Increasing thunderstorms in the Northeast lead to flash flood risks

AccuWeather

Rain is desperately needed across most of the Northeast, but heavy rain falling on extremely dry ground could lead to flash floods this week.

Transcript

00:00Flash flooding has been a concern, as you mentioned, into Lancaster County, PA.

00:03It is, yeah.

00:05We're starting to see some of these thunderstorms that start as small cells

00:08kind of merge together into a little bit of a line, and that is leading to some problems.

00:13So I have MinuteCast pulled up first.

00:15Two reasons.

00:16Pittsburgh, you're about done with the rain, so there's good news there.

00:19You get a little bit of a break.

00:20But into eastern Pennsylvania, that's where I want to focus

00:22because that's where I was talking about those cells kind of merging together.

00:26You see a lot of reds here, those heavy downpours.

00:29And I pulled up MinuteCast because that does not have the lightning like my radar loop does,

00:33so you can really see what's going on.

00:35Now let's talk about that flash flood warning into Lancaster County, just like Jeff said.

00:40But one detail here I want to point out.

00:43So this warning issued because an inch and a half to two and a half inches of rain

00:47has already fallen in this county,

00:50and they're already expecting another half an inch to an inch additional rainfall.

00:57Yeah, that's going to cause some problems, especially, Jeff was mentioning,

01:00because of how dry it's been, the ground is really hard.

01:02And it's hard for the ground to soak up all of this rainfall at once when it has been so dry.

01:08I know it's kind of counterintuitive, and you would think, well, you know, it needs this rain.

01:11What's the problem?

01:12But it does run into some problems.

01:14When we look at our storm reports,

01:16nothing's showing up yet as far as any kind of flash flooding reports into eastern PA.

01:20But sometimes it takes a little bit for these storm reports to show up.

01:24In fact, we look towards the Ohio Valley and this line of thunderstorms we were tracking yesterday

01:29with the severe thunderstorm warnings, the tornado warnings,

01:33the National Weather Service, they're still asking for storm reports.

01:36So sometimes it's even days later that we're looking at some of these things.

01:40Most of us in the northeast has picked up a couple tenths of an inch of rain,

01:43but that'll pick up as we head into tomorrow,

01:46because what you're seeing right now as far as just these kind of scattered thunderstorms,

01:50and you'll see the flash flood warning popping up there,

01:52it becomes more widespread tomorrow.

01:55Now, tonight, though, we could see some damaging wind gusts.

01:58We could see some small hail.

01:59Very localized, though.

02:01Then tomorrow, again, things become a little bit more widespread.

02:04Now, all of this, especially as we get later into the week,

02:08into those major airports along the east coast, Jeff,

02:10that's going to cause travel issues.

02:11And we're seeing some of that right now.

02:13Places like Dulles, Virginia, the western part of the D.C. metro,

02:16minor delays there.

02:17Orlando seeing minor delays now.

02:19We still continue to see minor delays into Houston.

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