Strong Tornadoes Possible Today Across Louisiana, Mississippi & Alabama

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]It's Wednesday, May 6th, 2026, and we have some severe weather to talk about in the south today. There's also going to be a lot of rainfall out east over the next 5 days. Really 5 to 7 days. Not much out west with some cooler temperatures out east and some very warm temperatures out west. So, let's get right into it.

[00:00:16]Starting with our severe weather, you can see we have a large marginal to enhanced risk for severe weather from the southern plains all the way out through the southeast. And if we break this down a little bit more, get into our tornado risk. We do have a large 2% all the way to a 10% risk for strong tornadoes today. This yellow is our 10% risk. There's a 10% chance that a tornado could touch down within 25 miles of any location in this zone today. And this hatched area or these dashed lines if you're in this area as well, as you can see highlighted here through portions of Mississippi, Alabama, and portions of Louisiana and southeastern Arkansas as well. This is an area that could see tornadoes up to EF2 plus in strength. So, this is going to be the area where we could see our strongest tornadoes today. Pretty decent size tornado risk today. You can see we have 6.2 million people inside that SIG one risk area, including some larger cities like Jackson, Mississippi, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Hoover, Alabama, Montgomery, Alabama, and Birmingham, Alabama. 2.7 million people are in that 10% risk for tornadoes today. 5% we have 3.1 million.

[00:01:13]And 2% we have 5.7 million people in that risk zone today. Let's take a look at the wind risk. We have a 5 to 15% risk. Again, pretty large, stretching from the southern plains out through portions of the southeast. And then we take a look at our hail risk. That larger hail risk is actually in a similar location to that tornado risk.

[00:01:29]This is actually pretty common. To get strong tornadoes, you need strong updrafts. And to get large hail, you need strong updrafts as well. So, you can see we have this 15% sig one risk for hail. Again, this just means you could see large hail. We're talking 2 to three plus inches in size. I did quickly want to take a look at our day two risk zone. Not much going on tomorrow. Day two just means tomorrow, so Thursday.

[00:01:48]But we do have a little bit of a risk for severe weather. Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, even portions of southeastern North Carolina. If we break this out, a little bit of a tornado risk tomorrow as well. Southern Alabama, the panhandle of Florida, central to southern Georgia, and then portions of southern South Carolina as well. You do have that 2% tornado risk tomorrow. Breaking down the wind risk, just 5% down there in the southeast. And as of right now from the Storm Prediction Center, no hail risk tomorrow. We'll break down the severe weather today a little bit more in just a second. But I do quickly want to take a look at our weather prediction center precipitation forecast. Taking a look at the next 48 hours, most of that rainfall is going to be down here through portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. As we get into the 72-hour forecast, you can see we start to get a little bit more precipitation up there through portions of the Midwest, really Ohio Valley up through New England. Taking a look out about five days, still a lot of precipitation down there in the southeast, especially Mississippi and Alabama. And then going out seven days, I think the story really is also we're not really seeing any precipitation out west, but we're seeing a ton out east, obviously, especially in the southeast. The weather prediction center forecast for portions of Mississippi and Alabama over the next 7 days is about 7 in. But I'm telling you, when you see something like that locally, you could hit a foot, at least 10 plus inches locally in some of these areas over the next week. So, obviously, that could cause some flash flooding issues. If you're in a low-lying area, you live near a creek, you're in a flooding prone area, obviously you're going to want to be paying close attention to the weather as we move through this week and into early next week. Taking a look at our 6 to 10 day temperature forecast from the Climate Prediction Center, we're expected to be much cooler. This is getting into next week out east still and then much, much warmer. Obviously out west, 8 to 14 days, still cooler for most of us out east, warm out west, but you see that warmth is beginning to push its way east. And then in the 3 to four week outlook, it actually looks like we may cool down again through portions of the plains, out through the Midwest and Ohio Valley, and especially up there in the Northeast as well. Before we break down today's severe weather threat a little bit more, I did just want to point out we've got some actually snow falling through portions of Colorado. If I change this over to precipitation type, I know it's May, but we do have some snow falling through Colorado. And then we have a lot of rainfall out there out east from New England all the way down through portions of the Mid-Atlantic down into the southeast, the Ohio Valley. So pretty wet morning for a lot of us out east and a snowy cold morning for some of us out here in the Rockies.

[00:04:10]All right, let's break down the severe weather a little bit more. We're going to start to see some strong to severe thunderstorms firing off in the southeast, really from southeastern Texas out through Alabama, maybe southern Tennessee as we get into around 1 or 2:00 p.m. today. So early afternoon and we could see some of these significantly strengthen as we approach the late afternoon and early evening.

[00:04:30]That's cuz our LLJ, our low-level jets really going to kick in and is going to help to enhance these thunderstorms. So you see these updraft ticity tracks showing up on the HR model right at around 3 to 4 p.m. Then things really start to potentially pop off at around 5 6 p.m. And then these storms continue to move east. We continue to see the potential for strong supercells all the way until about 9 to 10:00 p.m. tonight.

[00:04:54]Now, timing always changes. It is possible we have a little bit of a nocturnal severe weather threat tonight.

[00:04:58]So, make sure you sleep with your alerts on tonight. And because again, we do have that severe threat tomorrow as well. You can see here looking at the 500 mibar level. This is the level that helps our storms to organize, our severe storms to organize. We have some shortwave troughs appearing here through Mississippi and Alabama. And this is definitely going to help with that forcing or storm initiation out ahead of our main bar clinic boundary. So you start to see a strong mid-level flow, some shortwave troughs appearing. You know that you have the potential for some strong supercells. Taking a look at the 850 mibar level. This is a little bit closer to the surface. You see some of that strong shear really appearing as we get into around 5 to 6:00 p.m. Give or take an hour. This is when I'm most concerned about the strongest supercells firing off. And you can see some of these strong jet streaks through portions, like I said, of Mississippi, Alabama, and even Georgia here. We're all the way in May. I would say we typically don't see as many sharp temperature gradients this far to the south, but we do have a lot of cold air sinking in. So, we actually do have a little bit of a temperature barren clinic boundary down here. And that again is going to help with forcing. And we're not going to have much inhibition.

[00:05:57]I do expect these storms to fire off.

[00:05:59]Sometimes you have conditional days where if storms do fire off, they're intense, but they might not. No, we're going to see thunderstorms today. The question is, how severe will they be?

[00:06:07]We're going to see these storms initiate today though. You can see these due points are extremely high. We're talking 75 76°ree due points. This just tells us that the air is very saturated, very buoyant, and that's just going to allow this moisture to more easily rise into the atmosphere and condense and turn into clouds and obviously fuel our storms. You can see the vorticity down at the surface as well. And we do have some converging winds. So again, this is what helps to spin up our thunderstorms.

[00:06:31]And a supercell is a rotating thunderstorm. And with vorticity at the surface, that just elevates your chances for seeing a tornado. Taking a look at our mixed layer cape. There's plenty of instability here. We're talking 3 to 4,000 jewels per kilogram of instability or of cape, which is convective available potential energy. Just another sign we could have some very strong sphere thunderstorms today. I did take a look at our SIG tour parameters and pulled up a sounding here and possible hazard type PDS tour. This means we could see an EF2 plus tornado. You can see on our photograph we do have those turning winds with height or those rotating winds in the atmosphere. Down at the surface, we're looking at southerntherly winds. As we go up towards the 500 millibar level, we're looking at westerly winds. So again, that's just another sign there. Our winds are expected to be rotating with height. This elevates our tornado chances. There's our cape. Decent amount of instability in here. We can see that we have 240 SRH, so storm relative felicity. Violent rotation is possible in the atmosphere. Almost 30 knots shear down at the surface. We're looking at about a 5.0 effective layer. Sigtor param. So plenty of signs here that we could see a strong tornado today. Make sure if you're out in this region, you have your alerts on. And just as a reminder, this is the main area we're watching today for tornadoes. Again, portions of Texas up through Tennessee, and Georgia, but that main area is Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I appreciate you guys watching this video.

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