Another round of severe spring storms is expected to sweep through the Greater Peoria area Wednesday.
The National Weather Service [NWS] in Lincoln says the area is at “enhanced risk,” level three on the five-level scale used by the NWS. A hazardous weather outlook issued by the office says a strong cold front will push into Central Illinois Wednesday morning and bring severe thunderstorms along with it.
Meteorologist Daryl Onton says there could be a patch of storms in the Peoria area as early as 8 a.m., but it’s a second potential breakout of storms in the afternoon that the NWS is watching closely.
He describes the way the day could progress as a “messy evolution.”
“[The early storms] can work over the atmosphere somewhat so that it takes a bit of time for it to recover the instability needed for another round of severe storms,” said Onton. “So that’s one of the questions we still have, is about where those afternoon and evening storms redevelop as the day progresses.”
The potential hazards from those storms include hail as large as two inches in diameter and damaging wind gusts that could locally exceed 75 miles per hour. While Onton does expect conditions to be right for tornadoes to possibly develop, most will be further south. He says Peoria has roughly a 5% chance to see a tornado within 25 miles.
“It actually sort of competes with what we saw on Sunday in parts of Central Illinois, although this one looks to have one of the ingredients that’s particularly stronger with this storm,” he said. “Looks like we’re going to have a stronger deep wind shear with this storm system. So could be even a little more of a threat than we had on Sunday.”
In general, Onton says the March storms central Illinois saw over the last few weeks are typical of the season, maybe slightly more active than average.
Rainfall is expected to continue on and off throughout the week.
