Thunderstorms will carve a path through the central United States, bringing multiple days of severe weather that kicks off on Saturday, continues into Sunday and peaks with the most widespread and adverse conditions on Monday, forecasters say.
The rounds of storms are expected to deliver a barrage of weather hazards, including damaging winds of more than 75 miles per hour, hail as large as softballs, bursts of heavy rain and strong tornadoes from Texas to the Great Lakes.
“This is certainly looking like one of the bigger severe weather sequences this year so far,” Andrew Lyons, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center, said on Saturday morning.
Some areas will be at a higher risk for the most severe weather than others, and the National Weather Service advised that people living in areas threatened by thunderstorms keep an eye out for watches and warnings, especially those alerting of tornadoes.
A tornado watch is a heads-up that conditions are favorable for tornadoes, while a warning is an order to find shelter immediately because a tornado is about to form or has already been spotted.
Here’s a day-by-day look at what to expect.
Damaging Winds Possible on Saturday
A risk of severe storms was focused over parts of the Central Plains and the Midwest on Saturday, and was expected to continue overnight.
By late afternoon thunderstorms had developed across portions of southern Iowa, northern Missouri and western Illinois, where there were reports of lightning, hail as large as golf balls and damaging winds that knocked over trees. Storm activity had also started over northeast Colorado, southern Nebraska and northern Kansas, the area with the highest prospect of unsettled weather on Saturday.
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