Weather forecasters have been talking about the potential for some heavy weather tonight through Friday morning, but the exact path of these storms has yet to fully develop.
“…The threat still exists for all modes of severe weather. We still have a threat for tornadoes tomorrow. We still have a threat for large hail with any supercells that can develop.
Winds gusting to 75 miles an hour is still that threat. We're not expecting as big of an area to experience severe weather. So we've changed our threat level from a level three of five to a level two of five for tomorrow.”
Jim Kaiser is a Warning Coordination Meteorologist with the Grand Forks Weather Service office. He says the timing of the systems has yet to develop. But possible scenarios are giving some early clues…
“…We're really anticipating thunderstorms to develop within the next couple hours across the West. And then as those that first round of thunderstorms develop, we're going to watch and see where and how they may organize With respect to developing a linear system and then start to push to the east, or they may kind of hang out out in the West and wait for the stronger wave that's coming out of Montana to kind of push things.”
Kaiser says depending on how much “push” the system gets, heavy rains and high winds could develop in the Devils Lake basin in the early evening, with the Red River Valley seeing strong storms around 10 tonight. The activity is expected to continue into the early morning hours for parts of northwest Minnesota.
Officials are advising people to have a weather plan in place and be prepared when the severe storms begin.