I think Chief Meteorologist Tom Terry put it best this afternoon; "you can see it coming, and it just makes you sick." It is a devastating severe weather outbreak that has been responsible for raking the mid-west and southeast with enormous, long-tracked, and deadly tornadoes this afternoon. The handwriting was on the wall yesterday: a powerful surface low was over Oklahoma late last night with a ripping 150 mph jet stream moving through what we call the system's warm sector. It is this jet stream that is responsible for creating the twisting and turning motion in the atmosphere -- wind shear -- that is needed for tornadoes to develop.

As I write this (around 6:30 pm Friday), tornado watches extend from southern Ohio to the western Florida panhandle with an unsual "moderate to high" risk of severe weather through tomorrow morning issued by the Storm Prediction Center. If that's not enough, some of these watches boxes are what are known as "Particular Dangerous Situations" or PDS. I heard a meteorologist in Nashville describe this as a "tornado watch on steroids;" that pretty much covers it. So far today there have been 67 tornado reports, 263 hail reports, and 102 reports of strong, damaging wind. These numbers will only grow through the evening as this system heads east. I've included an image from Early Warning Doppler 9 HD of a chilling, classic large tornado signature east of Lexington, Kentucky. This storm not only had a well defined region of heavy precipitation/hail north of the hook, a "rear flank downdraft" surrounding the west side of the hook, but also what is known as a "debris ball" south of the hook. That's right -- radar can detect the debris a tornado creates. We saw an unsettling flare up in this debris cloud as the storm moved past West Liberty, Kentucky. There have been numerous reports of catastrophic damage, injuries, and fatalities in this area. Our thoughts are with them tonight -- it was very likely an EF-4 or EF-5 tornado.

Looking down the line, the cold front responsible for this will move through central Florida early Sunday morning. There will still be enough wind energy and upper level support for a line of heavy rain and even storms to move through the area after midnight and through daybreak Sunday. The most likely threat are very strong wind gusts, but we can't rule out an isolated tornado across our northern counties in the wee hours of Sunday morning. We'll detail more on any threat tomorrow, but there certainly will be the potential for a few strong to severe storms in central Florida -- favoring northern counties -- Sunday morning. It won't be anything close to what we're seeing today, fortunately, but you will want to have your weather radio handy late Saturday night into Sunday morning.

Brian Monahan