US Midwest put on tornado watch
BBC UK 14 April 2012
Nick Miller, from BBC weather, says it's a "potentially very serious situation"
A severe storm threatens to bring tornadoes to a vast swathe of the Midwestern US, forecasters are warning.
States ranging from Texas to Minnesota have been put on alert, with tornado experts saying storms on Saturday could be a "life-threatening event".
On Friday a first tornado swept into Norman, Oklahoma, site of the US national Storm Prediction Center (SPC). No serious injuries were reported.
US tornadoes have already killed at least 39 people in 2012.
An outbreak of deadly twisters hit the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and Alabama in early March.
At the start of April the Dallas-Fort Worth area was badly hit, with hundreds of flights being disrupted but no-one injured or killed.
'Dangerous day'
The worst storms were predicted to hit Kansas and Oklahoma on Saturday, forecasters said.
The SPC has said the storms could be a "high-end, life threatening event" and its forecasters have spoken of "baseball-sized hail stones" possibly being on the way.
The SPC a warning on Saturday for a "major severe weather outbreak today and/or tomorrow", click here;
storm warning
It also said:
Quote:
"An outbreak of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes is expected over parts of the central plains this afternoon and tonight."
Areas most likely to be hit are central and eastern Kansas, central and eastern Nebraska and central and north central Oklahoma, the warning said.
Parts of Texas, Minnesota and Illinois have also been put on storm alert.
"We're quite sure [Saturday] will be a very busy and dangerous day in terms of large swathes of central and southern plains," National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro told the Associated Press. "The ingredients are coming together."
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Those ingredients include strong jets of wind moving in from the west mixing with moisture-rich air moving across from the Gulf of Mexico.
The difference in wind direction is expected to increase the possibility of tornadoes.