join me on today's expedition as we explore the southern blue ridge escarpment - a hot bed of diversity. >>♪music. >>the appalachians a vast, but gently rolling range spanning an enormous distance from the tip of the gaspe peninsula in quebec through alabama. the southern edge of this region - where the piedmont meets the mountains is a place unlike any other, the southern blue ridge escarpment - stretching from just south of asheville, north carolina south and west to northeastern georgia. the diversity of the southern appalachians is astounding with over 4000 species of flowering plants alone. millions of visitors stream into the appalachians to places like the

community what are you going to do in appalachia what are you going to do in southern louisiana my church your church we go to appalachian we go to these places and their energy degree and feed them now but what i'm saying yes there are churches there there are other food banks there it's not the whole idea that if the federal government is not there they're going to starve it's ridiculous the federal government is even do a very good job of it to going to starve them saying that they're not getting decent nutrition let's. seems like this is just like you know why do you think the federal government increasing money for food stamps which is not working as we're talking about before is going to help why would you feed money into a program that its program is actually one of the better programs that we had at the federal one of the but it's a very obscure non-sale works really well it feeds people a job it actually does your decision to give thirty one dollars or he would see to thirty one dollars a grocery store and can barely buy enough food that it's working yeah well it's better than nothing not right it's better than

of the central appalachians, maybe towards the far north georgia mountains maybe later on this afternoon. mostly again it's a strong wind event. out across areas of the high plains, southerng the threat for some severe weather. it's ahead of the next storm in. tomorrow and tuesday we start to see another system that begins to develop across parts of the plains. i don't think at this point it's as strong as this last one, but there's a chance for more tornadoes. could see a couple large tornadoes across parts of oklahoma and in towards kansas again. something to keep preparing for. today's highs across the country shaping up like this. it's warm out across the east. it's warm and sticky. out across the west, 109 in phoenix. we've also been talking about those fires across southern california, guys. today conditions improve. instead of an offshore flow that's a very dry flow, we start to see the winds come off the water. that increases the moisture con content in the air. that helps firefighters in the next few days. >> alisyn: thanks so much, rick. >> tucker: thank you, rick. >> alisyn: looking at other headlines. a fox news alert now. while you were sleeping, iraq has app