Severe Storms to Ramp Up in Central US Next Week

By Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist

April 30,2015; 10:51PM,EDT

 

 

After a several-day lull in severe weather, the risk of damaging and dangerous storms is forecast to ramp up in the Midwest and northern Plains and return to Texas and the southern Plains early next week.
The expanding risk of severe weather could not only bring disruptions to ballgames and agriculture in the region, but could have significant consequences for travel and pose risks to lives and property.
Almost summerlike warmth will build over much of the Central and Eastern states ahead of an approaching storm system this weekend into early next week.
A cool front dropping in from Canada will lift that warm air over part of the northern Plains and the Upper Midwest, leading to showers and thunderstorms Sunday into Monday.
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The storms can first become severe from parts of central and southern Minnesota to central and northern Wisconsin later Sunday afternoon. The storms will bring the potential for large hail and damaging wind gusts. The risk of severe weather may include the Minneapolis area.

As the front sags southward, the threat of severe thunderstorms will dip into portions of Iowa, southern Wisconsin and perhaps part of the lower Michigan Peninsula Sunday night into Monday. Locally severe storms are possible in Des Moines, Iowa, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Storms could reach as far south as Chicago and as far east as Detroit.
The main event of severe weather next week will begin over parts of western Texas and the southern High Plains on Monday.

According to Paul Pastelok, AccuWeather.com chief long-range meteorologist, "Unlike the last severe weather event which pushed eastward over the Deep South, the severe weather next week will expand northward and northeastward over the Plains and part of the Midwest."
Weather systems will not progress quickly from west to east across the nation next week.
"A potential tropical or sub-tropical system along the east coast of Florida could help create an atmospheric traffic jam, forcing warmth to build from the Mississippi Valley to the Ohio Valley and much of the Northeast," Pastelok said.
Severe storms may fire on the rim of the warmth from west-central Texas to as far north as Illinois on Tuesday.
The atmospheric traffic jam could result in a large south-to-north swath of severe weather by Wednesday.
According to AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Becky Elliot, as a storm system attempts to move out of the Rockies and into a zone of building warmth and humidity, severe weather could become very extensive on Wednesday.
"Strong to locally severe storms could fire from Texas all the way to North Dakota and Minnesota," Elliot said.
Just as the development of the tropical system have to be monitored for impact on Florida and part of the southern Atlantic Seaboard, so will the expanding risk of severe weather next week for Texas, the Plains and Midwest. The severe weather threat next week could encompass an area of more than 1,000 miles.
It is too early to say if the outbreak of severe weather will include a significant number of tornadoes, but there are likely to be a number of storms with strong wind gusts and hail. Where storms repeat, there will be the potential for flash flooding.