Severe storms were continuing to move through the mid-Mississippi and Ohio Valleys on Monday, with the weather pattern still capable of producing very large tornadoes, including EF3+ twisters, overnight into early Tuesday. Baseball-sized hail and damaging wind gusts were also expected as the outbreak pressed east.
The storms were already being blamed for two deaths, and forecasters said the greatest threat stretched from northeastern Texas to Arkansas and Mississippi, where large to very large hail, swaths of damaging wind and a few tornadoes were possible. Cities including Dallas, Little Rock, Shreveport, Jackson, Memphis, Nashville and Birmingham were told to watch the weather carefully.
Storms capable of producing very large hail, a few tornadoes, damaging winds and some flooding were impacting the mid-Mississippi River Valley and Ohio River Valley, and the severe weather was expected to persist overnight into the early morning hours of Tuesday. The front was also expected to keep driving severe storms across parts of the mid-South on Tuesday before the severe threat began to wind down on Wednesday.
The danger did not end with tornadoes. More than an inch of additional rain was expected in much of the Midwest through Monday, with isolated flash flooding possible and flood watches remaining in effect until Monday evening, including the Kansas City metro. Rivers already in flood stage could fall more slowly because of the added rain, while parts of the Great Lakes, still saturated from deluges last week and earlier this spring, faced more periods of rain as the same stormy pattern continued.
By Wednesday, the severe threat was expected to ease, though storms could still affect portions of the Deep South and mid-Atlantic before the front cleared the Southeast and pushed offshore. That leaves the immediate answer to the question posed by the fast-moving outbreak: the weather remains dangerous now, and the worst of it is not yet over.
