Today is
Saturday April 19, 2025
(NEW YORK) -- More than 30 million Americans are on alert for severe weather this Easter weekend, as several states in the Heartland have already been slammed with tornadoes, hail and damaging winds.
The National Weather Service's office in Omaha, Nebraska, confirmed 5 tornadoes in the area on Thursday. The strongest of these was an EF-3 tornado that tracked across portions of Northern Douglas County and Southeast Washington County (about 11 miles north of Omaha). Two more tornadoes were confirmed in Nebraska, and the other two tornadoes were confirmed in Iowa.
On Friday, hail larger than tennis ball size was reported in Evansville and Edgerton, Wisconsin, with hail larger than golf ball size hail being reported elsewhere across southern Wisconsin. Downed trees and power lines were reported across portions of southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, southern Missouri, northwestern Arkansas, central Oklahoma, and northern Texas.
The severe weather threat for Saturday shifts focus to central Texas, southeast Oklahoma, northwest Arkansas, and southwestern Missouri, including the cities of Dallas and Abilene, Texas; Fort Smith and Texarkana, Arkansas; Norman, Oklahoma; and Springfield, Missouri.
The primary hazards for these thunderstorms will be damaging wind gusts and large hail, with a few isolated tornadoes possible, primarily for central Texas and southeastern Oklahoma.
The current batch of heavy rain and severe weather will continue across the area stretching from central Texas up to north-central Illinois until about midday Saturday, by which point it'll fizzle out.
By early evening Saturday, more storms will begin to fire up across central Texas, west of Dallas, and central Oklahoma.
Later Saturday, these broken lines of storms will start transitioning into messy bands of storms and showers. For the rest of the overnight from here, the main concern will shift from severe storms to heavy rain and potential flash flooding in the region.
The severe weather activity ramps up on Sunday for areas to the east. The severe weather threat for then will be focused on parts of far northeastern Texas, far northwestern Louisiana, eastern Oklahoma, most of Arkansas and Missouri, and southwestern Illinois.
The primary threats for Sunday's severe weather will be damaging wind gusts, large hail, and tornadoes, with the greatest damaging wind gust and tornado potential centered over portions of northern Arkansas into Missouri and far west-central Illinois.
Flash flood threat for Plains, Mississippi Valley
Because of the slow nature of this storm system, an increasing flash flooding threat will be present throughout the holiday weekend for parts of the Plains and Mississippi Valley as heavy rain will track over the same areas for a few days.
Flood Watches are in effect across portions of northern Texas, east-central Oklahoma, northwestern Arkansas, southeastern Kansas, south-central Missouri, and southwestern Illinois.
Winter storm and fire weather threats
The same system that is bringing wet and stormy weather for the Plains and Midwest is also bringing a blast of winter weather across parts of the Four Corners and Central Rockies. Winter weather alerts remain in effect cross multiple states for total snowfall between 6-12 inches with locally up to 20 inches in the higher elevations.
Meanwhile to the south of the wintry weather, yet another day of a critical fire weather threat across the Southwest U.S. Fire Weather Warnings are in effect for southeastern New Mexico and western Texas for Saturday for very low relative humidity (as low as 4%) and wind gusts up to 50 mph.
An elevated fire weather threat is also present for the western Florida panhandle for Saturday because of low relative humidity (25%-35%) and wind gusts up to 20 mph.
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(NEW YORK) -- More than 50 million Americans are on alert for severe weather this Easter weekend, as several states in the Heartland have already been slammed with tornadoes, hail and damaging winds.
On Thursday, 15 tornadoes, 86-mph wind gusts and softball and baseball-sized hail were reported across Nebraska and Iowa.
Damage to farm buildings, downed trees and power lines have also been reported across Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.
The severe weather will persist this weekend as this storm system will begin to stall across the Central and Eastern parts of the country.
On Friday, areas stretching from central Texas up to southern Wisconsin and western Indiana will be hit with large hail, damaging winds, along with threats of possible tornadoes, especially in parts of Oklahoma and Texas.
The main window for severe weather will begin on Friday afternoon and continue until Saturday morning local time.
The wet and windy conditions will shift southwest on Saturday, hitting areas of central Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.
The National Weather Service said flash flooding is likely in these areas on Saturday.
On Easter Sunday, the weather will finally break out of its stall across the Central U.S. and move further east, hovering over parts of northwestern Texas, northwestern Louisiana, most of Arkansas and south-central Missouri.
The slow-moving nature of this storm system will also bring an increasing flash flood threat in the coming days as rounds of heavy rain and thunderstorms sweep across many of the same areas of the South and Midwest through the holiday weekend.
Flood watches have been posted across portions of six states, from north Texas to southern Illinois. A widespread 2 to 4 inches of rain is expected through Sunday with locally up to 6 inches where the heaviest rain falls.
Thankfully, the brunt of the heavy rain will fall just west of the areas that were recently hit with extreme rainfall and major flooding. However, much of this rain will eventually still drain down across the lower Mississippi River Valley, keeping the Mississippi and other nearby rivers in the region elevated for at least the next several days.
This system also brings heavy snow to the higher elevations of northern Arizona and New Mexico, extending up across the central Rocky Mountains through Friday evening. Winter storm warnings have been posted for portions of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado through Saturday afternoon. These areas could see 6 to 12 inches of snowfall with locally up to 20 inches at the highest elevations.
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