Parts of Midwest, South bracing for "potentially historic" rainfall into weekend in wake of tornadoes
Parts of the Midwest and South faced the possibility of torrential rains and life-threatening flash floods Friday, while many communities were still reeling from
tornadoes that destroyed whole neighborhoods and killed at least seven
people.
Forecasters warned of catastrophic weather on the way, with round after round of heavy rains expected in the central U.S. through Saturday. Satellite imagery showed thunderstorms lined up like freight trains to take the same tracks over communities in Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, according to the
national Weather Prediction Center
in Maryland.
The center warned of "potentially historic" amounts of rainfall for some places through Sunday with some places getting 10-15 inches or more along with a "catastrophic, life-threatening flash flooding risk," especially in the lower Ohio Valley, mid-South and Ozarks.
The bull's-eye centered on a swath along the Mississippi River and included the more than 1.3 million people around Memphis, Tennessee.
More than 90 million people were at risk of severe weather from Texas to Minnesota to Maine, according to the Oklahoma-based Storm Prediction Center.
Those killed in the initial wave of storms that spawned powerful tornadoes on Wednesday and early Thursday were a least five in Tennessee and one each in Missouri and Indiana, according to a CBS News count. They included a Tennessee man and his teen daughter whose home was destroyed, and a man whose pickup struck downed power lines in Indiana. In Missouri, Garry Moore, who was chief of the Whitewater Fire Protection District, died while likely trying to help a stranded motorist, according to Highway Patrol spokesperson Sgt. Clark Parrott.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said entire neighborhoods in the hard-hit town of Selmer were "completely wiped out" and said it was too early to know whether there were more deaths as searches continued. He warned people across the state to stay vigilant with more severe weather predicted.
"Don't let your guard down," he said during a Thursday evening news conference. "Don't stop watching the weather. Don't stop preparing yourself. Have a plan."
With flattened homes behind him, Dakota Woods described seeing the twister come through Selmer.
"I was walking down the street," Woods said Thursday. "Next thing you know, I look up, the sky is getting black and blacker, and it's lighting up green lights, and it's making a formation of a twister or tornado."
By late Thursday, extremely heavy rain was falling in parts of southeastern Missouri and western Kentucky and causing "very dangerous/life threatening flash flooding" in some spots, according to the National Weather Service.
Heavy rains were expected to continue there and in other parts of the region in the coming days and could produce dangerous flash floods capable of sweeping away cars. The potent storm system will bring "significant, life-threatening flash flooding" each day, the National Weather Service said.
Water rescue teams and sandbagging operations were being staged across the region, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency was ready to distribute food, water, cots and generators.
Water rescues were already underway in flooded parts of Nashville, Tennessee, where the rain could persist for days after an unnerving period of tornado warnings that drained the batteries of some city sirens, the fire department said.
Western Kentucky prepared for record rain and flooding in places that normally do not get inundated, Gov. Andy Beshear said. At least 25 state highways were swamped, mostly in the west, according to a statement from his office Thursday.
Flash flooding is particularly worrisome in rural areas of the state where water can quickly rush off the mountains into the hollows. Less than four years ago, dozens died in flooding across eastern Kentucky.
Extreme flooding across the corridor that includes Louisville, Kentucky, and Memphis, which have major cargo hubs, could also lead to shipping and supply chain delays, said Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather.
Forecasters attributed the violent weather to warm temperatures, an unstable atmosphere, strong wind shear and abundant moisture streaming from the Gulf.
Under darkened skies Thursday morning, the remains of a used car dealership in Selmer stood roofless and gutted, with debris scattered across the car lot and wrapped around mangled trees. Some homes were ripped to their foundations in the Tennessee town, where three tornadoes were suspected of touching down.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol released video of lightning illuminating the sky as first responders scoured the ruins of a home, looking for anyone trapped.
In neighboring Arkansas, a tornado near Blytheville lofted debris at least 25,000 feet high, according to weather service meteorologist Chelly Amin. The state's emergency management office reported damage in 22 counties from tornadoes, wind, hail and flash flooding.
The home where Danny Qualls spent his childhood but no longer lives was flattened by a tornado in northeast Arkansas.
"My husband has been extremely tearful and emotional, but he also knows that we have to do the work," Rhonda Qualls said. "He was in shock last night, cried himself to sleep."
Workers on bulldozers cleared rubble along the highway that crosses through Lake City, where a tornado with winds of 150 mph sheared roofs off homes, collapsed brick walls and tossed cars into trees.
Mississippi's governor said at least 60 homes were damaged. And in far western Kentucky, four people were injured while taking shelter in a vehicle under a church carport, according to the emergency management office in Ballard County.
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WIRED
2 hours ago
- WIRED
The Viral Storm Streamers Predicting Deadly Tornadoes—Sometimes Faster Than the Government
Jun 11, 2025 7:30 AM Storm streamers are using radars and AI robots to predict extreme weather for millions of YouTube subscribers, in some cases faster than the National Weather Service, which has been gutted by DOGE. A large tornado moves down a highway in Texas. Photograph:At 10:44 pm eastern time on May 16, Ryan Hall spotted a blue square on his radar indicating debris flying into the air and realized a huge tornado was racing toward Somerset, Kentucky. 'We've been watching this storm for a while, we've been hootin' and hollerin' for a while, hopefully the message has gotten out there and we know to be in our safe spots,' Hall warned his YouTube audience in a calm voice with a Southern twang. A silver robot with blue eyes popped onto the screen to tell Hall that a viewer had commented about tiny houses near the tornado. 'Oh really?' Hall replied to his AI robot, known as Y'all Bot. The 31-year-old host of Ryan Hall, Y'all—one of YouTube's most popular weather channels with 2.8 million subscribers—went live for nearly 12 hours that day as more than 70 tornadoes swept through the central U.S., killing at least 28 people. Nineteen of the dead were in Kentucky. Hall, too, was under tornado warning as he streamed from his home in Kentucky. Sirens went off in Somerset, but the National Weather Service lagged behind in upgrading its tornado warning, Hall told viewers. He also said that recent cuts had left the NWS office in Jackson, Kentucky short staffed. 'We're about to have a large tornado go through a very populated area with much less warning than what there should be, as a result of that,' he said. It wasn't until 10:57 pm that the NWS finally upgraded its tornado warning for Somerset. Hall doesn't have a meteorology degree, but employs meteorologists like 27-year-old Andy Hill, who frequently appears on his livestream. Hill was on vacation during the deadly tornadoes, but noted that Hall had correctly read the radar. 'He was just looking at, essentially patterns and radar data, which is what I've attempted to teach him over the years,' Hill said. 'On May 16, I think Ryan definitely saved some lives.' A new generation of storm forecasters are going live on YouTube for hours during severe weather events, offering real-time updates to millions of subscribers through a network of storm chasers, and even using AI. Their devoted fans help shape the forecast by sending on-the-ground photos of these storms, for example lemon-sized hail, for the streamers to show live on their screens. As the Trump administration slashes federal weather forecasting staff and climate change supercharges storms, their reports are not only entertaining, but crucial and potentially life-saving. This form of weather content is growing rapidly, but so far there are two main YouTube weather forecasters. Hall, who employs about 40 people across his media business and non-profit, and YouTube's second biggest weather streamer, Max Velocity, are game changers who frequently warn their millions of fans about tornadoes on the ground before the NWS issues official alerts. They do this by interpreting blobs of color on the radar and hosting feeds of storm chasers going live from their vehicles. Hall's AI bot interacts with him during storms and it even has its own channel where it goes live 24/7. At the same time that storm streamers, who are funded via ads on YouTube and merch sales, are booming, the primary source they rely on is in chaos. The Trump administration and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have gutted staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which includes the National Weather Service, meaning less accurate forecasts from all meteorologists. The NWS, which was already understaffed, has lost 600 employees since January; in June, the NOAA announced it would rehire 100 NWS workers. And as yet another above-normal hurricane season begins, the new generation of storm streamers is careful to avoid the subject of climate change when talking to their audiences in deep red states — to avoid alienating viewers who don't believe in it. AI Weather Bot Y'all Bot lives on a server in Hall's Weather House in Kentucky, a large home that is decked out with a studio, edit suites and tornado shelter. When Y'all Bot launched last year, its first job was to interact with Hall on the livestream, helping to fill dead air. Y'all Bot was buggy at first but learned the ropes quickly. Now, it has its own channel separate from Hall's with more than 800,000 subscribers where it goes live 365 days a year, regurgitating NWS warnings and interacting with viewers. Viewers post in the chat asking the bot to tell them the weather in their area, and it reads them the latest forecast. However, it hasn't learned how to read radar imagery yet, Hill said, and would likely never be able to do that independent of human supervision. 'It's going through all the text-based information that it has access to and relaying it in a continuous format,' Hill said. 'Humans have to sleep, we can't always be there.' 'It is 100% independent, running itself,' said Caleb Beacham, a 22-year-old storm chaser who worked for Hall before leaving in early June. 'It has learned how to forecast weather all on its own through AI and computer learning.' 'We're seeing exponential growth on that channel,' Beacham said. He's aware of the backlash to AI but said their audience loves the little bot. 'We're trying to embrace it and incorporate it into that life-saving information.' Competition Heating Up Meanwhile, 22-year-old Max Schuster, who goes by Max Velocity, live streams tornado and hurricane forecasts from his dorm room in Florida. His more than one million YouTube subscribers are familiar with his cat Cheese Curd, who often walks across his desk, seeking attention. 'I'll usually pick her up at some point during the stream, and show everybody,' he tells WIRED. His operation is bare bones compared to Hall. Behind him is a neon sign in the shape of a storm cloud with a lightning bolt. He uses one camera, five monitors, a couple lights and simple software that instantly broadcasts new NWS alerts onto his livestreams. He recently graduated with a meteorology degree and is moving out of his dorm this summer into a larger studio space. As traditional media shrinks, storm streamers are growing; Schuster recently hired his first full-time employee—Reilly Dibble, who used to work for Hall. Unlike a traditional broadcast, YouTube allows Schuster to go live before there's a tornado warning, so he can warn viewers if a storm is likely to produce a tornado. When Hurricane Milton hit Florida last year, causing a tornado outbreak, Schuster said he heard from a viewer that his livestream prompted their family members to seek shelter. 'Our weather coverage is actually saving lives,' he said. Schuster expects the storm streaming world to get more crowded. He notes that competition has recently heated up between them. 'It's bound to happen, but he wanted to make this more of a competition on YouTube,' he says. 'We're definitely not as close as I thought we were.' National Weather Service Cuts Traditional forecasters, storm streamers, and even Y'all Bot rely heavily on the National Weather Service; the agency is a primary source that runs radar sites, launches weather balloons and flies planes into hurricanes. Cuts across the National Weather Service are making storm streamers nervous. The NWS weather balloon launches collect valuable information on temperature, humidity, pressure and winds. 'Because there's been a lack of balloon launches, the data that's getting fed into these models just haven't been as good as they could have been,' Beacham said. Fewer planes flying into hurricanes will mean less accurate forecasts of where hurricanes will make landfall, Schuster said. Jana Houser, a storm chaser and meteorology professor at Ohio State University, says the understaffing at the National Weather Service office in Jackson, Kentucky during deadly tornadoes was 'a small glimpse of what's to come. ' 'The office did as good of a job as they could have possibly done, but they didn't have the resources that they could have possibly had in a different climate,' Houser says. 'Unless we get full staffing in, there are going to be tired forecasters. There are going to be overworked people. There are going to be missed tornadoes.' Houser said streamers like Hall are providing a public service. 'He is helping to inform the general public, which is a service, especially under the context of a poorly-funded and resource-starved National Weather Service.' But she adds that storm streamers can misread the radar and raise the alarm about a cloud formation that is not capable of producing a tornado. This is problematic if there's conflicting information between a streamer and the National Weather Service. 'It can create a sense of distrust or confusion,' she said. Hill said his team is 'immensely careful' but it's impossible to perfectly forecast tornadoes, and they do make mistakes. Calling tornadoes before the National Weather Service means they have a higher false alarm rate than the federal agency, Hill said. 'There's a lot of layers there to justify before [the NWS] sends out a warning. So their false alarm rate is going to be much lower than ours,' Hill said. Climate Change Conundrum Hurricanes are becoming more frequent as global heating cooks the planet, but you wouldn't know it by watching the storm streamers. They know the climate is changing, but many of their viewers live in red states, so they avoid the subject. President Donald Trump has consistently downplayed climate change; during the 2024 election he called it 'a big hoax.' Yale's 2024 Climate Opinion Map that measures perceptions about climate change across the U.S. found that a majority of people in hurricane-prone states like Florida, Texas and Louisiana, and states in tornado alley, believe global warming is happening. But a sizable percentage of people in those states, around 30 percent, don't believe it's caused by human activities. Schuster, whose fans are mostly based in the hurricane and tornado zones of Texas, Illinois and Florida, believes climate change is happening. 'If you deny it, I don't know what to tell you—there's a lot of scientific evidence,' he says 'My opinion is not based off politics or anything like that,' he continues. 'It's based off of what I've been seeing data-wise, within the scientific field of meteorology.' But he doesn't talk about it on his channel. 'If I bring up climate change or something else, it'll probably end up being politicized.' Hill, meanwhile, takes a more nuanced approach; he doesn't directly reference climate change, but he attempts to educate viewers about climatology, hoping they will become more open to believing in climate change. 'As a climatologist, that's the smartest way to handle it,' Hill says. 'Because if I were to be direct with it, we would just lose 40 percent of our audience immediately.' He knows he's walking a tricky line. 'I don't think many people would be super happy about that, especially activists,' he says. But he argues that his approach is more likely to make climate skeptics curious instead of defensive. 'Especially in those deep red states, there's plenty of people who are still on the fence,' he says. 'It's going to be a long term thing but it's going to be something I work on my whole life,' Hill says. In the immediate future, the storm streamers are facing a busy hurricane season this year, and their audiences will likely continue to grow. Beacham predicted that people will soon create AI bots that can read radar and livestream personalized weather forecasts. And he expects more people will launch storm forecasting channels. 'We're going to see a lot more people start to do what Ryan and Max are doing,' he says. 'They've proven that it's possible.'
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
This spot in California is so windy, locals call it a ‘little hurricane' zone
California is a state defined by wildly diverse topography; from the tall peaks of the Sierra Nevada, to the lush lowlands of the Central Valley and the rugged cliffs lining more than 800 miles of coastline. But when it comes to wind, the invisible force that shapes landscapes and fuels wildfires, one spot in the state consistently stands above the rest. A Chronicle analysis of three decades of wind gusts shows the state's windiest spot isn't a mountain peak, a high desert bluff, or even Point Reyes, which once reportedly logged a gust of 133 mph. It's Cape Mendocino — a remote coastal headland — which juts out into the Pacific Ocean just south of Eureka and marks the westernmost point in California. Cape Mendocino is a part of California's Lost Coast, a rugged, roadless stretch well-known by backpackers, where Highway 1 detours inland to avoid the steep terrain. Just south of Eureka, the cape is surrounded by steep cliffs, redwood groves and isolated communities like Petrolia and Shelter Cove. 'Yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all,' said Nick Pape, the fire chief in Shelter Cove, a small community tucked just southeast of the cape, of the region's windiest designation. 'We get the full brunt of the wind out here. There's no protection. It just comes screaming off the ocean and hits us head on.' A January 2023 storm stands out in Pape's memory. 'I couldn't even open the door of my duty truck, the wind was that strong,' he said. 'We had to open an emergency shelter and evacuate residents after trees came down on homes. That one (storm) came in from the south and we're totally exposed from that direction.' The Channel Islands, located off the Southern California coast, ranked at the state's second windiest area; gusts there are similarly amplified by steep coastal terrain and open ocean exposure. Further inland, exposed ridgelines near Lake Oroville, the high-country terrain of the Emigrant Wilderness and mountain passes around Kingvale and El Dorado National Forest all consistently experience intense gusts, each shaped by California's unique and varied landscape. The cape's fierce winds are driven by two seasonal patterns. The strongest and most persistent gusts occur in spring and summer, when sharp temperature contrasts form between California's hot interior and the cold Pacific Ocean. In late spring, inland temperatures can climb toward 100 degrees, while Cape Mendocino, along the coast, hovers in the upper 40s. That thermal divide creates a steep pressure gradient that fuels relentless north and northwest winds. These winds, guided by the North Pacific High, also help generate the dense marine layer and summer fog familiar to Bay Area residents. 'Cape Mendocino sticks out over the coastal waters, creating a convergence between the land and the faster-moving air offshore,' said Doug Boushey, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Eureka. 'When this air encounters the steep coastal terrain, it's forced to accelerate because it has nowhere else to go, it can't move inland easily, and it can't rise upwards due to a persistent marine layer inversion acting as a cap. That's why the winds become so consistently strong there.' Those spring and summer winds can be especially punishing for mariners, many of whom travel south along the coast after the winter storm season. Cape Mendocino's exposure makes it one of the hardest passages for seafarers on the Pacific coast. 'Every year, mariners come to our office asking, 'When can I get around the Cape?'' Boushey said. 'Sometimes we have to tell them it might be two weeks or more. There is just no opening. People unfamiliar with the area will try to round the Cape and just get beat up. They have to pull into Humboldt Bay and wait until the winds let up enough to safely pass.' In winter, the pattern shifts. Instead of pressure-driven north winds, powerful low-pressure systems sweep in from the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, triggering brief but intense southerly gusts. These storms can deliver serious wind impacts, but they are shorter-lived and less consistent than the prolonged blows of spring and early summer. The Chronicle's analysis relied on hourly wind gust data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, known as reanalysis data, which blends direct observations with weather modeling. We calculated the strongest gust recorded each day and averaged those over 30 years, from 1991 to 2024, to provide a comprehensive picture of wind behavior statewide, pinpointing the Cape Mendocino area as the consistently windiest place in California. There are limitations, however. The dataset's resolution is relatively coarse, which means it may not fully capture the nuanced influence of California's complex terrain. It also doesn't include data from newer ground-based weather stations installed by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., potentially missing localized wind extremes. Some individual locations have recorded stronger isolated wind gusts. California's highest-ever recorded gust, a remarkable 199 mph, occurred at the Alpine Meadows ski resort in the Lake Tahoe area in February of 2017. But this extreme reading reflects a single event. Pape, of the Shelter Cove Fire Department, confirmed it gets seriously windy at Cape Mendocino. 'We've had what folks around here call little hurricanes. Trees falling into power lines, roofs torn off, people getting evacuated,' he said. 'It's not every week, but when it hits, you remember.' Cape Mendocino residents and local officials have been grappling with the reality of relentless gusts. In Shelter Cove, that means more frequent wind‑related damage and disruptions, forcing the community to adapt to increasingly severe conditions. 'We're starting to see a real public safety issue with it,' Pape said. 'It definitely keeps us busy, especially during the winter months.'
CBS News
2 hours ago
- CBS News
Flooding possible as storms return to North Texas on Wednesday
More rain and thunderstorms are on the way to North Texas on Wednesday. First Alert Weather Days are in effect for the threat of more heavy rain leading to flooding concerns Wednesday and Thursday. The Wednesday morning commute will be a wet one – rain will move north towards the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex around 7 a.m. Widespread severe weather isn't likely. Showers will linger around lunchtime. The evening commute will be dry before another round of rain arrives around 8 p.m. In fact, over the next several days, a forecasted 1 to 5 inches of rain accumulation will be possible. This has prompted the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center to issue a slight risk, level 2 out of 4, for the risk of excessive rainfall for both Wednesday and Thursday. The Storm Prediction Center highlighted the area of concern to the southeast of the metroplex. Hail one inch in diameter and wind gusts of 60 mph will be the primary threat, while the tornado threat is low. A flood watch is in effect now until Thursday evening for parts of North Texas, including Tarrant, Dallas, Parker and Rockwall counties. Wise, Denton, Collin and Red River counties aren't included in the watch. Please remember "Turn Around, Don't Drown." Do not try to drive through water-covered roadways, as it is very hard to estimate how deep the water is, and you could put yourself in a life-threatening situation. The slow-moving upper-level low-pressure system that has been creating the active weather pattern will shift to the east this weekend. This will allow conditions to clear, just in time for Father's Day.
