Severe storms to ride rim of heat from Kentucky to Delmarva
One more round of severe thunderstorms will ride the rim of a massive heat dome situated over the central United States on Friday. The greatest risk of severe weather will stretch from Kentucky to the Delmarva Peninsula.
An all-too-familiar pattern, where severe thunderstorms roll along the edge of a heat dome, will exist over the Midwest for much of this week, AccuWeather meteorologists say. Rounds of thunderstorms will pack a punch from the northern Great Lakes to the Ohio Valley and parts of the central Appalachians into Friday.
A massive area of high pressure associated with a heat dome will reside over the middle of the United States through this week. Despite a combination of near 100-degree-Fahrenheit highs and exceptionally high humidity, no thunderstorms will erupt in a multistate area of the Plains and Mississippi Valley.
But, on the edge of the high pressure area, it will be a different story.
Storms that erupted on Wednesday evening survived the night and sliced southeastward across Michigan then southward through Ohio Wednesday night to early Thursday morning.
As of the start of daylight on Thursday, ground stops were still in place at Detroit Metro Airport, due to storms in the vicinity. Willow Run Airport in Michigan, near Detroit, received 5.40 inches of rain. Most of that rain fell in less than four hours. From 3-6 inches of rain fell across the Detroit metro area from midnight to 6 a.m. local time.
Farther south into Thursday morning, a large part of Ohio picked up 1-4 inches of rain. Motorists were struggling due to the downpours and ponding on some of the roads during the morning rush hour.
Severe thunderstorms that erupted Thursday night turned severe from parts of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan to portions of Ohio and western Pennsylvania. Powerful winds knocked out power to more than 650,000 utility customers in the tri-state zone, according to PowerOutage.us.
Even though the intensity of the storms had eased Friday morning as the moved southeastward, the storms will re-energize thanks to the heating of the day in parts of the Ohio Valley and lower mid-Atlantic region.
Storms capable of knocking down trees, triggering power outages and leading to travel delays will mainly extend from Kentucky to eastern Virginia, the Delmarva Peninsula and southern New Jersey. Airline passengers in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore airports should expect ground stop delays.
It's also not out of the question that some of the southern suburbs of Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, could have gusty thunderstorms.
Storms that pop up Friday afternoon and evening may also be locally severe as far west as parts of Missouri and northern Kansas.
This weekend, as the massive heat dome begins to shrink southward and cooler air expands to the south and west, the risk of severe weather will ease over much of the country.
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