Regional Outbreaks of Severe Weather Through Early Next Week; Early Season Heat Wave across the South

Active spring pattern across the center of our nation with several episodes of severe weather and heavy rainfall expected into next week. The potential for very large hail, long track tornadoes, severe wind gusts, frequent cloud to ground lightning strikes and flash flooding are in the outlook. Furthermore, dangerous early season heat wave continues for the Gulf Coast states into early next week. Read More >

At National Weather Service Louisville, we monitor several ways of looking at the atmosphere, from our new GOES-16 Satellite, to Doppler Radar, to Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS), just to name a few. Another means is by watching area webcams, some privately owned and others government owned, such as the Louisville TriMarc cameras. On Saturday afternoon, a lone thunderstorm developed over north central Tennessee. This storm produced some tree damage northwest of the Nashville weather forecast office (labelled KOHX in image below). Given the relative clearing around it, local webcams got some good snapshots of this developing storm. The image below shows several area webcams, most courtesy of WBKO in Bowling Green, that caught a glimpse of this storm. The image near Leitchfield, KY is courtesy of Dustin Knight. Close up images for each site are given below the mapped image.

Russellville, KY, 5:40 PM CDT, WBKO Clicking on this image will bring up a loop of this storm developing. Note late in the loop a dark gray under cloud approaching the camera. This cloud is the remnant gust front, also known as an outflow boundary. The closer this front is to the storm usually means stronger gusty winds. As it gets farther away the winds die down.

Greenville, KY, 5:40 PM CDT, courtesy of WBKO

Greenville, KY, 6:21 PM CDT, showing two additional towers developing to the right (southwest) of the main tower.

Morgantown, KY, 5:40 PM CDT, also courtesy of WBKO.

Scottsville, KY, 5:40 PM CDT, WBKO.

Later image at Scottsville, 6:05 PM CDT, showing the expanding high-level clouds, also known as an anvil top.

Tompkinsville, KY, 5:40 PM CDT, WBKO.

Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, 6:05 PM CDT, showing the expanding anvil as well as new cells developing underneath it. Courtesy of White Squirrel Weather.