Weather alert: Severe thunderstorms, possible tornado risk this afternoon, evening
By Terry Eliasen, WBZ-TV Meteorologist, Executive Weather Producer
BOSTON - Thursday is one of those rare days in New England where we are at heightened risk of a high-end severe weather event. For this reason, the WBZ-TV Weather team has issued a NEXT Weather Alert.
The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for all of southern New England until 8 p.m.
We have certainly seen our share of thunderstorms and torrential rainfall this month. Thursday's atmospheric setup is quite a bit different than what we have seen thus far, and a bit concerning at the same time.
In a nutshell, the bottom few miles of the atmosphere are primed for severe weather. The combination of very high dewpoints and strong shear (winds veering as you go up in altitude) has raised our level of concern for the potential of a few tornadoes as well as some straight-line wind damage.
The Storms Prediction Center has placed most of our area in a "slight" risk for severe weather Thursday (level 2 of 5).
And, they have also placed a good portion of our area in an enhanced, 5% tornado risk. This may not seem very high, but for our area, this is about as high a risk as we ever see.
We expect storms to fire first across western Massachusetts between noon and 2 p.m.
By the evening commute, the storms will be centered over central and portions of eastern Massachusetts.
The threat will diminish after sunset. It's highly unlikely that we will see any additional severe weather after 9-to-10 p.m.
Other than the tornado and straight-line wind damage potential, we are also concerned about some torrential downpours leading to localized flooding, something we have become all-too familiar with lately.
Severe weather days like this are never guaranteed. In order to achieve a higher-end severe weather event, we will need to break out in a good deal of sunshine. The sun heats the surface and is the fuel for storms to develop. You likely noticed that we had a good deal of cloud cover Thursday morning. If the clouds don't break up in a meaningful way, not only will we not hit 90 degrees, but we may also avoid a widespread severe weather outbreak.
Clearly, this is one of those days where we will need to keep an eye on the sky and also on the radar.
The WBZ weather team will have you covered on WBZ-TV, WBZ.com and CBS News Boston all day long.