According to Thornton, residents need a way to be awakened and alerted if a severe thunderstorm or possibly a tornado warning is issued because this threat is likely to last well into the night. He continued by saying that locals ought to have a plan in place in case of severe weather.

According to meteorologists at AccuWeather, the main atmospheric energy will enter Canada on Sunday, reducing the severe threat for the remainder of the weekend.

On Sunday, however, a cold front associated with a storm in Canada may bring some soaking thunderstorms to western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and central Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. By Monday or Tuesday of next week, that cold front will finally reach the East Coast and halt the heat wave along a portion of the I-95 corridor.