Blizzard and Tornado Update

The dark orange near the Missouri bootheel represents predicted wind gusts of nearly 50 mph. Given the heavy snow, severe blizzard condition


This is the winterized radar for the same time as the pressure/wind map above. Very heavy snow is predicted from the Mississippi River in southeast Missouri to near Little Rock.

To the south, a line of violent thunderstorms is predicted to extend from western Alabama to Gulfport to the Mississippi Delta. I looked at the "hodographs" (a term important to severe storm meteorologists) predicted for the area this afternoon and tornadoes are certainly possible. 

This looks like trouble: A derecho from Harrisburg through Baltimore-Washington to Norfolk Wednesday afternoon. 

The model is forecasting winds of nearly 100 mph about 1,800 above the ground with the line of thunderstorms. That translates of gusts to near 80 mph, perhaps stronger, with the more powerful cells.

This is the radar depiction of that line of thunderstorms. Farther northwest, very heavy snow is falling from near Pittsburgh and Erie, though Lake Erie and northern Ohio, through Detroit and northeast Indiana.