Wicked Severe Weather Week Around The Nation Is Ongoing

Storm damage this week in Roseville, Minnesota.
Photo by Kathy Berdan, St. Paul Pioneer Press.  

There's always severe thunderstorms scattered around the United States during mid-summer.

Subtle disturbance in the atmosphere interact with the hot, humid air that envelops most of the nation, and local storms erupt with strong, damaging winds and hail. Every once in awhile you get a tornado.

This week, though, some of those weather disturbance that trigger scattered storms aren't so subtle.

They're pretty intense for midsummer, which usually features weak, hard to find storms.

This week, these stronger than usual areas of unstable air are interacting with that hot, humid air that we always get in July to create some pretty impressive outbreaks of severe weather.

Tuesday, NOAA's Storm Prediction Center noted seven reports of tornadoes (mostly in Minnesota), 303 reports of damaging winds and 58 reports of large hail.

Wednesday was even worse: Nine tornadoes, mostly in Nebraska, 422 reports of damaging wind and 37 reports of big hail.

Also on Wednesday we had the unusual spectacle of three severe weather outbreaks going on simultaneously in the nation. One was sweeping Nebraska and the Dakotas with those tornadoes and winds of up to 80 mph.

Another squall line was causing very severe storms centered on Kentucky. A third area of severe storms marched through Georgia and South Carolina.

Early this morning, severe storms were blasting the Kansas City metropolitan area and flash flooding was going on in parts of Kentucky and Tennessee

This bout of busy severe weather in the nation will continue today and into the weekend. Maybe into next week.

Today, an area centered on Iowa, southern Minnesota and surrounding areas is under the gun for a pretty outbreak of severe storms. This area has been the focus of severe storms for pretty much a week now, so they're probably getting sick of it.

In the Minneapolis area, for example, storm damage to utilities is so bad that people might have no electricity for several days, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports.

Up here where I live in Vermont, there might be a few strong to locally, briefly severe thunderstorms as well.

Northern New England and northern New York is in some humid air, and a weak boundary to the north will touch off quite a few showers and thunderstorms today. The severe weather won't be widespread, but there will probably be a few damaging microbursts here and there.

On Friday, the latest storm system will move the severe storms from the Upper Mississippi Valley into the Ohio River Valley.

That storm might cause some more severe weather in the Mid-Atlantic Coast Saturday, but on the bright side, will bring some badly needed rain to New England. On the not-so-bright side, southern New England needs the rain even more than the North Country, but the heaviest rain looks like it will fall to the north over the weekend.

Early next week, more storms will zip along the northern United States, raising the spectre of more severe weather