Severe Weather Summary April 13, 2004

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Severe Weather Summary


Severe Weather Potential in the Mid-Atlantic Today into Tonight..
by AccuWeather.com meteorologist Kathy Francis


The surface storm, centered over northwestern Georgia this morning, will track north-northeastward today, most likely ending up over northern Virginia this evening, then over southeastern Pennsylvania Wednesday. The warm frontal boundary over the eastern Carolinas, back to the storm center, will make slow progress northward today. The upper-level storm, or cold pocket of air, currently back in western Tennessee, will end up over Virginia by Wednesday. So, we have a relative warm sector with this storm (dew points are in the 60s and that air is trying to come up the Eastern Seaboard), height falls heading eastward, a dry slot of air working its way into the Carolinas, which will help with daytime heating, and thus destabilization, an increase in the southerly jet along the Eastern Seaboard, and CAPE values of around 1,000 j/kg. Central and eastern parts of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, as well as Delaware, will be the prime areas likely to end up with locally severe thunderstorms, mainly this afternoon and early tonight.

The southern end of the front will head across Florida today. South Florida, in particular, will likely have thunderstorms, and locally strong storms. In the West, in eastern Washington, northern and central Idaho, and western Montana, the combination of some height falls and daytime heating will produce widely-separated thunderstorms later today.