A lightning bolt streams from the storm near Medicine Bow, Kan., on Wednesday evening. (Bruce Bishop via Twitter)
With 200 reports of severe weather, eight of which were tornado sightings, Wednesday was the busiest severe weather day of the year thus far. Severe thunderstorms are forecast to continue through Friday in the central and eastern U.S. as an upper level low shifts east.
The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., has issued a large area of slight to enhanced severe weather risk on Thursday, encompassing a population of nearly 67 million people from northeast Texas to the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic.
The metro areas of Chicago, Indianapolis, Memphis, St. Louis, and Cincinnati are all included in the enhanced severe thunderstorm risk, which means that numerous severe storms are possible. A few of these storms could be intense, with strong and damaging winds, a few tornadoes and large hail.
The risk of storms shifts eastward on Friday, with a slight risk stretching from Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to the northern Gulf Coast and southern Texas.
Friday’s severe weather potential in the D.C. area is highly dependent on how much warmth and instability the region can muster. If the cool wedge the D.C. area has seen over the past couple of days manages to erode, we could see severe storms move through on Friday afternoon and evening.
Wednesday storm photos and video
There were eight reports of tornadoes on Wednesday evening — six in southern Kansas southwest of Wichita, one in Oklahoma near Hammon, and one more in Potosi, Mo. The teams from the local National Weather Service offices will survey the damage from these storms to determine the intensity of the tornadoes.
Storm chasers were out in droves on Wednesday evening and many caught video and photos of the tornadoes in southern Kansas. This video from Live Storms Media shows a large cone tornado and a rainbow side-by-side near Deerhead, Kan.:
A tornado spotted southwest of Medicine Lodge, Kan.:
Southwest of Colwich, Kan.:
This photo was taken near Farmington, Mo., though there were no reports of a tornado touchdown in that area, though Farmington did get walloped with very large hail. Some of the stones were larger than baseballs.
For some storm chasers it was a story of windshield versus large hail. We definitely do not recommend putting your car through this beating. In the video you can see the hail start to fall alongside the road, and you know it’s just a matter of moments until the windshield is toast:
