National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Dangerous Heat in the Central and Eastern U.S.; Severe Thunderstorms in the Central U.S. and Northeast; Critical Fire Weather in the Four Corners

Dangerous, record-breaking heat will intensify across most of the central and eastern U.S this week. Heat indices will likely exceed 100 degrees. Severe thunderstorms are forecast from parts of the central High Plains into the Upper Midwest, and across parts of the Northeast. Critical fire weather conditions will continue across portions of the Four Corners and Great Basin. Read More >

Overview

During the evening of June 15th, 2023, a line of storms with embedded supercells formed over portions of southwest Kansas and extended south through Beaver County, OK into the northeastern portions of the Texas Panhandle. The farthest south supercell produced a tornado that tracked through Perryton, killing three people and leaving a path of destruction over 6 miles long. Several other landspout tornadoes developed farther south of Perryton along the flanking line of the tornadic supercell. One of these landspouts damaged some power poles but remained mostly in open grassland. An additional tornado developed south of Higgins and tracked eastward into western Oklahoma, also remaining mostly in open grassland.

The Perryton tornado was the first fatal tornado to occur in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles since March 28th, 2007, when one person died near Canadian, TX and two people died in south central Beaver County, OK. Additionally, this was the first tornado to cause a recorded injury in the Panhandles since the May 27th, 2015 tornado near Canadian, TX.

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