Damaging, disruptive storms to target NYC, Philly and DC
A pulse of severe thunderstorms is shifting into the Interstate 81 and 95 corridors of the Northeast into Thursday night. Some severe storms will also extend into the southern United States and northward into Canada.
Severe thunderstorms packed a wallop from Illinois to Ohio on June 18, including destructive tornadoes and soaking rain.
The same setup that brought close to 300 wind damage incidents and a dozen reports of tornadoes in the Midwest on Wednesday will focus on the Atlantic Seaboard from Quebec to the Carolinas into Thursday night, AccuWeather meteorologists warn.
High humidity levels combined with a ripple in the jet stream will unleash one or more lines of thunderstorms that will progress from the Appalachians and Piedmont areas toward the Atlantic coast into Thursday night.
"As the storms approach the airports at the major metro areas from New York City to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., airline delays and ground stops will increase dramatically. Some flights may even be cancelled," AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter stated. "Such delays and cancellations at these major airports have a tendency to spread quickly elsewhere in the United States air system because planes and crews are not where they need to be based on the existing schedule, resulting in cascading delays and cancellations."
Motorists should be prepared for high water and sudden poor visibility as the storms approach. Roads that tend to flood during downpours should be avoided.
Powerful wind gusts in many of the storms will average 60-70 mph with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ gust of 85 mph.
Due to the saturated ground in some areas, strong wind gusts during storms can easily push over trees or break off rotting limbs, leading to power outages.
There will be an elevated risk of tornadoes in an area from upstate New York and northwestern New England to parts of central and eastern Quebec. This includes the major Canadian metro areas of Quebec City and Montreal, as well as Burlington, Vermont; Albany, New York; Pittsfield, Massachusetts; and Lebanon, New Hampshire; in the northeastern United States.
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A small number of the storms can also bring pea- to marble-sized hail, which, when combined with strong winds and torrential downpours, can damage crops in fields, plants in backyard gardens and other vegetation.
As the storms creep along, flash flooding along small streams and urban areas can occur. Two or three storms may blast some locations into Thursday evening.
Storms in the metro areas of Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia, as well as Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, may be somewhat more widely separated but can still be severe in some neighborhoods and lead to damage and travel disruptions into Thursday evening.
Some thunderstorms and severe weather are also anticipated from South Carolina to Georgia, Florida and Alabama. However, a few storms in these areas can still pack a punch at the local level with brief wind gusts, torrential rain and a sudden cluster of lightning strikes.
As a massive dome of heat builds from this weekend to next week, rounds of severe thunderstorms will erupt on the northern edge from the Midwest to parts of the Northeast.
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