A rare “particularly dangerous situation” tornado watch is in effect across several states, warning “several tornadoes and few intense likely.”
The heightened tornado watch covers parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee, including cities like St. Louis and Jefferson City, Missouri, Paducah, Kentucky, and Carbondale, Illinois.
This tornado watch is only issued when there’s unusually high confidence in the potential of multiple at least EF2-strength and long-lived tornadoes in the area, according to the National Weather Service.
And nocturnal tornadoes are often more deadly because it is harder to get warning messages out while people are asleep.
This tornado watch includes about 4.7 million people, bringing the total number of Americans under tornado watches Sunday evening to more than 7 million.
The supercell thunderstorms firing up in the watch area will also be capable of large hail –bigger than the size of baseballs — and damaging wind gusts reaching up to 75 mph.
“Intense supercell thunderstorms will continue to develop across the watch area through this evening. Several tornadoes are likely, some of which are expected to be intense. Very large hail is also likely, along with the risk for potentially significant damaging wind gusts,” the Storm Prediction Center said.
