Central US Severe Weather Threat to Ramp Up Tuesday

By Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist

April 7,2015; 11:52AM,EDT

 

 

The risk of severe weather will ramp up into Tuesday night across portions of the Central United States and includes some major metro areas.
While the prime days for severe weather this week will be centered on Wednesday and Thursday, a few storms at the local level into Tuesday night will bring risks to lives and property.
People should keep an eye out for rapidly changing weather conditions and seek shelter indoors as storms approach.

Where the storms pass through or fire up in the general vicinity of major metro areas, such as St. Louis, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Dallas and Louisville, Kentucky, there can be significant disruptions for highway and airline passengers.
A zone of drenching, gusty thunderstorms will affect parts of the middle Mississippi and Ohio valleys into Tuesday evening. A few locations can be hit with a more robust thunderstorm that brings large hail, damaging wind gusts and frequent lightning. Some communities on the Plains and Midwest can be hit with flooding.
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The storms on Tuesday will extend from parts of southeastern Missouri to southern Illinois and into southern Indiana, Kentucky, southern Ohio and western and southern West Virginia.
Farther west, storms will ignite and become locally severe from Tuesday afternoon into early Tuesday night from central Missouri, southwestward to north-central Texas.

The main threats from the storms on the Plains will range from large hail and damaging wind gusts, frequent lightning strikes and perhaps a couple of tornadoes.
The threat for severe storms and an increased risk of tornadoes will persist in the Central U.S. Wednesday into Thursday.