AccuWeather meteorologists are tracking several more thunderstorm complexes that are expected to bring high winds and hail across portions of the Plains states into the weekend. Severe thunderstorms have been erupting with a regular cadence across the middle of the nation over the past several weeks, hitting some communities on consecutive days while sparing others altogether. Downtown Chicago was one major metro area hit by damaging weather on Wednesday as a tornado-producing storm toppled larg
form and where do they form and how do they form? so generally in the atlantic they form off the coast of africa from disturbances, thunderstorm complexes that move off the coast of africa. irma is one of these cases, it developed off the coast of africa and was able to develop and stay very strong because of the environmental conditions around it. the atmosphere was very moist. the winds above it were pretty weak. it had a good environment in which to intensify and traverse the atlantic. professor, do you think that we are one of the things that happened with harvey was it almost sort of exceeded or neared the theoretical limit, what meteorologist and climateologists have predicted for the amount of water that it could hold, it bumping up our records. this hurricane has already set records in terms of maximum sustained wind for a period of time. are we going to see more records set?
areas like oak ok city and tulsa. today we re watching and adding areas to carolinas. it will be humid there. here s how hot it s going to get. you can go from 100 to san antonio to dallas, oklahoma is it, all the way through kansas to one of the hottest spots, st. louis. 103 degrees today. the mid-atlantic is also very hot. 95 in atlanta to charlotte, all the way through raleigh and d.c., and it s humid there too. the heat index will be above 100. new york city north ward, it gets cooler, and many areas outside the city won t be in the 90s. we re going to be watching thunderstorms. the last couple of days we ve had many thunderstorm complexes move through the northern plains. that s why we have a flash flooding risk that s very high today along with the severe weather threat. already some thunderstorms just south of chicago through northern indiana, and later on today we ll get a new complex of storms, 27 million people at risk from fargo to minneapolis, lacrosse, madison, and then do
you mentioned the winds the flash flooding and lightning. that s what we are seeing in ohio and kentucky. each yellow box is a severe thunderstorm warning. plenty of lightning. damaging winds going to be the big threat with these. a few stronger thunderstorms out ahead of the main line. this is the action through indianapolis, even chicago early this morning. starting up into parts of say, minnesota, minneapolis, late last night. here s the forecast. notice this system continues to push off towards the south and east and heading into west virginia and eastern kentucky. look at what happens through the evening. seeing more thunderstorms develop and by late tonight into the overnight, that s going to congeal into yet another one of the systems, wind producing thunderstorm complexes that will continue to drive southward as we go through the overnight and into tomorrow morning. we expect yet another actionive overnight period into the day
as they traverse through large areas of thunderstorm complexes. we ve got very dynamic updrafts and there s also cold air downdrafts. and that is exactly why we experience this turbulence. of course pilots are trained in their airline training to navigate around these storms to make you and i as comfortable as possible as we travel through the air. but with this amount of thunderstorm activity it s almost impossible to miss that area of thunderstorms. remember however, that turbulence is not what brings down thunderstorms, it s the pilot s reaction not turbulence that often leads to engine failures for instance as the auto pilot goes from cruising to manual. now this is again, the anatomy of a thunderstorm. and what we re talking about is ruffle around 20,000 feet is where we experience a freezing level. so if we have thunderstorms reaching well into the 30,000