by-products, and artificial preservatives in all of our meat. every. single. one. why? for the love of hot dogs. there s some violent weather a major problem over the holiday weekend. missouri out of the woods after a severe storm produced heavy rain, damaging winds and at least one tornado, and then just look at this, south of st. louis, a storm downing trees, knocking out power to over 2,700 customers. winds there gusting up to about 80 miles an hour in certain parts of missouri. near kansas city large hail, look at that. it s the size of a softball. look at that the softball there in the middle on the left. really wild where and moving east. bonnie schneider is looking out for all of us with the radar maps. the hail incredible, softball sized hail. yes. a vigorous storm system not
tomorrow and wednesday morning at 6:00 a.m. first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. we end february talking about tornadoes. seems like we haven t had much in the winter storms and dealt with severe weather than anything else and do it again. today, not so bad. heavy rain through mississippi and tennessee. watch out around new orleans, mobile, maybe isolated severe storms. tomorrow the tornadoes are in the forecast. little rock to memphis and south of st. louis. this is tuesday. then we take that storm and blow it all the way to the eastern seaboard. this is the wednesday map. this is 62 million people under the risk of severe storm. mostly wind damage and isolated tornadoes and tennessee, northern alabama, mississippi and we could see the strong thunderstorms heading all the way into areas like washington, d.c. by the time we get to wednesday afternoon. so, again, this is going to be tomorrow and then into the first day of march on wednesday dealing with severe weather acro
advisories. look who is here, jacqui jeras, good to see you, where are you homed in now. week focusing in on the nation s midsection. thousands of people are waking up without power now. numerous accidents being reported especially in the southern parts of missouri. you can see it covers a lot of real estate from texas shooting all the way up into minnesota and even into the mid-atlantic states. we want to focus in on the state of missouri. notice, by the way, we ve got a couple strikes of lightning. that gives you the idea of the intensity of this storm system and that can put down a lot of freezing rain. when i m talking about freezing rain that comes down as liquid and ices everything on contact. it covers the roadways. it covers the power lines. it just covers everything and makes it very hazardous. keep in mind as you re heading out the door to walk the dog, are very careful. a lot of reports of freezing rain has been south of st. louis
some issues. there s thousands quite worried. all of the tributaries continue to feed into the mississippi. even though the number of river gauges has dropped in half, it was over 438, now down to 238, really it s going to be from cape girardeau southward. and the big story s going to be what happens when the arkansas river starts to feed the mississippi. let s break it down a little bit. south of st. louis, cape girardeau, already reaching their crest, 30 homes and businesses destroyed. just south of there, we have had a levee break but thieves, illinois, they broke the all-time report at 47.7. if the numbers in cairo get to near 60, the army corps of engineers has to blast out waterways to relieve pressure. then down to the south, as we go down from there, toward what we re seeing, rivers from the arkansas move in. this could be quite interesting. the defenses are fortified in the memphis region. we re looking at moderate flooding.
7 million people in 15 states are under flood warnings, this as floodwaters are peaking near parts of illinois but are starting to approach some structures in memphis, tennessee. let s bring meteorologist tom satyr into the equation here. which areas downstream are going to be hit likely next? well, south of st. louis is cape girardeau in the boot he ll. from there southward things will get interesting because there are so many rivers that continue to feed the mighty mississippi and one of those in particular is of course the arkansas river, which is flooding a number of areas. so as far as flood warnings, those river spots that we ve been talking about in the last week, we have dropped the number in half. we were over 438 different spots of numerous rivers. but again the concern is the mississippi. president obama citing an emergency declaration for federal funds for those in missouri and that s good news, but cape girardeau, which has a 50-foot floodwall, just