Severe storms include tornado risk in central, eastern US
Thunderstorms that erupt through Friday night in the Midwest and eastern United States can be especially strong as some can bring damaging wind gusts and perhaps tornadoes, in addition to the ongoing flash flood risk.
Severe thunderstorms packed a wallop from Illinois to Ohio on June 18, including destructive tornadoes and soaking rain.
Rounds of severe thunderstorms will continue ahead of and on the northern edge of a building dome of heat into the weekend over the central and eastern United States. AccuWeather meteorologists warn that the likelihood of severe weather includes the potential for a few tornadoes to develop in the strongest storms.
An excessive amount of moisture in the atmosphere will produce considerable cloud cover, which will minimize the amount of sunshine throughout the day. However, enough warming will take place to unleash potent thunderstorms that can tap into that same moisture.
As storms approach the airport hubs in the central and eastern United States, airline delays and ground stops will increase.
A significant ripple in the jet stream will travel from the Midwest Wednesday evening to the Northeast on Thursday and will be the driving force for what may evolve into an outbreak of severe weather.
Thursday's likelihood of severe thunderstorms extends from part of eastern Quebec and northwestern Maine to the South Carolina Midlands and part of North Georgia.
For some along the I-95 mid-Atlantic from New York City to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., this could be the second or third day in a row with severe weather. However, Thursday's storms could be the strongest of the series.
Within this zone, there will be a greater concentration of severe weather from southeastern Quebec, near Montreal, to central North Carolina. Perhaps the greatest chance of storms producing tornadoes may be from eastern Pennsylvania to part of northern New England.
Farther west, a new crop of severe thunderstorms is forecast to develop over parts of the northern Plains and the Upper Midwest on Thursday afternoon and evening.
The main threats from the Thursday storms over the Upper Midwest will be from hail, high winds and torrential downpours that can slow travel.
On Friday, as heat begins to surge over much of the middle of the U.S., more potent thunderstorms are forecast to erupt on the northern rim of the high pressure dome. The storms in the sector from eastern North Dakota to northern Michigan will carry the potential for high winds, hail, flash flooding and a couple of tornadoes.
As the heat dome builds eastward, more storms are likely to run along the northern edge across the Upper Midwest, parts of the Northeast and adjacent areas of southern Canada this weekend.
Should large, strong complexes of storms develop, there is the potential for a long-lived damaging wind event, called a derecho, to develop.
In lieu of any derecho, a thunderstorm complex that rolls over the top of the heat dome then southward just off the Atlantic coast next week has the potential to slowly develop into a tropical rainstorm off the Carolina coast toward the end of the month.
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