Severe weather in the Heartland, excessive heat warning for the West

There were 332 damaging storm reports from Colorado to Virginia over the weekend bring damage and one death due to these storms.

One person died in the Birmingham, Alabama, metro area when a tree feel on a home.

In Great Bend, Kansas, winds gusted to 80 mph. The winds were so strong that a semi-truck was flipped on a highway.

Also in Kansas, baseball sized hail was reported along with six tornadoes and landspouts.

Today, severe weather will stretch from Oklahoma into Texas and Arkansas where damaging winds will be the biggest threat along with large hail.

Major cities in the path of the storm are Dallas, Oklahoma City and Little Rock.

Widespread scattered summer time thunderstorms are possible from Texas all the way to the Great Lakes and east into the I-95 corridor from Florida all the way to the Mid-Atlantic.

The heaviest rain will be along the Gulf Coast and also in the western Great Lakes where some areas could see 2 to 4 inches of rain.

In the West, there are 35 wildfires burning across 10 states from Texas to Alaska.

Dry and blustery weather continues to spread wildfires especially in Arizona, where evacuations continue!

The Bush Fire north of Phoenix has grown now to 184,674 acres and is 42% contained.

The Bighorn Fire near Tucson, Arizona has grown to 51,628 acres and is only 16% contained.

A few other smaller fires have also broken out in Arizona and in California due to dry and blustery weather.

There is some bad news for firefighting in the West, however. Very hot weather is moving in for California today and into Arizona by Wednesday.

Today, Heat Warnings and Advisories stretch from southern Oregon all the way into southern California with temperatures expected to reach triple digits and some areas could get close to 120 degrees.

By midweek, the hottest air will move into Arizona where those huge fires are burning near Phoenix and Tucson. Temperatures are expected to reach lower 110s for Phoenix and near 110 degrees in Tucson

The good news is that no major wind events are expected, just the usual localized breezy conditions. That being said, localized gusty winds are possible and these have the potential to spread the fires even more.