Severe storms target the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes
Description: Storms with large hail and damaging winds pushed east from the Midwest on April 17, but parts of the region will face even more storms on Thursday.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Our top story is the ongoing severe weather. We've had more than a dozen
00:03 tornadoes over the past part of the central plains yesterday and into the
00:08 Midwest and the threat for damaging storms has shifted east into the
00:13 Midwest and the interior Northeast. Now in Ohio, there have been a lot of hail
00:17 reports and also one or two tornado reports and these storms continue to
00:22 race east into western Pennsylvania. So let's check out the view from Pittsburgh
00:26 P. A. And things are very warm 79 degrees in Pittsburgh, but that's gonna
00:32 change dramatically in the next hour or so as the thunderstorms are making quick
00:36 progress through this area. So overall, we have one band of thunderstorms as a
00:41 pretty unified zone here in which we have thunderstorms to track. But the
00:45 story line is going to change in a big way tomorrow. So again, a lot of moving
00:49 parts out there, but overall we're tracking some severe thunderstorms in
00:53 parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania right now. And if we begin to the south here,
00:57 you could see into central Ohio areas around Nelsonville facing some nasty
01:01 thunderstorms in progress. We could take a look at the more high resolution data
01:06 out of the Wilmington radar site off to the west. And as we look at a couple of
01:10 the storm hazards here, there are indications of some big hail. Now it may
01:13 not fully be up to two inches in diameter, but there is potential for
01:17 some very large hail, maybe bigger than maybe ping pong or golf ball size into
01:23 areas southwest of Logan back into the area of areas between Logan and
01:28 MacArthur. So near Cedar Grove or Hugh Ohio. That's where we have a
01:31 significant risk of some large hail with this storm. And as this is looped,
01:36 you can see it's moving east southeast, kind of tumbling into that more unstable
01:40 air a little farther south. I'm gonna hop over to the radar data out of
01:44 Pittsburgh P. A. To kind of move us into eastern Ohio and beyond the severe
01:48 thunderstorm warnings there that we talked about for Hocking County, Ross
01:52 County, Eastern Pickaway County, Northern Vinton County and a big chunk
01:54 of Athens County of Ohio. We have another zone here near Wheeling, West
01:58 Virginia. So Belmont County of Ohio and Marshall County of West Virginia under
02:03 a severe thunderstorm warning northeast corner of Monroe County, Ohio. Then you
02:07 get into Pennsylvania, southern Washington County of P. A. And also a
02:10 big chunk of Green County, Pennsylvania under a severe thunderstorm warning.
02:14 And this is the cell that's rumbling right on through the southern suburbs
02:18 of Wheeling right now crossing the Ohio River. This storm is also producing
02:23 some strong winds and here the hail potential is a bit more modest, but
02:27 maybe a dime size hail with this cell here and also two inches per hour
02:32 rainfall rates accompanying this storm. It's a heavy one moving through some of
02:36 those areas heading up into Pittsburgh. You recently had a severe
02:39 thunderstorm warning. It has expired there in the city, but other areas
02:44 farther northeast are under a very large severe thunderstorm warning on
02:47 this includes areas like eastern Butler County, the far northeast corner of
02:51 Allegheny County, the northern corner of Westmoreland County at a big chunk of
02:55 Armstrong, Clarion Counties and then southern parts of Forest County. Also
02:58 western sections of Jefferson County and a little sliver of northwestern
03:02 Indiana County under these severe thunderstorm warning. So areas around
03:05 Clarion P. A. Nasty storms rumbling east along Interstate 80. And then this is
03:11 closing in on Punxsutawney there. So we're dealing with some strong storms
03:15 rumbling through parts of west central Pennsylvania there tied to this severe
03:20 weather event. Then heading farther north up into Erie P. A. There's a
03:23 lightning here and there and also into places like Corey and Wattsburg and up
03:27 into areas around western Warren County P. A. In Chautauqua County, New York.
03:31 But the storms are not quite as severe there. You're noticing no warnings
03:34 associated with them there as we remove the lightning to clarify the view. One
03:39 more thing to point out here. I do want to at least indicate what's going on
03:41 here with this flash flooding so we can hop back over to the Cincinnati area
03:46 radar site, bring up the six hour precipitation estimates and there are
03:49 estimates of a little over an inch of rain here into an area of at least the
03:54 northern part of Perry County, Ohio, where an ongoing flash flood warning is
03:58 the concern. So where do we stand with watches? There is still some area under
04:03 a severe watch. In fact, it's a tornado watch for western Pennsylvania and far
04:07 eastern Ohio. Northern West Virginia is in on this too. And this technically
04:11 runs until midnight. Now, frankly, the storm threats going to be outpacing
04:15 this before midnight. So I don't think any part of this is going to survive
04:18 fully until midnight. We will likely be dealing with again some of that being
04:22 canceled a bit earlier. But tonight I want to go back here to the severe risk
04:27 that is going to re emerge a new threat zone totally unrelated in areas like
04:31 Kansas City and ST Joseph, Missouri from a new disturbance is coming in from
04:35 Nebraska. We could see some hailers late tonight and tomorrow are severe
04:39 weather risk zone then shifts into the Midwest and the Mississippi Valley to
04:43 ST Louis, southern Illinois, western parts of Kentucky, southeast Missouri
04:47 and then to some extent all the way down to the southern plains. So we are
04:50 dealing with the damaging wind risk and a hail risk motivating us behind the
04:54 medium risk there for the Mississippi Valley and overall, these storms will be
04:58 rumbling maybe a little more sporadic farther south, but the line will fill
05:02 in tomorrow evening into Arkansas and that will be a big concern for us. And
05:06 then these move east. The tail of his front gets stuck then and we're going
05:10 to see more storms erupt into friday into texas and that sets the table for
05:14 the weekend in which we have repetitive rounds of storms and a risk for some
05:18 flash flooding in the south.