Good Friday, everyone. What’s left of Hurricane Laura is pushing into and across Kentucky today, bringing the potential for high winds, severe storms and local flash flooding issues. This is part of a very active looking pattern showing up for the closing days of August into the first week or September. There’s the potential for a lot of rain in the next week.
Let’s get into what’s going on out there today with a breakdown of how things are looking…
- Laura rolls into western Kentucky as a tropical depression then crosses the state from west to east through tonight.
- Scattered showers and storms will be noted during the first part of today, with several dry hours until the core of the system arrives where you live.
- Along and ahead of the center of circulation, we have to watch for strong to severe storms to develop. A tornado or two can’t be ruled out. The best chance appears to be across the southern half of the state.
- Winds will be gusty and may reach 40mph at times as the low moves through. Local gusts may exceed that in thunderstorms.
- Even though this storm is moving at a decent speed, I’m still concerned about local high water issues developing. Some spots may pick up a quick 2″-3″ in the stronger storms.
- All this action winds down quickly as the low moves east early Saturday.
In terms of the severe threat, here’s the Severe Weather Outlook from the Storm Prediction Center…
I will have all your tracking tools in a bit.
Once Laura moves through here, we have a cold front to drop in here late Saturday. That will have a broken band of thunderstorms along it into Saturday evening. This same front slows down right on top of the region for Sunday and that could spell trouble. Rounds of thunderstorms develop and work across the state starting Sunday and carrying us into early next week.
This will be ahead of another front dropping in here later next week. That boundary is a little slower than I first thought, but should bring more showers and storms ahead of it.
I will have updates when I can later today and have the latest on WKYT starting at 4pm. Until then, here are your
Current watches
Possible Watch Areas
Have a good one and take care.
Thanks Chris, We could use an inch of rain here where I live in central Kentucky.
I think over the next 5 days there will be plenty of chances for rain.
Then we need Fall weather please !
Short range models all over the place on the rain from Laura, so I can see why you haven’t posted a precip map. Nam shows 60+ wind gust SE Kentucky, could be some power outage issues.
Today is the 30-year anniversary of the devastating F5 tornado that hit Plainfield and Crest Hill IL which killed 29 people, injured 365, and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages.
This was, and remains, the strongest August tornado on record in the United States, and is the only F5 or EF5 tornado to ever occur in the Chicago Metro area.
I was only a little over 20 years old when the tornado hit, and I’ll never forget riding my bike less than two hours after the tornado struck to look at all the damage and devastation, which occurred less than a mile from my house!
The NWS Chicago web site has a very comprehensive page examining all the aspects of this tornado (including photos) and the advancements in severe weather forecasting that have been made since then. Here is the link: http://weather.gov/lot/Plainfield_Tornado_Anniversary
I was only about six at the time, although I may vaguely remember this event (I better recall the April 1991 outbreak that included Wichita/Andover KS tornado and I sure remember the tv footage of the devastation from Hurricane Andrew). Anyway, seems meteorologists in 1990 Illinois were caught a little off guard due to the technology of the time. if I remember reading correctly, a Severe Thunderstorm Watch was in effect for northern Illinois in 1990, not a Tornado Watch. Also, this was a few years before the NWS started widespread installation of their WSR-88D Doppler radars. Non-doppler radars could sometimes (but not always) get some hints of a tornado (like the hook echo), but even then there could be little if any advanced warning.
Yep, you’re right, Mark. There was only a Severe Thunderstorm Watch in effect for Northern IL at the time. Also, no Tornado Warning was issued until after the tornado struck. Here in Plainfield, the only tornado siren, which was by the high school, was destroyed by the tornado along with the high school, so there was no tornado siren to warn of the tornado.
Now, there’s about a dozen tornado sirens located throughout the area, as the population of Plainfield has exploded since then. When the tornado hit, Plainfield’s population was about 5200. Now, it’s over 39,000!
Thanks Mike for the reminder. That storm was scary to watch on radar on The Weather Channel from the safety of my house in Kentucky!
The tornado made national headlines quickly because of the damage, deaths, and devastation involved.
The only tornado I’ve been in was an F0 in my backyard while I was living in Evansville. It twisted two large locust trees right out of the ground just yards from my house.
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Mike, there was a F5 tornado in June 1990 in a small town just a few miles north of where I lived in Indiana. How time flies by !
I’ve been unable to post anything and wonder if there is a problem with this site?
Good Afternoon, I am currently unable to post my commits here on this site. Reset my password to see if this goes through.
I am having trouble posting, as what I am posting doesn’t show up??
I wish someone who is in control of this forum would please correct what ever is going on, so I can post. Thank You.
The way the present radar looks we could have severe weather here in Taylor County. Please no F0 tornadoes.