Severe Weather Continues to Threaten the Middle of the U.S.

Weather|Severe Weather Continues to Threaten the Middle of the U.S.

Days after storms tore a path of destruction across the Midwest, severe weather is once again expected in the middle of the United States on Sunday into Monday. The forecast is potentially for “all severe hazards,” including hail larger than golf balls, strong winds and tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.

The risk is spread across a broad slice of the middle of the country, but it is focused over the south and central Great Plains and the northern High Plains on Sunday, and then the central Plains into Missouri on Monday.

The storm warnings come as the Midwest and the Northeast continue to recover from a spate of deadly storms that generated several strong tornadoes on Friday. In Missouri and Kentucky alone, tornadoes killed at least 25 people, officials said. A rare dust storm swept across central Illinois and into Chicago.

“We’re probably one to two notches below what occurred,” Aaron Gleason, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center, said of the weather he expected for Sunday and Monday. “There certainly could be strong tornadoes though, but not over as large of an area.”

The severe weather is hitting at a time when the Weather Service is facing staffing shortages, with nearly 600 people having departed through layoffs and retirements after cuts ordered by the Trump administration.

A forecasting office in Jackson, Ky., which was directly in the line of Friday night’s tornadoes, is one of four that no longer have enough staff to operate around the clock. It would have been without an overnight forecaster on Friday, said Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents Weather Service employees. But after an “all hands on deck” scramble, he said, the office stayed open and was fully staffed, issuing 11 tornado warnings.