Multistate severe weather outbreak to continue on Friday for parts of South, Ohio Valley
The last day of the three-day severe weather event will stretch from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, and while the overall risk will be lower than Thursday, storms on Friday will still be capable of producing damaging impacts.
Storms will shift from the Gulf Coast to parts of the Ohio Valley and threaten to produce flash flooding, damaging winds and even a tornado or two.
The risk of severe weather will continue for the third consecutive day on Friday as storms target areas from the Southeast to the Ohio Valley. The severe weather will be the byproduct of a larger storm system tracking across the country and could produce downpours, destructive wind gusts and tornadoes across portions of 11 states, AccuWeather forecasters say.
The powerful storm responsible for this early-season severe weather outbreak arrived on the shores of the United States earlier this week and brought more drought-relieving rain and heavy snow to lower elevations in California. It will advance into the Midwest and Northeast on Friday and Saturday, bringing heavy, travel-snarling snow to cities such as Chicago and Boston.
The final round of severe weather is expected to unfold from the Gulf Coast states to the Ohio Valley into Friday night. While the risk of gusty thunderstorms will be somewhat diminished compared to Thursday, it will not be gone entirely.
By lunchtime on Friday, the severe threat will be ramping up along and to the west of the Interstate 65 corridor, including in the cities of Birmingham, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; and Louisville, Kentucky.
Farther east, the threat will reach its peak during the afternoon hours due to a surge of warmer and more humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. The gusty, southerly winds moving this air will reach all the way north into parts of Ohio and West Virginia. This will help fuel the development of new thunderstorms, which can quickly turn severe through the evening commute.
"A threat of tornadoes will be reinvigorated on Friday, especially toward the central and northern part of the risk area, closer to the storm system providing the energy for thunderstorm formation," said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tony Zartman. "Farther south, a narrow stripe of thunderstorms moving into Georgia and the Carolinas will likely be remembered for producing locally damaging wind gusts."
Motorists planning to drive along portions of interstates 20, 40, 75 and 85 may have to alter their plans as thunderstorms form and move through into Friday evening. Atlanta; Charlotte; Charleston, West Virginia; and Columbus, Ohio; are among the major metropolitan areas at risk for these damaging storms.
In addition to the heavy rain caused by thunderstorms in parts of the South and Ohio Valley on Friday, flooding downpours will also occur from parts of the mid-Mississippi Valley to the southern Great Lakes and mid-Atlantic.
While strong winds and tornadoes from severe thunderstorms pose a significant risk to life and property, even run-of-the-mill thunderstorms can present their own hazards.
Heavy rain that can tally close to an inch in less than 30 minutes can strand motorists, especially in low-lying or poor drainage areas. Additionally, lightning is another deadly hazard that can even strike far away from the actual storm. On early Thursday morning, lightning from a non-severe storm sparked a house fire in Clayton, North Carolina, according to local television station WTVD-TV.
Strong wind gusts associated with the storm system, in lieu of thunderstorm activity, will buffet areas from the Ohio Valley to the Tennessee Valley and the western slopes of the Appalachians from Friday to Friday night.
Gusts in much of this zone will frequently hit between 40 and 60 mph. However, in some cases, gusts can top hurricane force (74 mph), with an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ gust of 90 mph possible.
Since the ground may be saturated from the recent rain and thunderstorms, some trees may topple over more easily than if the ground was fairly dry. As the trees come down, they will take power lines with them and/or block roads. As of mid-afternoon on Friday, close to 770,000 utility customers were without power from Texas to Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and northern Florida, according to poweroutage.us.
The multiday severe weather outbreak will finally come to an end this weekend as the storm system moves off the East Coast. A pattern change expected to follow toward the middle of the month will bring waves of colder air farther south across the country and likely result in a lull in the severity of thunderstorm activity for a time across much of the nation, according to AccuWeather's team of long-range meteorologists.
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