Wilkes County's Big Thunderstorm Day

Tuesday evening featured unusually severe thunderstorms in Wilkes County, North Carolina, where I grew up and where my mother still lives. While under an appropriate Slight Severe Weather Risk, 5 Severe Thunderstorm Warnings (shown below in yellow) and 4 Tornado Warnings (red) were issued for Wilkes between 4 and 6 PM as the area was continually attacked by severe thunderstorms. Mom was actually up in Wilkesboro at the Wal-Mart during the storms, and reported that the sky was very scary looking. I would imagine so, looking at the radar data!

The following spotter reports of hail and wind damage were issued in the county:

There were so many storms on radar it was hard to figure out which storm caused which reports! It turns out that the strongest storm passed over Wilkesboro, just north of Wal-Mart about 5:50 PM. Mom wasn't sure if it hailed because she was inside the store when it passed over.

But the funnel cloud report that sparked a tornado warning was from an earlier storm around 5:30 PM. Although that storm (radar) did show some weak rotation on the velocity radar (red vs. green below), the 5:50 storm showed even stronger. This means both thunderstorms were violently rotating and could have contained funnel clouds. The radar saw hail 3.38" in diameter (a little smaller than a grapefruit!) at 6,300 feet in the 5:50 storm so it's no surprise that golf-ball-sized hail (1" in diameter) was reported on the ground. Given the small number of spotters in the area, larger hail may have fallen. The radar read 67.5 dBZ which is an extremely high reading for the North Carolina mountains.

Heavy rain also fell from all these storms -- officially up to 3.37" at the Rendezvous Mountain reporting station, which is to the northwest part of Wilkes County. This was among the highest totals reported in the state.

The bigger story that day was further south in Lincoln County, two tornadoes touched down according to the National Weather Service report containing photos of tree damage. WSOC has a story and slideshow of the damage.

And this was the third day of severe weather in the Carolinas -- on Monday a possible funnel cloud was spotted in Hickory during a severe thunderstorm warning but no Warning was issued. Here's a plot of all spotter reports and warnings for the three-day period:

Radar images from NCDC archive viewed through GRLevelX.

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