A powerful cold front is charging across the eastern half of the US this week and bringing quite a lot of hazardous weather, including severe thunderstorms, flooding rainfall, high winds and a dramatic temperature drop.
The severe storms traveled through cities resembling Milwaukee and Nashville on Wednesday, prompting tornado warnings.
Hundreds were left without power and the National Weather Service office that covers southeast Wisconsin plans to survey damage on Thursday to find out what number of tornadoes impacted the Badger State.
Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport clocked a wind gust of 59 mph because the storms rumbled across the town.
Fall is taken into account the second severe weather season, because it’s the time of 12 months when cold air from Canada begins to spill south into the US and clashes with warmer, more humid air streaming north from the Gulf of Mexico. This is strictly what the FOX Forecast Center expects will occur through Thursday.
Thursday: Severe storm threat shifts to mid-Atlantic, Northeast
The cold front will reach the eastern US on Thursday, sending a line of thunderstorms across areas to the east of the Appalachians.
A number of strong to severe storms are possible Thursday afternoon, mainly from central Recent York, the eastern half of Pennsylvania and western Recent Jersey southward into Delaware, Maryland and northern and central Virginia. This includes major cities along the Interstate 95 corridor resembling Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.
Damaging wind gusts are the important threat on this region, but a transient tornado can’t be ruled out from eastern Pennsylvania to central Virginia.
“Although these thunderstorms are going to roll through Boston and Recent York, they shouldn’t have as high of a possible of manufacturing those severe components,” FOX Weather meteorologist Britta Merwin said.
Flash flooding threat is biggest within the Northeast
Along with the severe weather, the cold front will produce areas of heavy rain because it tracks east through the tip of the workweek.
Flash flooding will develop into a priority by Thursday when the heavy rain shifts to the Northeast, where moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic will team up and surge into the region ahead of the approaching cold front.
“It’s going to be a sloppy mess,” Merwin said. “The evening commute (Thursday) goes to be hectic.”
A widespread area of 1 to three inches of rain is feasible across the Northeast, with localized amounts exceeding 3 inches not ruled out in parts of northern Recent England, upstate Recent York and northeastern Pennsylvania.
High winds develop in wake of cold front
After the cold front moves through, high winds will rush in and accompany the dramatic temperature drop, making it feel even colder than what the thermometer reads.
Wind gusts could reach 40 to 50 mph in lots of areas, likely bringing down much of the remaining fall foliage.
