Jake Reed

The weather could get ugly Thursday afternoon, and strong tornadoes are possible.

Storms will form over east central Mississippi late in the morning Thursday and move into west and north Alabama Thursday afternoon. Destructive wind gusts and hail are also possible in the strongest storms.

Stay alert and pay attention to the weather on Thursday!

I've spent years researching and publishing on the problems that exist with the extended forecast graphic.

Tuesday night’s severe weather potential is a prime example of how an overnight event is hard to communicate on legacy graphics like the extended forecast graphic. The necessary information is in the weathercast, but it is largely absent from this graphic.

It is no fault of the meteorologist - this graphic wasn’t designed for these kind of events. The nuanced, impact-focused information that local meteorologists are able to provide cannot be adequately showcased on this particular graphic.

There physically is no space for nighttime events on this graphic. A workaround is to add text or icons in-between days - but we don’t know whether that makes sense to a non-expert.

The detailed, accurate information is present throughout the full weathercast, but we can’t be sure that people are watching the entire broadcast or accurately interpreting what is being shown. The 7-day is identified as most important and is what most eyeballs focus on.

This is incredibly rare — there is now a 45% chance of an EF-2 to EF-5 tornado within 25 miles of a point for the area in purple. This includes Tuscaloosa, Northport, Starkville, and Columbus.

You can’t afford to ignore the threat today.

The situation is looking scary for southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. Read below for more and if you have friends or relatives in these areas, please make sure they are aware and ready to evacuate if told to do so.

LAURA'S FORECAST SHIFTS WEST TO TX/LA BORDER, NEAR CAT 3

This is way too close for comfort. Please stay on guard.

Here is one computer model projection of wind gusts from Laura near landfall at midnight Thursday, and it's actually not as strong as some of the computer models I could have shown you. Remember, I share this to prepare you, not to scare you. This is a reasonable forecast IF Laura's center follows the middle of the cone. If it tracks farther east, most of us barely get gusts into the 30s.

But if it tracks farther to the west (which is still a realistic *possibility*), we get much more than I fear many of us in Houston are expecting right now.

Also, I must stress that this storm will be moving at around 17 mph, which is about 5 mph faster than Ike's movement. Hurricane Ike was a large category 2 hurricane with 110 mph winds at landfall when its eye went through southeast Texas. Hurricane force winds made it 125 miles inland, past Lake Livingston and stopping just shy of Lufkin. Laura is predicted to have the same intensity at landfall (and yes, many reliable computer models say it could even stronger). The faster movement of Laura means the hurricane force winds could extend much farther inland than Ike's did.

Of course, if the center of Laura hits near the TX/LA border, then the I-45 corridor won't get any hurricane force winds. I wish we had better confidence in the track just 48 hours prior to landfall, but we don't.

Please pay close attention to the forecast throughout the day Tuesday. I believe we'll have better confidence in the forecast track by the 10AM NHC forecast update because Laura will have spent several hours over the Gulf already and we'll have special steering current data from the Hurricane Hunters fed into the computer models.

Let's hope for the best, but we have to still prepare for the possibility of taking a direct hit from a major hurricane.

Forecast track and new video coming soon here: abc13.com/forecast

(POSTED 10:34PM 8/24/2020)