By Alex Sosnowski, Expert Senior Meteorologist
April 3,2014; 8:55PM,EDT
As a multiple-day severe weather event continues, 43 million people will be at risk for violent and dangerous storms into Thursday night from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio Valley. The severe weather risk will stretch along a nearly 1,000-mile-long swath.
Following the significant round of severe weather from Wednesday, the atmosphere will continue to energize into the nighttime hours, adding to this dangerous situation.
There are many communities at risk for severe weather. Major cities in or near the alert area include Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas; Shreveport, La.; Tulsa, Okla.; Little Rock and Fort Smith, Ark.; St. Louis, Springfield, and Kansas City, Mo.; Peoria, Ill.; Tupelo, Miss.; Memphis and Nashville, Tenn.; Paducah, Lexington and Louisville, Ky.; Evansville and Indianapolis, Ind.; and Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus, Ohio.
According to Severe Weather Expert Henry Margusity, "Thursday into Thursday night will be for severe weather with risks ranging from damaging wind gusts and large hail to flash flooding and tornadoes spanning multiple states."
During the past two days over parts of the Central states, hail up to the size of golf balls and baseballs has fallen and caused damage. From 2 to 6 inches of rain has fallen over parts of Missouri and Illinois. The landscape is primed for more significant flooding events as more storms ramp up.
The setup into Thursday night is very complex, and there will be clusters and lines of severe thunderstorms over a broad area.
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According to AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Executive Mike Smith, "We've already had a damaging tornado this morning at University City, Mo., (suburb of St. Louis), which might be called Mother Nature's warning shot."
Tornadoes could be scattered about parts of Texas, the central and southern Plains and the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, ahead an advancing cold front.
"If you live in the southern half of Missouri, southern Illinois, western Kentucky, western Tennessee and Arkansas, you need to be paying very close attention to the weather," Smith said. "The first tornadoes Thursday afternoon may fire over southwestern Missouri to bordering areas of Kansas."
Flight delays may be extensive well into Thursday night as the storms approach and pass through many airline hubs. Travel along highways from I-10 to I-70 in the Central states could be dangerous, slow and disrupted for a time.
According to Severe Weather Meteorologist Scott Breit, "Some of the wind gusts in the storms not associated with tornadoes can reach 75 mph."
Winds of this strength can easily push trees into homes, damage roofs and send objects airborne.
The threat of severe weather will continue to push eastward into Friday and may reach areas from the lower Great Lakes to the southern Appalachians.
April 3 and 4 mark the 40th anniversary of the Super Tornado Outbreak of April 1974, which was centered on the Ohio and Tennessee valleys. The severe weather outbreak from 1974 was one of the worst such events in U.S. history and yielded nearly 150 tornadoes, including seven F5 tornadoes with estimated winds topping 260 mph. The storms caused more than 300 fatalities.
The number of tornadoes spanning this Thursday into Friday is forecast to fall well short of the event from 40 years ago. However, even one tornado hitting a populated area has the potential to bring disaster and great loss of life.
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