Tornado threat issued for Midwest as severe storms move through country
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A spring storm system will move east over the next three days, bringing a variety of dangerous and life-threatening weather, including tornados and large hail, from the Heartland to the East Coast.
From late Saturday evening into Saturday night, severe storms will take shape from Oklahoma City to Kansas City, according to the forecast. The biggest threat with these storms will be damaging winds and large hail, but a tornado cannot be ruled out.
On Sunday, the storm will move into the Midwest and the South with severe weather expected from near Dallas all the way to Erie, Pennsylvania. The highest threat for strong tornadoes will be from east of Little Rock, Arkansas, to Tupelo, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; Nashville, Tennessee; and Evansville, Indiana.
Damaging winds and hail are also possible in Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Cleveland.
On Monday, the severe weather moves to the East Coast and I-95 corridor from Upstate New York all the way south to Tallahassee, and New Orleans. Damaging winds will be the biggest threat for northern cities but a few tornadoes cannot be ruled out across the southern areas.
On the north side of this storm, snow and ice is forecast from Dakotas all the way to New England Saturday into Sunday.
Ice storm warnings have been issued for Wisconsin and Michigan, where up to a half an inch of icy glaze will cover streets, roads, trees and sidewalks.
Additionally, periods of rain and thunderstorms will move into the Carolinas and Asheville Saturday night into Sunday morning. The area has experienced wildfires over the last week due to the dry conditions.
On Saturday, seven states from New York to North Carolina are under Elevated Fire Danger.
The thunderstorms with heavy rain will be on and off into Monday.
(NEW YORK) — More than 20 million Americans in eight states were under red flag warnings Tuesday morning as severe winds and dry conditions have elevated the threat of fire danger.
The alarming forecast comes in the wake of a deadly tornado outbreak over the weekend in the Midwest and South, and wind-whipped wildfires that destroyed hundreds of homes in Oklahoma.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday issued red flag warnings for a large portion of Oklahoma — including Oklahoma City, Stillwater and Wichita Falls. The NWS office in Norman, Oklahoma, said possible wind gusts of up to 45 mph combined with low relative humidity and dry conditions are producing “critical to extreme” fire danger in Oklahoma and North Texas.
Extremely critical fire danger is also forecast Tuesday for the entire state of Kansas, parts of Arizona, a major portion of Missouri, eastern Colorado and West Texas, including the Texas Panhandle.
Other major cities under red flag warnings on Tuesday are Denver; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri; and the Texas cities of Austin, San Antonio and El Paso.
The areas under red flag warnings are being warned that the conditions are rife for fires to spread rapidly, which makes them extremely hard to contain.
Relative humidity across the alert areas is 15% to as low as 6%, and wind gusts are forecast to be between 40 and 75 mph.
The critical fire danger comes just as people are beginning to recover from devastating wildfires in Oklahoma and a series of tornadoes.
At least 42 people were killed amid more than 970 severe storm reports — including tornadoes, severe storms, dust storms and fires — across more than two dozen states over the weekend. A three-day tornado outbreak tore through at least nine states.
Raging wildfires in Oklahoma over the weekend left four people dead and more than 140 others injured, according to the state’s medical examiner.
The Oklahoma wildfires destroyed more than 400 homes and structures and burned at least 170,000 acres, prompting evacuations amid extreme fire weather conditions.
Wildfires also raged in Texas over the weekend. The biggest blaze was the Windmill Fire that ignited in Roberts County and quickly spread to 21,000 acres, the Texas A&M Forest Service said. The fire was 95% contained on Monday.
Parts of Gray County were temporarily under a mandatory evacuation due to the Rest Area Fire, the Texas A&M Forest Service said. The fire has burned an estimated 3,000 acres and was 30% contained as of Friday evening, according to the forest service.
ABC News’ Kenton Gewecke contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Presidential immunity does not protect Donald Trump from having to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages after being held liable for defaming magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, a lawyer for Carroll told a federal appeals court in a filing Monday.
After being awarded an $83.3 million defamation judgment from a jury last year, Carroll on Monday urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to uphold the judgment against Trump, after Trump asked the court to toss out the verdict because he had immunity as president.
“Dissatisfied with the outcome of the judicial process, Trump now asks this Court to set aside that jury verdict on the theory that he was actually immune from judicial review all along,” Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in the filing.
In 2023, a jury held Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages. A year later, a different jury in a separate trial ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83 million in damages for defaming her in a 2022 social media post in which he called her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and said “This woman is not my type!”
A federal appeals court upheld the $5 million judgment in December, and Trump’s appeal of the $83 million judgement is ongoing.
In September, Trump attorney D. John Sauer — who Trump nominated in November to serve as the new solicitor general — told a federal appeals court that the $83 million judgment should be thrown out based on a flawed jury instruction, a series of “highly prejudicial errors” during the trial, and because presidential immunity protects Trump from liability for public statements made as president.
“Presidential immunity forecloses any liability here and requires the complete dismissal of all claims,” Sauer wrote.
In her reply brief filed Monday, Kaplan pushed back against Trump’s assertion of immunity, arguing that statements Trump made about Carroll as president would clearly fall outside of his official responsibilities.
“If there were ever a case where immunity does not shield a President’s speech, this one is it,” Kaplan wrote. “Donald Trump was not speaking here about a governmental policy or a function of his responsibilities as President. He was defaming Carroll because of her revelation that many years before he assumed office, he sexually assaulted her.”
Carroll’s attorney argued that the $83 million judgement was justified to deter Trump from further defamatory statements, a risk that Kaplan said the jury saw firsthand. Trump attended most days of the 2024 trial, criticizing Carroll as a liar from his seat in the courtroom and sparring with the judge who oversaw the case.
“Throughout the trial, the jury had a front-row seat to Trump’s relentless campaign of malice, including his repeated defamation of Carroll at press conferences he held and in statements he posted on social media while the trial was ongoing,” Kaplan wrote.
(NEW ORLEANS) — Just a little over a month since 14 people were killed and dozens more were injured in a truck-ramming terror attack on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street, the victims and first responders of the rampage will be honored at Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, according to the NFL.
For the eleventh time, the Super Bowl will be played in the Big Easy, but the normally festive atmosphere will include a somber tribute to the victims and the heroes of the New Year’s Day tragedy.
While the NFL is keeping details of the ceremony under wraps, league spokesperson Brian McCarthy told ABC News, “We will appropriately honor the victims and first responders.”
The big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles will be played in front of more than 75,000 fans expected to attend the game at the Caesars Superdome and millions more around the world watching on TV.
Among the crowd at the game are expected to be some of the survivors of the attack, firefighters and paramedics who rushed to the chaotic scene to treat the injured, and police who stopped the attack by killing the suspect during a gun battle.
During the Sugar Bowl, a college football playoff game that was delayed a day due to the attack, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell led a moment of silence before the game, also played at the Superdome, and former President Joe Biden addressed the crowd in a video statement, saying, “The spirit of New Orleans can never be kept down.”
President Donald Trump is planning to attend Sunday’s Super Bowl, according to White House officials. It will mark the first time a sitting president will appear at the game.
A spokesperson for the city of New Orleans referred ABC News to the NFL about Sunday’s plans to honor the victims and first responders of the Jan. 1 attack.
Over the past week, players on the Super Bowl teams, as well as the New Orleans Saints, have been surprising survivors of the attack with tickets to the big game.
On Monday, Saints linebacker Demario Davis teamed up with a furniture company to gift Stevey Kells, a nurse who rushed to provide first aid to victims of the attack, with tickets to the game.
It’s a resilient city. That response began with the first responders, those who were on scene and those who had to react quickly, and she was there,” Davis told reporters after presenting Kells the tickets. “So, it means a lot. To be able to give back to somebody who’s given so much, was awesome. That’s what it’s all about.”
Eagles players also gifted Super Bowl tickets to Ryan Quigley, a former Princeton University football player and Eagles fan who was injured in the attack and whose friend, 27-year-old Martin “Tiger” Bech, was killed.
Eagles player Brandon Graham surprised Quigley with two Super Bowl tickets last week after the team invited Quigley and Bech’s sister to the Eagles practice facility in Philadelphia.
“We wanted to tell you the real reason we brought you. It’s OK if you’re not feeling it, but we would love to have you down for the Super Bowl,” Graham told Quigley in a video the team shared on its Facebook page.
In the video, Quigley said his best friend, Bech, was the “biggest fan” of the Eagles.
“We went to every home game last year,” Quigley told Graham in the video. “All year… I told him if we make it, ‘I promise I’m gonna take you to the Super Bowl.’ So, I’d love nothing more than to still take him.”
The Super Bowl will unfold under tight security with more than 2,700 state, federal and local law enforcement members securing the game, according to officials.
“We have reviewed and re-reviewed all the details of what happened on Jan. 1,” NFL Chief of Security Cathy Lanier said during a news conference on Monday. “We have reviewed and re-reviewed each of our roles within the overarching security plan, and we have reassessed and stressed tested — our timing, our communication protocols, our contingency measures and our emergency response plans multiple times over, over the past several weeks.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at least 700 Homeland Security personnel will be on the ground in New Orleans to bolster security at the game and more will be added if the need arises. Noem said that at this point, there have been no specific credible threats reported.
“This Super Bowl exemplifies how we come together to safeguard our traditions, how we come together to make sure that the public is well-informed and gets the chance to celebrate something that is very special to us, our culture, to our people and our families,” Noem said.
