The wild weather that has plagued much of the United States this winter — with its record-breaking bursts of snow — is giving way to tornado warnings, fierce wind gusts and hail-hurling thunderstorms. Areas in a wide swath of the South and the Midwest, from Louisiana to Ohio, were under tornado warnings and watches Thursday evening, and in Illinois, the first tornado nationwide in over a month touched down briefly, though no damage or injuries were reported from it. The reason for the storms? According to a Weather Channel meteorologist, they were spawned by strong winds funneling south in the upper atmosphere and slamming into wet air coming north from the Gulf of Mexico — and they carry the potential for damaging winds and spring-like hail storms from the Gulf to the Canadian border.
