© NOAA
In this GOES East satellite image taken at 10:15 a.m. ET on Jan. 29, 2013, severe weather can be seeing brewing over the central portions of the United States.
After an Arctic blast left much of the United States out in the cold, a new system is bringing the threat of severe weather to the central portions of the country this evening and through the night. A satellite snapped an image of the system earlier this morning (Jan. 29).
The National Weather Service's (NWS) Storm Prediction Center, located in Norman, Okla., has forecast severe thunderstorms, with damaging winds and hail - and possibly even tornadoes - for the lower Ohio Valley, the mid-South and the lower Mississippi Valley. The SPC says the threat will increase through the night, with squall lines (or long lines of thunderstorms) and individual storms rolling through along with a cold front.
Nighttime
storms and tornadoes can be particularly deadly, as people tend to be in bed and unaware of warnings and the storms are harder to see as they bear down. A 2008 study in the American Meteorological Society's journal
Weather and Forecasting found that nighttime tornadoes were 2.5 times as likely to cause a death as those that occurred in the daytime. The threat of
deadly nighttime tornadoes is exacerbated in the winter with the season's shorter daylight hours.
Comment: We find it interesting that the number of sinkholes are increasing... is the planet literally 'opening up'?