After Iowa Tornadoes, Threat of Severe Lakeshore Flooding in Michigan- Kendall Walczynski

The intense midlatitude storm that swept across the Great Plains on Wednesday, dropping several tornadoes across central Iowa, may produce the worst flooding in decades along the southeast shores of Lake Michigan on Thursday. The powerful surface low at the heart of the storm is being energized by a pocket of extremely strong winds at upper levels. The radiosonde launched at 6:00 pm EDT Wednesday night from the Springfield, Missouri, office of the National Weather Service sampled west-southwest winds raging at 155 knots (178 mph) near the 300-mb level, or about 30,000 feet above ground level. See the YouTube clip at bottom for a taste of what it was like to launch this radiosonde in surface winds gusting to 40-50 mph.