Tornado Outbreak Likely Saturday Across South
An early-season outbreak of tornadoes is likely to occur on Saturday across the Mid-South and Deep South, the result of a plethora of weather systems crashing together at once.
An unusually strong area of low pressure is advancing through the Mississippi Valley tonight, with a strong cold front stretching southward into Louisiana. As that low moves into the Great Lakes overnight, a new low pressure system will take shape along the tail end of the front.
This second low will continue to strengthen as we reach the daylight hours on Saturday, pulling Gulf moisture northward to interact with a slightly drier air mass left in the Ohio Valley by today’s cold front. The combination of these two air masses will have grave implications for much of the South.
The national Storm Prediction Center has labeled this threat to be a High Risk for damaging thunderstorms and tornadoes across east-central Mississippi and central Alabama. This area, largely overlapping the Interstate 20 corridor from Jackson, Miss., to Birmingham, Ala., is most likely to see waves of violent tornadoes, including some capable of tracking on the ground for 100 miles or more. This is the top-level category that the SPC can place, and this is only the third time that they have used this category on the day preceding the storms.
A Moderate Risk for severe storms and tornadoes exists from the Mississippi Delta to the Florida Panhandle and western Georgia. In addition to the potential for tornadoes, very large hail to the size of baseballs, and wind gusts in excess of 80 mph are also likely in the High and Moderate Risk areas. This includes metro New Orleans, Mobile and Huntsville, Ala., and the western suburbs of Atlanta.
The risks continue to ebb outward across the Mid-South and into the central Ohio Valley, where 60 to 70 mph wind gusts, golf ball sized hail and a few tornadoes could be found as far north as Louisville, Ky., as far east as Charlotte, N.C., and as far south as Tallahassee, Fla.
Residents of the South are urged to have a plan in place for Saturday so that they can reach safety when these storms do start to develop. Have a weather radio with you at all times, and listen for warnings that may very quickly develop. It is not out of the question that the storms could approach the levels of the April 2011 outbreak that wreaked havoc on Tuscaloosa, Ala.
