Dangerous storms: Destructive storms for Plains, Midwest

Dangerous storms could bring destructive winds to the Upper Mississippi Valley and Midwest this evening and overnight.

The atmosphere will rapidly destabilize this afternoon and evening throughout the central and northern Plains, and massive thunderstorms will quickly develop. Our daily Breakfast Brief provided a heads up on these developments.

As seen on our TemperatureRadar and WindRadar, strong southerly flow and hot air streaming northward will feed into these storms. This will constantly resupply energy to the storms.

Conditions will be ripe this afternoon and through the overnight hours for the thunderstorms to develop in a long line —called a squall line — that can travel hundreds of miles, producing destructive wind gusts in excess of 75 mph. Sioux Falls, S.D., Des Moines, Iowa, and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, could all get hit by these storms.

Downed trees, damaged crops and widespread power outages are possible. The storms have a chance to make it into Chicago and Milwaukee early Thursday.