The severe weather that killed 32 from the South to the Midwest over the weekend is gone, but another round of thunderstorms was aiming for nearly the same area Tuesday.
Federal forecasters on Monday said a thunderous front of wind, lightning, hail and rain, with tornadoes possible, will sweep into the eastern third of the nation Tuesday afternoon and overnight into Wednesday.
A diagonal line from Illinois to eastern Texas, much like the tornado-producing front that struck Friday night and Saturday morning, was expected to form and move south and east, bringing with it unsettled weather that’s not unusual for the area this time of year.
However, there’s the added possibility that tornadoes as strong as EF-2, with sustained winds of 111 mph, could form as cold air from the north and warm, relatively wet air from the Gulf of Mexico clashes explosively, forecasters said.
If strong winds aloft change direction and dive, and supercells and then mesocyclones produce telltale vertical, thunderous, and spinning storms, the system will have created fertile conditions for tornadoes, they said.
“If they do form,” National Weather Service meteorologist Melissa Byrd said of thunderstorms, “they were have the potential for very large-scale and strong tornadoes.”
An estimated 35 million people will be in the path of the front, according to NBC News’ weather unit. And as it marches east, into Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and other states in its path, 58 million could be impacted.
The worst weather was likely to materialize along a vertical line from Des Moines, Iowa to Little Rock, Arkansas, the National Weather Service said.
Springfield, Missouri, will join Iowa’s Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Waterloo, and Iowa City, in being targeted for the worst of the front, what the weather service describes as having a moderate risk of severe thunderstorms.
“Strong tornadoes and particularly damaging winds are expected,” the weather service said in an outlook report Monday. “Both afternoon…
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