(Bloomberg) — A powerful storm rolling across the Great Plains has spawned tornadoes and left more than 400,000 homes and businesses in the dark, less than a week after twisters killed dozens across the South.
High winds knocked out power lines from Colorado to Michigan Wednesday, as a bow-shaped line of thunderstorms pushed east. The storms have triggered multiple tornado warnings and at least 20 tornado reports, the National Weather Service said. In addition, widespread reports of wind damage have come from Missouri to New Mexico, including to aircraft at Santa Fe’s airport, the U.S. Storm Prediction Center said.
“This is pretty off-the-charts,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist and author with Yale Climate Connections. “I’ve certainly never seen a storm with all of these components in the Midwest in December.”
A bow-like arc of fast-moving thunderstorms is often a signature of a derecho, a particularly fierce storm that can cause widespread, significant damage. It’s still too early to tell if a derecho has formed, said Matthew Elliott, a meteorologist at the U.S. Storm Prediction Center.
“We need to see how everything evolves over the next several hours to be sure,” Elliott said. “Nevertheless, we expect widespread swaths of extremely strong winds with embedded gusts exceeding 90 miles per hour and several tornadoes, including the possibility of a strong tornado.’
Temperatures will rise 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit above normal and could set all-time records for December across the Great Plains and Midwest, said Zackary Taylor, a forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. The high in Topeka hit 76 degrees; nearly 70 in St. Louis; and 73 in Omaha, the weather service said. It was 65 degrees in Chicago at 3:30 p.m. local time. The city was put on alert for high winds.
The escalating temperatures, along with moist air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico, raises the odds for severe thunderstorms throughout the central U.S.
Meanwhile, to the west, as much as 5 feet (1.5 meters) of snow fell in California’s mountains, and another two feet could fall Wednesday as a smaller storm moves in off the Pacific Ocean. That could help alleviate drought conditions that have gripped the state and much of the U.S. West.
The snow and high winds already have knocked out power to more than 20,000 homes and businesses across California and those outages could spread eastward as the wind rises. In addition, many roads in the mountains of California and Nevada have been closed.
As of 2 a.m. Eastern Time, there were more than 418,000 customers without power in Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri, according to PowerOutage.us.
The high winds raking the Midwest are expected to spill over into southern Ontario, where they could also knock down trees and cause power outages, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
(Updates power outage figures in first and 10th paragraphs)
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