A Busy Weather Day Great Lakes To NE To Canada; Storms, Wind, Rain

One of thousands of trees that blew over in Vermont during
last week's windstorm. This one is in Milton. Gusty winds
today could bring down a few more branches and power
lines, but today's gusts won't be as bad as last week's.

Welcome to another active Sunday in the weather department.

Parts of the Midwest, Northeast, Great Lakes region and into southern Ontario and Quebec can expect a variety of things to watch out for.

Here in Vermont, wind will be the problem, but it won't be as big a problem as last Sunday and Monday, that's for sure. I'll have more on the Vermont wind in a moment.

We'll first pick today's hazards apart one at a time:

TORNADOES, SEVERE WEATHER

As expected, parts of Illimois, Indiana, Ohio and some surrounding areas are under the gun for severe storms and possible tornadoes today.

I was impressed by how rapidly the first volley of storms formed in eastern Illinois this morning. Went from nothing to hailers in seemingly a half hour or less. This first wave won't be the severest of them. The tornado and big hail and damaging wind threat comes this afternoon.

It looks like the target zone for tornadoes today would be southern Illinois, southern and central Indiana and western and central Ohio. Big hail and strong damaging winds are a definite possibility in this area as well.

FLOODING

The highest flooding threat because of locally heavy rain today and tonight from central Indiana, much of Ohio and on into Pennsylvania.  Training thunderstorms - repeated storms that roll over the same area - could dump up to six inches of rain in this area, which of course would trigger flash flooding.

Heavy rain could extend tonight up through western New York, the St. Lawrence River valley and parts of southern Ontario and Quebec.

These areas had two to five inches of rain in last weekend's storm, so it wouldn't take much to trigger some flooding in these areas. Further east into Vermont and the rest of New England, some of the showers could be briefly heavy tonight and Monday, but will fall well short of being able to cause flooding, so no worries there.

STRONG WINDS

The actual worry, especially in northwestern Vermont, is strong winds today. I'll emphasize the wind today will definitely NOT be nearly as severe as what we had late Sunday night and Monday morning.

Still, the wind was picking up outside my house in St. Albans, Vermont as of mid-morning.  I already saw a couple more small branches come down.  Gusts were already as high as 47 mph out on Lake Champlain at Colchester Reef. The wind will only get stronger late this morning and through the afternoon.

Northern New York and the northern half of the Champlain Valley is under a wind advisory for gusts to around 50 mph. Winds will be somewhat less strong elsewhere in Vermont and the rest of New England.

This kind of wind is enough to take down some trees and power lines. This is especially true now, because we have trees and branches weakened by the even stronger gusts nearly a week ago. And although utility crews had power back to almost everybody in Vermont by Saturday, not all line and pole repairs are finished. Some temporarily jury rigged lines might not hold up in today's wind. We'll see.

Just to be on the safe side, I'd fully charge your smart phones and have those flashlights ready again.

After the rain pushes through tonight and tomorrow, dry, seasonably cool weather should take over for the middle of the week around here