National Weather Service Regional Office

• Home
• Site Map
• News
• Organization
• Search for: NWS All NOAA 

Kansas City, Mo. – Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012 – NOAA forecasters said the middle of the country will see its second day of blustery winds over the High Plains today. Winds will stay strong through tonight and should finally begin a gradual calm through Friday.

On Wednesday, winds took roofs off buildings, uprooted trees, knocked down road signs and downed miles of electric and telephone lines.

Rain is expected today from the northern and central Plains to the Ohio Valley. Thunderstorms are possible in the northern Ohio Valley and eastern Kentucky. High temperatures will be in the 40s and 50s over much of the region with some locations from Kansas to Kentucky reaching the 60s.

Showers and thunderstorms are expected to stretch from central Pennsylvania to southern Florida and along the entire Gulf Coast from Florida to South Texas. The western half of the country will be mostly clear, except for some rain in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana).

Forecasters at NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center said there are no organized areas of severe weather in the outlook for the next several days.

The center did receive preliminary reports of five tornadoes Wednesday (2 in Arkansas and 3 in Mississippi) along with five reports of large hail and 89 reports of high winds.

See today’s Hazards Map at http://www.weather.gov/largemap.php and the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center threats map at http://origin.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/noaa/noaad1.gif.

Winds over the High Plains will still be forceful, but won’t be quite as strong as they were Wednesday, according to forecasters. For the second consecutive day, High Wind Warnings, Wind Advisories and Red Flag Warnings stretch from the Canadian border to southern Oklahoma. Expected conditions include:

• North Dakota – sustained winds around 40 mph with gusts to 65 mph in the western two-thirds of the state; winds at 25-35 mph in the eastern third of the state
• Minnesota – sustained winds of 25-35 mph along the North Dakota state line25-40 mph with gusts to 55 mph in the southwest corner of the state
• South Dakota – 30-50 mph winds with gusts to 60-70 mph
• Wyoming – 35-45 mph winds with gusts to 60 mph; in Red Flag area, 16 percent humidity, 57 degrees and high temperatures in the low 50s
• Nebraska – 35-50 mph winds with gusts to 65 mph in the western three-fourths of the state
• Kansas – winds at 25-35 mph with gusts to 45 mph in the west, 25-35 mph with gusts to 45 mph in the east, 35-45 with gusts of 50-65 mph in central areas
• Oklahoma – 40 mph winds in central and western parts of the state
• Iowa – 25-35 mph sustained winds in western third of the state, gusts of 45-50 mph
• Missouri – 25-35 mph sustained winds, gusts to 40 mph
• Arkansas – gusts to around 40 mph
• Kentucky – 30-40 mph in extreme western part of state

The middle of the country is also a bull’s-eye for wild fire possibilities, according to forecasters. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center has labeled a four-state part of the central Plains as a critical area for fire weather today. The area of concern includes extreme northeast Colorado, central and southern Nebraska east of the Panhandle, the western two-thirds of Kansas and extreme north-central Oklahoma. See NOAA graphic at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/fire_wx/index.html#Day1.

Storm Prediction Center forecasters said there is a Slight Risk of severe weather today along and inland of the Mid-Atlantic Coast – the only area currently showing organized severe weather potential. The risk area includes parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and the District of Columbia. See NOAA’s outlook graphic at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1otlk.html.

NOAA’s five-day precipitation outlooks may be found at http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/qpf/qpf2.shtml.

Local National Weather Service office web pages are available at http://weather.gov; select the desired location. All segments of the U.S. weather and flood forecasts and outlooks are available through the NOAAWatch briefing page at http://www.noaawatch.gov/briefing.php.

Contact:  Public Affairs Specialist Patrick Slattery (816) 268-3135