More than 5.4 million people across the Southern Plains are under a high threat of violent tornados Monday, with 1.4 million facing at least a 45% chance of a deadly storm.
“It’s about as volatile as a situation as I can remember seeing and it’s on the anniversary of the most recent EF-5 tornado in Moore,” Bill Bunting, Chief of Forecast Operations at Storm Prediction Center tells TIME.
PDS Tornado Watch # 199 is coming for Oklahoma. This is only the second watch in SPC history where every category of watch probabilities (torn, wind, hail) are at greater than 95%.
The Storm Prediction Center said that following the tornadoes, there will also be more isolated and potentially dangerous severe weather––including baseball-size hail and flash flooding––in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas.
School districts across Oklahoma have cancelled classes on Monday in anticipation of the storm.
Almost 120,000 square miles––from Lubbock, Texas through Oklahoma to northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri––faced a significant threat of tornadoes forming on Monday.
Bunting says the tornados could produce winds of up to 200 mph, capable of causing serious damage anywhere they hit.
“If the tornadoes hit only open fields that would be incredibly fortunate, but it can be catastrophic so that is a reason it’s important to monitor forecasts” he says.
Justin Sullivan—Getty ImagesAn American flag flies from a damaged car that sits in the driveway of a home that was damaged by a tornado on June 2, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. Residents of Moore, Oklahoma continue to recover and sift through the remains of their homes two weeks after a devastating EF-5 tornado ripped through the town killing 24 people and destroying hundreds of homes and businesses.
According to Bunting, the volatile storm system and high threat of tornadoes is a result of an unusual combination of extreme instability in the atmosphere and very strong wind shears that are reaching speeds of up to 100 mph. He says a cap––a layer of warm air that usually helps suppress tornadoes––was not present Monday, creating perfect conditions for possible tornadoes to grow stronger.
Bunting says tornadoes that form Monday will “definitely” be capable of causing similar damage to the storm that hit Moore on May 20, 2013. Any tornados that form are likely to do so between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. local time, when it’s expected there will be multiple rounds of tornadoes followed by “catastrophic” flash flooding.
“We could easily see 5 to 10 inches [of rain] today and tonight in parts of Oklahoma,” Bunting says. “This was a wet spring so the rivers are already high, and we’ve already had flooding so the rivers can’t really take additional rainfall. The flooding is as serious of threat as this afternoon’s storm.”
The Storm Prediction Center advised residents in areas with tornado warnings to “move to a place of safety, ideally in a basement or interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building.”
The National Weather Service office in Norman stressed that residents “not let their guard down” on Monday night because severe storms and flooding will still be a problem overnight into Tuesday morning.
Here's a link to a quick 90 second video that summarizes our thoughts on the severe storms and flooding expected tomorrow (Monday) through Tuesday morning. https://t.co/g45uTva6qS
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