Severe thunderstorms to explode across the Midwest Tuesday

Amid sizzling heat in place across the Midwest, atmospheric conditions will come together in such a way to promote explosive thunderstorm development into early Tuesday night.

Temperatures soared into the 90s F in places like Sioux Falls and Aberdeen, South Dakota, as well as Minneapolis and St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Monday as a dome of heat encompassed the region. It is this hot and humid air that will remain in place and provide fuel for thunderstorm development.

A weak storm system tracking out of the Plains into the Midwest during the day will act as a triggering mechanism to force the hot and humid air upward, resulting in explosive thunderstorm development.

Right on cue with the start of meteorological summer, which runs from June 1 through Aug. 31, classic Midwest thunderstorms will threaten Minneapolis and Rochester, Minnesota; Eau Claire, Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Des Moines, Iowa; Chicago; Detroit; Cleveland and Buffalo, New York, before weakening or moving away before daybreak.

These storms will feature all threats that come from severe thunderstorms including large hail, damaging wind gusts, torrential downpours and even an isolated tornado or two.

These storms could pose a serious threat for anyone caught off guard outdoors during the afternoon and into the overnight hours. With protests actively continuing across many of the cities within the zone of expected severe weather, citizens and law enforcement will need to keep a close eye out for rapidly changing conditions.

Large hail and an isolated tornado or two will initially be the main concern as individual discrete thunderstorms form. These expected conditions are expected.

Into the evening hours, these individual storms may then congeal into a powerful complex or line of thunderstorms capable of producing a wide-scale damaging wind threat.

"Should a well-organized thunderstorm complex form, it could travel hundreds of miles during the nighttime hours and reach portions of central Indiana and Ohio and northern Pennsylvania," according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.

With ample moisture in place over the region, these storms will also be capable of producing rainfall rates that could prompt localized flash flooding.

Area farmers will also want to monitor the weather carefully as well, as hail could pose a threat to the young crops that have sprouted. Up to this point in the growing season, conditions have been very favorable for growing across Iowa and much of the Corn Belt, especially compared to the dismal 2019 season according to the latest USDA crop report across the region.

While crops may not play a major factor for this thunderstorm event due to the fact that the corn crop isn't exceptionally tall yet, studies have shown that the expansive corn crop across the Midwest can actually play a role in adding additional moisture in the atmosphere. Evapotranspiration, which is the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration from plants can be enhanced midsummer when the corn crop blankets much of the Midwest.

This can typically be felt by residents in Iowa and southern Minnesota at midsummer, when dew point temperatures can sometimes exceed levels typically found in the tropics.

While hail will threaten some farmland, overall, these thunderstorms can aid in crop growth and durability as the summer progresses. Lightning is known to release high levels of nitrogen into the air, which plants then absorb and grow as a result. With the unstable atmospheric conditions in place Tuesday, these storms will likely feature plenty of dangerous lightning strikes.

Into the overnight hours, storms will continue to track southward toward the Interstate 80 corridor. The most dangerous threat from thunderstorm activity into the overnight hours will transition to damaging straight-line winds and torrential downpours.

The same atmospheric disturbance responsible for Tuesday's activity will also act as a triggering mechanism for thunderstorms into the day on Wednesday across portions of the Midwest, Ohio Valley and portions of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.

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