Big Severe Weather Outbreak In Nation's South, Central Areas Today

Severe storm in Oklahoma last night as
the current severe weather outbreak got underway.  

UPDATE; Those tornadic supercells and storms I worried would form ahead of the main band of storms with the current severe outbreak appeared to be forming as of noon.

Tornado warnings were beginning to sprout in storms east of teh squall line in eastern Arkansas and western Mississippi.

The threat of tornadoes will grow over the next couple of hours.

Already, we have at least one tornado death to report, unfortunately, in Ashdown, Arkansas.

We hope things don't get any deadlier.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: Early Monday morning, there was a tornado watch covering most of Arkansas, northern Louisiana and part of East Texas.

That's pretty unusual since most tornadoes come in the afternoon and evening. Plus, October isn't really prime season for tornadoes.

Spring is the big tornado season.

But every once in awhile, you get a really dynamic, energetic storm system in the autumn, and you get a widespread severe weather outbreak. That's what's happening today.

This spell of dangerous weather actually started yesterday and especially last evening. There were more than 80 reports of damaging winds and big hail, mostly in Texas and Oklahoma, but extending as far east as Tennessee and Alabama. Winds gusted into the 75 to 80 mph range in a few Southern Plains towns.

Today, things will get worse. 

There was a wicked squall line with severe storms in western Arkansas and northeastern Texas early Monday morning. That will move east today, bringing a threat of widespread strong winds and damage all the way into Tennessee.  If anything, the storms along the squall line will get stronger as the day goes on.

Straight line winds are the main threat today, but that's as big a threat as tornadoes, as we saw with a microburst in Massachusetts last week.

Still, some of the storms in the squall line will start to spin, creating the risk of tornadoes. And a few supercell storms might get going ahead of the squall line, and those could create a couple strong, long lasting tornadoes.

So the southern Mississippi Valley is kind of screwed today. People living there ought to look to the skies, and take any storms they see coming seriously. It'll also be a good idea to keep a weather radio or other media handy so you can hear warnings right away.

The severe weather will continue on into the southeastern United States for Tuesday. As dangerous as the weather will be there, the strong winds and tornadoes won't be quite as widespread as today.

In addition to the severe weather threat, heavy rains are likely in a lot of the storms in and around Tennesee, so flash flooding is going to be a problem in some spots.

The storm system causing all the rough weather will only trudge slowly toward the northeast, so wet weather won't hit the East Coast until the Wednesday through Friday time frame.  There could be areas of heavy rain when this hits the East, but there will only be a few severe storms, I think.

As I noted, big tornado and severe weather outbreaks aren't that common in the fall, but they do happen. Just last November, a flurry of severe tornadoes caused widespread destruction in the Midwest.

In that outbreak 73 tornadoes caused 11 deaths across the Midwest.

Here's a video of the storms as they developed in Kansas last night. Looks like quite a bit of hail: