A Tornado Watch was issued for much of the TV9 viewing area on Monday and stays in effect until 10:00 p.m. as storms move into eastern Iowa. The weather threat is immediate for residents in the area, with strong to severe storms possible through the evening.
The forecast calls for damaging wind, large hail and a tornado or two, and the Storm Prediction Center kept an Enhanced Risk of severe storms over much of the TV9 viewing area while the rest sat in a Slight Risk. New storm development was expected to intensify between about 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., with storms north of U.S. Highway 20 starting out a bit scattered before some of them could congeal into a line and raise the damaging wind risk.
Those storms were expected to shift southeastward at about 40 to 50 mph, which means the timing of the threat is not the same everywhere. For some of the area, the worst weather should pass earlier, but farther south the storm threat was expected to last later into the night and wind down closer to midnight and 3:00 a.m. That uneven timing is what makes the setup harder to read for anyone trying to plan the rest of Monday evening.
The storm threat is only part of the picture. Several counties in the TV9 viewing area were also under a Heat Advisory, with heat index readings nearing 100 to 105 in some spots. At the same time, reduced air quality from wildfire smoke emanating from Canada was being seen, and that smoke was expected to improve for several hours this afternoon and evening before tonight’s cold front drags another batch southward. Air quality could slip to Orange-Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or Red-Unhealthy for All.
After the storms end tonight, skies were expected to turn partly cloudy and winds to shift northwesterly late. Tuesday was then expected to bring a day of transition, with cooler and drier air already taking hold, gusty northwesterly winds with some gusts reaching 30 mph or more, and partly cloudy skies. For now, the key question for the TV9 viewing area is how long the severe-weather threat holds together in the south before the night settles in.
