(AP) — Millions of people in the central United States are bracing for powerful storms Monday including long-track tornadoes, hurricane-force winds and baseball-sized hail, forecasters said.
Much of Oklahoma and parts of Kansas are at the greatest risk of bad weather — including areas in Oklahoma, such as Sulphur and Holdenville, still recovering from a tornado that killed four and left thousands without power late last month. Both the Plains and Midwest have been hammered by tornadoes this spring.
In all, nearly 10 million people live in areas under threat of severe weather, the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said. Forecasters there issued a rare high risk for central Oklahoma and southern Kansas.
With the forecast, Oklahoma City Public Schools and several metro-area school districts began canceling all after-school and evening activities. Oklahoma’s State Emergency Operations Center, which coordinates storm response from a bunker near the state Capitol, remains activated from last weekend’s deadly storms, and the state’s commissioner of public safety told state agencies to let most of their workers across Oklahoma leave early on Monday.
Monte Tucker, a farmer and rancher in the far western Oklahoma town of Sweetwater, spent Monday putting some of his tractors and heavy equipment in barns to protect it from potential hail and letting his neighbors know they can come to his house if the weather becomes dangerous.
“We built a house 10 years ago, and my stubborn wife put her foot down and made sure we built a safe room,” Tucker said. He said the entire ground-level room is built with reinforced concrete walls.
Tucker said there’s not much you can do to protect cattle from severe storms, but he said the animals tend to know when the weather turns threatening.
Bill Bunting, deputy director of the Storm Prediction Center, said a high risk from the center is not something seen every day or every spring.
“It’s the highest level of threat we can assign. And it’s a day to take very, very seriously,” he said.
The last time a high risk was issued was March 31, 2023, when a massive storm system tore through parts of the South and Midwest including Arkansas, Illinois and rural Indiana.
The risk on Monday in parts of the southern Plains is the worst in five years, AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter said.
“If you look at a meteorology textbook about how to get a significant tornado outbreak in the southern Plains, all the ingredients you need are here today,” Porter said.
Cities that could see stormy weather include Kansas City, Missouri, and Lincoln, Nebraska.
The number of storms and their intensity should increase quickly in the evening hours across western parts of Oklahoma and up into south-central Kansas, Bunting said.
The expected thunderstorms could produce winds up to and potentially exceeding 80 mph (49.71 kph), according to Porter. Even worse, those “supercell” storms can produce destructive tornadoes.
