The WORST Tornado Outbreak of the Year Could Occur Tomorrow!

[00:00:00]Good evening, everyone. This is Atmospheric Alex here and welcome back to another severe weather outlook and discussion. And in today's video, we're going to be discussing the tornado outbreak tomorrow and it kind of how dangerous it could get cuz we are definitely talking about a very volatile environment in place tomorrow for the potential of intense to potentially even violent long-track tornadoes. So, we're going to go ahead and get into that in just a minute here. But, we're going to start off the video with today's SPC's convective outlook. We're talking about two slight risks of severe weather.

[00:00:35]Nothing too big of a deal, honestly.

[00:00:38]We're seeing some other areas where we have a marginal risk. We have this one down here in the southeast that is being influenced by potential tropical cyclone number one, which could become tropical storm Arthur in a few days. We'll get into that towards the very very end of the video.

[00:00:55]But, we are seeing, you know, a little bit of a tornado risk today across portions of northern Indiana. I know area has just been so active lately and that's not going to change even going into tomorrow. But, we could see a spin-up tornado. We did see a tornado warning earlier for area over there.

[00:01:14]We're seeing a wind risk as well.

[00:01:16]Nothing too significant there. And of course, some hail is possible as well.

[00:01:20]And then you also have this in Iowa.

[00:01:22]This will be tomorrow morning's morning convection. And that is another thing we'll get into in just a little bit. As we move into tomorrow's outlook, we do now have a moderate risk for severe weather. That is right, a level four out of five on the severe weather scale for towns and cities like Peoria, Illinois, Kankakee there, Lafayette, Champaign, Springfield, in those areas there. Such as south of Joliet as well. But, we're talking about a very significant outbreak of tornadoes. A potentially, like I said, intense to even violent and long-tracked in nature. We are seeing here a SIG 2 risk. This basically denotes the area where intense tornadoes will be possible, and this does in fact go all the way up into northern Indiana, right along the lakeshore right there. I know, you know, I know some people who live in that area. I was watching model trends earlier trying to go further south, but the SPC is staying pretty consistent, and you guys may have an intense tornado threat tomorrow. And then all other areas in between, and not only that, we do in fact also have a wind risk as well. A large SIG 1 30% wind risk right there. Could we see an upgrade to a 45%?

[00:02:37]We're going to have to wait and see. And our hail risk as well, again, SIG 1 and fairly large in nature. Now, we're going to go ahead and take a look at our Storm Net probabilities. I love using this tool. This is something new created by Andrew Brady, so big credit does go to him, but this is basically the equivalent of a high risk of severe weather here in your red contour. That is where the Storm Prediction Center tomorrow could issue a high risk of severe weather. You know, like I said, for those hazards I mentioned before, and that is definitely something we need to look out closely for. And I know my webcam's definitely blocking this, but our rarest plotted point on this map is three forecasts per year. This is definitely going to be an upper echelon event tomorrow, and you guys need to prepare accordingly. So, let's go ahead and get into all the ingredients, all the craziness for tomorrow. We're taking a look at our 500 millibar jet here, or I mean, basically it will tell you where your troughs are located, and we do in fact have what looks to be a trough right here. And you can see from this image, this is a neutrally tilted trough right here. We have a very strong jet streak right out ahead of it right down in these areas here. So, we're seeing our you know, mid-level winds aligning really well with our severe weather risk tomorrow. We're also seeing a ton of divergence as well, especially as we continue the clock on forward even more.

[00:04:07]And it Oh my goodness. I mean, look at this. By 8:00 in the evening, we are talking about a neutral to potentially even negatively tilted trough right there. Very intense jet streak, very strong divergence in front of our system right there. How it fans out is essentially going to cause a lot of rising air as divergence kind of pulls apart the atmosphere a little bit. And in order to fill those holes, in order to fill the voids, you need more air.

[00:04:34]And so, that's exactly what's going to happen. You'll see a lot of convection, lots of storms across those areas tomorrow. That is not a surprise. And it gets really intense as we head into the overnight hours. If we have more storm energy in forecasted, oh boy, it's it's this is going to be a long-lasting event if that remains the case. We've got a lot of stuff going on at the surface. We have a powerful surface low right here lifting off to the north. A 986 millibar low pressure system that is unseasonably strong for this time of year. You typically see that in March and April, but definitely not May June. Another strong surface low, 989 millibars there, you know, say near the Davenport, Iowa area. And that will continue to move on through. And this will be the main feature here that will pose your severe weather risk, your tornado outbreak. And something really important I want to note is where your warm front is and how far south this surface low is. Look at some of these wind barbs right along your warm front. They are coming out of the south to southeast direction. You're going to have an a ton of speed and directional shear with height along your warm front and just south of your warm front tomorrow. And I am extraordinarily concerned for certain areas. And we'll get into that a little bit later into the video. But, this surface low is very intense in nature for this time of year, and will provide a ton of wind shear.

[00:05:55]And, your lower-level jet is going to be cranking here. You could see we do have our jet starting to increase as we head into tomorrow evening, where we do have lower-level winds upwards of 60 knots, and a little further north, if we can see your northern portion of the risk fully destabilize going into a far northern Indiana right along the lake shore there. You know, specifically those areas right there like Gary, Indiana. Look at your lower-level jet cranking over 70 knots right there. If you see a supercell form in that environment, you're going to have a lot of problems, and your LLJ continues to increase as the night starts to fall.

[00:06:33]Look at that. A widespread area of 60 to 70 knot lower-level jet right there, even, you know, impeding in on 80 knots in a couple of areas. This is actually winter kinematics [clears throat] right here overspreading summer-like thermodynamics. This is a recipe for disaster for certain areas, and this is a very intense cranking lower-level jet going into Ohio. Luckily, by then, here storm energy will be a lot less. So, we got to watch for timings of our main trough, you know, and all other things like moisture advection as well as we head into tomorrow. Now, we're going to go ahead and take a look at what your future radar could look like tomorrow.

[00:07:10]We're going to start off with tomorrow morning here as we have a massive complex of storms going a little further off to the north, and I'm actually going to move this up north a little bit. You can see lots of morning convection up here. We're talking about, you know, lots of severe weather, damaging winds, large hail, possibly a low-end tornado risk. That's kind of uncertain though, and as we continue to forward the clock here, we're talking about a pretty significant mesoscale convective system here moving into the morning hours, you know, say across Illinois going into Chicago, going even into the early afternoon hours. But what's about to happen next is going to be a little bit concerning here. So you have this morning convection that moves across the area, but immediately behind it you have a ton of moisture recovery, atmospheric recovery, mainly due to the fact you're going to have a very strong lower level winds. So this is going to cause your moisture advection to rapidly accelerate and you get a massive clearing. Look at this. By time we reach 4 to 5:00 in the evening, we have fully discrete supercells out here in the portions of eastern Indiana, northeastern Indiana there. Those may be a bit elevated, but we'll drill down to the surface through time as conditions become more favorable. You have a line of supercells beginning to erupt here across portions of central to northern Illinois.

[00:08:32]However, all of these cells kind of right up in this area will be a lot more elevated in nature, only promoting a damaging wind and potentially a very large hail risk. We'll see, you know, how large our hail can get, but that will be north of the warm front where conditions will not be surface based, will not be favorable for tornadoes.

[00:08:49]Look at this though. We are talking about an intense to a violent long-track tornado threat here. You have this supercell forming in northern Illinois.

[00:08:58]You have all these other storms and supercells forming along your dry line here. That's going to be a big problem.

[00:09:05]And this storm right here would definitely promote a strong to intense tornado threat. You have all of this kind of elevated junk up off to the north, but if we see our warm front lift any further north, these will definitely promote an intense to maybe violent tornado risk though. We'll have to wait and see as time progresses. And as we move a little later on in time, we now have a line of supercells capable of producing strong to intense tornadoes.

[00:09:31]We have a ton of supercells dotted up across the dry line right here. And then over here, again, you still have more of your elevated convection becoming gradually more surface-based with time.

[00:09:42]And if your warm front lifts too far north, your tornado threat is going to explode in those areas. There we go.

[00:09:48]Another intense to violent long-track tornado threat right there with that supercell. More of an intense tornado risk down to the south as well. And then we even have some more intense supercells trying to form behind that as well as our cold front approaches. We could have multiple rounds of intense tornado-producing supercells tomorrow.

[00:10:07]So you all need to stay hyper very extremely weather aware. Strong tornado risk will exist going all the way down here along the cold front {slash} dry line. That would actually be the dry line. That's your cold front line.

[00:10:19]Trying to get my bearings straight. And again, more supercells explode up there and that really continues on through.

[00:10:25]Again, you have another potentially intense tornado threat that develops a little bit later on going into central Indiana there in central Illinois. We have got a lot going on tomorrow, folks.

[00:10:36]And this kind of congeals up into a line and you still have tornado potential probably going all the way till, you know, say 1 to 3:00 a.m. Thursday morning. Now, I want to do something real quick and I want to measure just how long of a distance these supercells can track for. I'm looking at this one located near Streator and that town name sounds very familiar cuz they just got hit by a tornado. That supercell very intense moving on through. That would definitely be an intense, maybe even a violent tornado threat. And so it kind of dies around like, say, the Logansport area. So if we kind of take a look at this from this area here near Streator all the way to Logansport, we are talking about a intense supercell tracking 150 mi in length in a very short amount of time.

[00:11:20]So you're going to have very fast storm motions as well. And so long-track tornadoes is definitely on the table and is a pretty significant threat tomorrow.

[00:11:28]Now, we're going to go ahead and take a look at our surface dew points and this video is going to be a little longer than normal. As you can see, I do have the red borders out, which means this is going to be a level of concern of a five, in my opinion. So, we do have to spend a little bit more time discussing the details with our dew points here.

[00:11:44]You do have upwards of dew points in the upper 60s to low 70s affecting off to the north. We are seeing significant over mixing on the HRRR right down here.

[00:11:54]I do expect dew points to be a lot higher there, probably in the low 70s instead of the mid-60s. So, that is probably going to cause our threat to uptrend at the last second on say our HRRR model, and is probably going to break weather Twitter tomorrow morning.

[00:12:10]But, we're seeing this lifting off to the north, and where your warm front is situated is probably going to be right along right within here.

[00:12:19]And so, we're going to be talking about supercells kind of trying to ride along that. And so, if we got to watch out for that, because we're going to have a lot of helicity there, and I'm going to show you all that in just a minute. But, very favorable dew points up and down the dry line, cuz I got to remember where a cold front is located. So, even in your open warm sector, we're also talking about low to mid-70° dew points even going much further off to the south in time.

[00:12:44]So, we have a very ripe, very rich environment out there, for sure. In terms of our actual storm energy, it really builds in. You can see exactly where a warm front is lifting. Again, this is just really over mixed. We're probably going to see upwards of 2,000 cape down there. Again, that is going to heighten your risk of tornadoes and severe weather even more than already forecasted. We're also talking about a lot of cape back in these areas right within here, upwards of 4,000. And then, of course, in your open warm sector, around 2,500, which is sufficient enough for significant severe weather activity.

[00:13:19]I do expect that to uptrend, as well.

[00:13:21]And so, that continues on through.

[00:13:23]You'll have your supercells exploding in that environment. Again, that is being a little bit underdone there in my opinion, but certainly a good environment. 0 to 3 km cape here, this is a good tool to identify where your tornadoes may occur, and you can see where your warm front is. This right within here, we do have some good three cape values that could definitely support discrete supercell initiation in your open warm sector. We have to watch out very closely for that.

[00:13:50]And yeah, I mean, you definitely have sufficient values there. Back here along your cold front, you have some good values as well, and so we're just going to have to kind of monitor these things.

[00:13:59]Your storm relative helicity is going to be very elevated out there. We're talking about our morning round of storms that will have helicity in the air. Most of those will be elevated. As we head into the afternoon, though, things begin to crank a lot more. We're talking between fourth 400 to 500 storm relative helicity at the 0 to 1 km level across some of these areas in here. That is suitable for violent tornadoes. I mean, they do occur in that particular kind of environment. And this really begins to explode a lot more as we head into the evening hours. And again, if our warm front can get a lot further off to the north and track through these areas here, we are going to have a very big problems. Again, if a supercell latches onto your warm front in that environment with 700 to 800 0 to 1 km storm relative helicity, violent tornadoes are certainly on the table immediately. So, we need to watch out for this.

[00:14:55]And this even extends a little bit further off to the south. Like you have that supercell there in your Fort Wayne.

[00:15:00]That is in a very volatile environment.

[00:15:02]That would be a very big problem.

[00:15:04]And so, again, this continues throughout the night. It leaks It leaks a little further off to the south. And again, even when it gets dark out, look at this. Still intense tornado ingredients all the way down there in your Indianapolis. And I mean, that really just continues. This is going to be a really rough day ahead. Supercell composite parameters here to give you a good idea, a better look at the environment I should say. Your most volatile conditions are going to be right within this area here. That's what you know, everyone is generally thinking. Basically where the moderate risk is being put and that increases even more. That is a very stunning environment there. I mean, wow. It is continuing on through. This just continues to kind of have that look to it. Significant tornado parameter values. You can see exactly where tornado hotspots will be. Notice how they're very close to that warm front and again cuz you're going to have southerly surface winds in some of those areas. It's going to lead to a lot of turning with height. I've directional shear. A lot of speed shear as well.

[00:16:05]Almost maxed out there near Kankakee.

[00:16:07]That is going to be very serious and it gets a little bit larger, you know, the area of coverage. And finally by the time we reach 9:00 to 10:00 things wind down a bit, but it's not going to fully be over. Like I said, till 2:00 to 3:00 in the morning. So now we're going to quickly switch gears and take a look at potential tropical cyclone 1 as it will cause a ton of flooding across the southeast. You can see it emerging off of Texas. It actually formed over land, which is kind of crazy to think about.

[00:16:33]But you can see it. We're looking at our RRFS model here and we're going to look at our rainfall in just a minute. You can see it kind of trying to make landfall there as we head into tomorrow night. When our tornado outbreak is going on. There's a lot happening tomorrow. My goodness. Also we could be talking about tornadoes tomorrow across portions of southern Louisiana. I'm not expecting too much of a risk though. You never know with tropical systems, right?

[00:16:57]You could see an over performance quite easily. But torrential, really heavy rainfall down there. And that's going to be lasting for a very long amount of time. Look at that. It kind of turns into a bit of a severe weather risk as well. You see we have a squall line begin to develop and a ton, a ton of rainfall there. Look at this. It actually tries this tropical system tries to strengthen over land right there. That is quite astonishing for sure. So, you're going to have a heavy rainfall potentially making the ground very unstable. We could maybe even see some trees falling down possibly. I'm not really forecasting that as of yet, but again, that much rainfall and a little bit of wind could definitely cause that to happen. In terms of how much rainfall you might be seeing out of future tropical storm Arthur, this is kind of crazy here. Look at these totals here. Now, this is going to either shift up to the north a little bit, maybe shift to the south a little bit. We're kind of still a bit uncertain on this, honestly, but we are seeing here totals really between 5 to maybe even 12 in of rain by the time this is all said and done. So, significant, you know, potentially even life-threatening flash flooding will be possible, you know, if not even likely for some areas. You see some of our absolute high-end totals down there approaching even 16 in of rain. So, you all need to stay very weather aware out there. This could definitely cause significant impacts.

[00:18:23]And you can see from the National Hurricane Center's cone of uncertainty, we do have tropical storm watches and tropical storm warnings out here for eastern Texas and southern Louisiana.

[00:18:32]And I really don't want to spend much time on this because I've already kind of ran out of time in this video. But this is the HWRF, the HWRF model here showing tropical storm Arthur becoming a little bit, well, you know, consolidated here as we head into tomorrow morning into tomorrow afternoon. Very good lower-level pressure of 1,000 millibars. You have all your inner and outer bands out here kind of streaming up to the north. And again, this is why there's a tornado risk. You could see some of these making it onshore and kind of spinning a little bit, so that could definitely be a problem. And so, New Orleans, you also need to watch out tomorrow. In terms of our winds here, we do in fact meet tropical storm criteria right there.

[00:19:11]We're talking about sustained winds of around 50 mph on this particular model.

[00:19:16]Not all the way around the system, so again, probably 40 mph at absolute peak.

[00:19:21]So, that's kind of something to keep in mind. And so, you definitely could see some strong gusty winds when this thing makes landfall, you know, right over in those areas. And I did want to show you all beautiful satellite imagery here of future tropical storm Arthur. You can see it is rotating, spinning quite a lot over land right now. Very strong wind shear here kind of ripping out your upper-level clouds and pushing them off to the northeast there. So, this is not expected to become anything crazy, not a hurricane or anything, just a low-end tropical storm. And with that being said, everyone, thank you all so much for tuning into today's rather lengthy video. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you did, please be sure to smash that like button, subscribe to my old corner of weather community, share this video with friends, family on social media. Share, share, share. Tomorrow does look like a really rough day ahead. That said, have a wonderful night, everyone. Stay extraordinarily weather aware. Turn on your emergency alerts on your phone, and also turn on your weather radio so you know when alerts are issued, and so you know if there's a tornado heading your direction. I'll see you all back here very soon.