Damaging Winds and Flash-Flood Risk Grow as Central U.S. Storms Form Long Squall Lines

Overview

• Following Monday night's tornadic supercells, the Storm Prediction Center on Tuesday highlighted a long squall line from Iowa into Kansas producing severe winds with occasional brief, embedded tornadoes.
• The center issued Severe Thunderstorm Watch 229 overnight for southeast Kansas into far northeast Oklahoma and far southwest Missouri, warning of 70 mph gusts, isolated 1.5 inch hail, and a low chance of a line-embedded tornado.
• The Weather Prediction Center warned of training downpours from southern Missouri through southern Illinois and Indiana and later into northeast Oklahoma and adjacent states, citing 1 to 2 inches per hour and localized 2 to 4 inch totals that could trigger flash flooding.
• In West Central Texas, SPC posted Watch 232 as storms intensified with large hail up to 2.5 inches and damaging winds likely, following golf-ball hail near San Angelo and slow-moving cells that could grow into a larger complex.
• Farther east, forecasters noted clusters from Indiana into Ohio capable of damaging gusts and flagged isolated strong storms in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, reflecting a transition from discrete hail-producing cells to bowing lines that concentrate straight-line wind damage and set up training rain bands.