Frequent severe storms to increase flash flooding risk across central US

All forms of severe weather are expected across the south-central United States through late this week as a train of storms continues to rumble through the region. However, as the storms continue to march eastward, the risk of flash flooding will be greatest with the final storm, AccuWeather meteorologists say.

The storm that triggered everything from tornadoes to strong winds and very large hail over the southern Plains Monday evening pivoted through the Ohio and mid-Mississippi valleys into Tuesday evening. In addition to numerous reports of damaging wind gusts, the storms produced a report of 2.5 inch diameter hail, the size of a tennis ball, in Lancaster, Ohio. In Zanesville, Ohio, about 38 miles away, more hail could be seen falling:

Into Wednesday night, forecasters say the greatest severe weather danger will shift hundreds of miles farther to the west. A storm that recently moved ashore from the Pacific Ocean will dip well to the south over the Rockies before turning northeastward over the Plains. It is this southward dip that will allow thunderstorms to erupt and turn severe as far to the south as the Big Bend area of the Rio Grande River.

Showers and embedded severe thunderstorms erupted early Wednesday in southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. Into Wednesday evening, storms produced radar-confirmed tornadoes in Paducah, Texas, around the northern tip of the state, as well as in Dickens, Texas 60 miles southwest of the Paducah tornado. A tornado was also observed just outside of Maud, Oklahoma, located 60 miles east of Oklahoma City.

The city of Seminole, Oklahoma, already suffering structural damage from a tornado on Monday evening, had another tornado event on Wednesday evening. The immediate aftermath had some disastrous results for local buildings, with one brick building being almost completely blown away from the storm.

On Thursday, the threat of severe weather will shift farther to the east and encompass areas from eastern Texas to southern Missouri, western Kentucky and northern Mississippi.

"Rather than a significant number of individual storms, an intense line of thunderstorms is most likely on Thursday and Thursday evening, with damaging straight-line winds as the main threat," Johnson-Levine said.

"There can still be a few intense storms that produce tornadoes and large hail," Johnson-Levine cautioned.

More than 28 million are facing a severe weather risk Wednesday, while the number is substantially higher at over 37 million Thursday, according to the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center.

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Frequent rounds of rain have left the ground saturated and some small streams elevated across portions of central and eastern Kansas to much of Missouri, central and eastern Oklahoma, north-central Texas and western Arkansas. Around 1-3 inches of rain has fallen on parts of this region since this past weekend.

"With the upcoming round of downpours from Wednesday to Thursday set to target part of this zone, from 1-3 inches of rain can fall with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 8 inches," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said. The heavy rain could fall over the course of several hours and will easily be enough to cause flash flooding, Anderson added.

As the storm system pushes slowly eastward from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic region at the end of the week, a trailing cold front will slice into warm and humid air over the Southeast states. There will be the potential for heavy, gusty and isolated severe thunderstorms Friday from parts of Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia to southern portions of Alabama and Mississippi. While severe storms may be spaced farther apart on Friday than in previous days, damaging winds and hail will be a threat as the cold front pushes through the Southeast. In areas that receive repeated rounds of heavy rainfall, localized flash flooding is also possible.

Over the weekend, a new storm from the Pacific is forecast to take a track farther to the north over the Plains and may bring the threat of severe weather farther to the north over the Central states Sunday and Monday. With this northward shift in the storm track, chances for thunderstorms and heavy rain in the southern Plains may decrease into next week.

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