Algerian passengers from UK stranded for weeks at Paris Airport

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Following over 100 reports of severe weather in the South on Wednesday, including 25 tornadoes, the threat of violent storms has shifted east Thursday into the Carolinas and Virginia.

Wednesday evening, the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Centre had declared a level 3 out of 5 “enhanced” risk for severe thunderstorms over a large area of eastern North Carolina and southeast Virginia, including the possibility of damaging wind, large hail and a few tornadoes.

The threat comes after Alabama and Mississippi were hit particularly hard by tornadoes Wednesday, with numerous homes damaged or destroyed, and at least two injuries.

Weather radar showed a broken line of thunderstorms sweeping across central North Carolina and south central Virginia, prompting tornado watches until 9 p.m.. Cities in these watch areas include Raleigh and Norfolk.

At 8:30 p.m., tornado warnings previously in effect near the Virginia-North Carolina border had been discontinued.

Earlier, tornado warnings had also affected areas just east of Greenville and Spartanburg, S.C., south and east of Charlotte, and around and northeast of Greensboro.

Several severe thunderstorm warnings were also in effect in southeast Virginia south of Richmond and Virginia Beach around 8:30 p.m. All of this activity was moving off to the northeast, with the potential to generate damaging wind gusts and heavy rain until moving off and weakening late Thursday night.

An earlier tornado watch, covering the zone from roughly Charleston to Jacksonville, expired at 6 p.m. as the responsible storms pushed off the coast. Earlier, tornado warnings had been in effect around Jacksonville, north of Gainesville, Fla. and around Savannah. In addition, very heavy rain had caused flooding in Charleston.

Through 8:30 p.m., the Weather Service had received 37 reports of severe weather, with widely scattered instances of winds bringing down trees. One reported tornado in southeast Georgia early in the afternoon had downed several trees, the Weather Service reported.

The main trigger for the storms is a cold front sweeping through the Southeast on Thursday. Ahead of it, a warm front was pushing north through the Mid-Atlantic, which will leave behind a zone of warm, humid air to its south — known as the warm sector.

Within the warm sector, stretching from approximately Florida to central Virginia and Southern Maryland by Thursday evening, thunderstorms will become numerous and some intense.

As temperatures increase Thursday afternoon, the atmosphere will destabilize, setting the stage for vigorous to violent storms as the cold front plows east.

There is “high confidence of a multi-hazard severe weather event with potential impacts from damaging wind gusts in excess of 60 mph, tornadoes, and some large hail,” wrote the Weather Service office in Wilmington in a briefing early Thursday. “The threat will be greatest generally from this afternoon for inland areas, and later in the afternoon into the evening for coastal locations.”

« Back to Page