National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Regional Outbreaks of Severe Weather Through Early Next Week; Early Season Heat Wave across the South

Active spring pattern across the center of our nation with several episodes of severe weather and heavy rainfall expected into next week. The potential for very large hail, long track tornadoes, severe wind gusts, frequent cloud to ground lightning strikes and flash flooding are in the outlook. Furthermore, dangerous early season heat wave continues for the Gulf Coast states into early next week. Read More >

Overview

Showers and thunderstorms developed across northeast Missouri, west central Illinois, and extreme southeast Iowa between 4 and 11 PM, Wednesday, May 22.  Storms quickly intensified after 6 PM, with many severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings issued.  An EF-1 tornado was surveyed in Hancock county IL with these storms. 

During this event, the NWS Quad Cities Doppler Radar (KDVN) was not operational during much of the severe weather that occurred.  Technicians worked quickly to replace a motor that had seized up, even as storms approached the Quad Cities and forced them to take shelter at times.  The NWS plans and practices for these unexpected outages.  Our team of meteorologists quickly switched to viewing NWS radars in St. Louis MO and Lincoln IL. These radars give meteorologists virtually the same view as the Quad Cities radar in the area that severe weather occurred last evening, across Clark county MO, Lee county IA and Hancock county IL. Our meteorologists excel in these situations, and provided more than 20 minutes of warning lead time for the brief tornado and damaging winds that occurred in Hancock county. Radar outages are rare, and if they do occur, the NWS is ready.

 

Image
9:15 PM Radar Image
nws logo Media use of NWS Web News Stories is encouraged!
Please acknowledge the NWS as the source of any news information accessed from this site.
nws logo