Nasty weather in midwest

Compare the IR satellite image here with the one from yesterday. The zone of upper level clouds (indicated by yellow) has moved into the northeastern United States from the Great Lakes region. Those are the lovely high-level cirrus clouds that are gracing our sunset this evening in the photo below.

However, in the midwest it is a different story. The dark red blob over the midwest (Missouri and southern Illinois, to be exact) indicates very nasty weather. It represents a region of very cold cloud tops over a wide region. Very cold cloud tops like this only occur in the presence of numerous very severe thunderstorms. The ascent in these systems is so strong that the clouds shoot up into the cold stratosphere. It's very bad news for people living here.

You can access a current image and loop of this ehhanced image at the LSC Satellite Imagery Page.