Extremely strong winds are forecast for Friday in southeast Kansas and southwest Missouri. The National Weather Service has issued a high wind watch and a red flag warning for Friday.
"We're expecting sustained winds up to 30 to 40 mph with gusts up to 60 mph," said Rachel Nelson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office in Springfield. "And just to put that in perspective, we issue severe thunderstorm warnings for damaging winds at 58 mph when we have storms so having our kind of background winds that high is definitely dangerous and can be destructive."
Nelson said if you have any loose items outdoors, you should secure them or bring them inside. She said there could be some power outages caused by the wind.
Winds will start to pick up speed overnight and ramp up after sunrise Friday. According to Nelson, the strongest winds are expected between noon and 6 p.m.
Nelson expects the area to have an historic fire danger situation Friday as well.
"We are expecting to see a lot of fires, unintentional fires, so we're just encouraging people to avoid anything that involves flames or sparks, don't throw cigarettes on the ground, you know, discard of them properly, things like that," she said. "It's going to be very, very easy for a fire to start."
She said, if a fire starts, it will spread very rapidly and be difficult to control.