Tornado Watch 789 until 9 PM
It’s official, and about an hour before I thought: the Charleston area — and indeed, all of eastern SC — is now under a tornado watch. Primary threats cited in the watch discussion include damaging winds in excess of 70 MPH, half-inch sized hail, frequent and dangerous lightning, and of course tornadoes. The discussion in full:
Tornadoes…hail to 0.5 inch in diameter…thunderstorm wind
gusts to 70 mph…and dangerous lightning are possible in these
areas.The Tornado Watch area is approximately along and 80 statute
miles either side of a line from 55 miles west southwest of
Savannah Georgia to 45 miles east northeast of Orangeburg South
Carolina. For a complete depiction of the watch see the
associated watch outline update (wous64 kwns wou9).Remember…a Tornado Watch means conditions are favorable for
tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in and close to the watch
area. Persons in these areas should be on the lookout for
threatening weather conditions and listen for later statements
and possible warnings.Other watch information…continue…ww 788…
Discussion…a mesolow/MCV in central GA will track newd along a
retreating warm front into central SC through the afternoon…and
ongoing pre-frontal storms will continue to spread newd over se GA
into srn SC. The moist and weakly unstable warm sector will surge
nwd across SC in advance of the low…while low-mid level vertical
shear will remain quite favorable for embedded supercells capable of
producing a few tornadoes and damaging winds.
Storms in southern Georgia have been kicking up a lot of lightning this afternoon, and as I write this, there are two active tornado warnings there. This is definitely something to watch closely as the afternoon progresses and we get into that rush hour time.
For the record, the time of next high tide is around 7:30. That is expected to be a lower high tide, forecasted at 5.15 feet; however, any rapid rainfall on top of an already soaked Downtown could once again put streets underwater this evening. RADAR is not estimating the same rainfall rates out of the Georgia storms as we saw this morning; however, anything above half an inch per hour could prove problematic for an already overwhelmed drainage system.
Jared Smith 4:50 pm on December 2, 2009 Permalink
New AFD, just released a few minutes ago:
Rain is going to start again shortly in Dorchester County, sliding up the coast and eastward. Going to begin to get very rough here in the next hour or so.