Andrew Pritchard

After the regional severe weather event that brought a few tornadoes and big hail to parts of the Ohio Valley on Thursday, February 19th, we've slipped back into a familiar winter pattern across the Central and Southern U.S. Ridging in the west with troughing in the east has sent another wave of cold air spilling into the Midwest, feeding into a Nor'easter that delivered blizzard conditions to New England. I'm happy for East Coast snow weenies, but after tasting the warm inflow of a supercell...

It sure didn't feel like February on Thursday down in southeast Illinois. Multiple rounds of long-lived supercells producing tornadoes and big hail blew up across portions of the Ohio Valley ahead of a potent early season storm system. I left Champaign-Urbana around 11 AM, stopping at the Quik Trip in Effingham to gas up, grab a fountain coke, and apply a fresh coating of rain-x to the windshield. I moved down to the town of Flora where I found myself getting impatient with percolating...

Looks like the first storm observation of the season is near! The Storm Prediction Center has maintained a 'slight risk' and 5% tornado probability draped across central and southern portions of Illinois and Indiana on their latest Day 2 Severe Weather Outlook. Their thoughts are very much aligned with my own, and you can read their latest discussion here. I mostly wrote this off as a moisture-starved storm system several days ago, but as it's drawn closer the potential for a few low-topped...