Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
With the atmosphere behaving like a shaken bottle of champagne, potent storms were crossing the Philly region Tuesday night, prompting tornado and flood warnings. <\/p>\n
In the early evening, the National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for parts of Chester and Delaware Counties and northern Delaware. The warning area included Chester city and Wilmington, where a funnel cloud reportedly was sighted, the weather service said. <\/p>\n
The federal Storm Prediction Center, which issued the general twister advisory, also had the entire region under a severe thunderstorm watch until 10 p.m. <\/p>\n
By 8 p.m. the weather service had posted numerous flash-flood and severe-storm warnings.<\/p>\n
Rainfall this summer has been maddeningly capricious, but this time it appears that the entire region is going to win some share of the rain lottery proceeds, wanted or not.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is the type of setup where everyone is going to get rain,\u201d said Marc Chernard, senior branch forecasters with the federal Weather Prediction Center, in College Park, Md. The center had Philadelphia and its neighboring counties targeted for \u201cexcessive rainfall\u201d potential.<\/p>\n
The National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly has a flash-flood watch in effect until 2 p.m. Wednesday,<\/a> with a general 1 to 3 inches expected across the region.<\/p>\n For flood potential, what would matter would be the rainfall rates, and it\u2019s possible the skies could wring out localized amounts of 3 inches an hour, said Chernard.<\/p>\n Storms could be quite potent, said Patrick O\u2019Hara, meteorologist at the Mount Holly office. The weather service warned that a \u201cfew tornadoes\u201d are possible.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the stuff in Delmarva, South Jersey, maybe even Philadelphia, may be spinning.\u201d said O\u2019Hara. \u201cWelcome to July weather in Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n The likeliest time for strong storms in the Philly region<\/p>\n An early batch of strong storms is likely to miss Philly and most of the afternoon may be rain-free, but a second round late in the day into the evening won\u2019t, O\u2019Hara said, with a round of soaking downpours likely.<\/p>\n \u201cThat will be just torrents,\u201d he said. He expected the heaviest of the rains to appear around 6 or 7 p.m.<\/p>\n Said Chernard, \u201cIt could be a lot of rain that comes around quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n The system triggering the rain is something of a hybrid, born of a pattern more common to the cooler weather of fall and spring when temperature contrasts in the atmosphere are sharper, O\u2019Hara said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have a situation where we have summertime heat and humidity, but almost out-of-season dynamics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Whatever the cause, the storms could have \u201csignificant impacts,\u201d said Chernard. <\/p>\n Chernard said he expected the worst of the rains to move out of the region later Tuesday night; however, the shut-off time remains uncertain.<\/p>\n Showers could return Wednesday night.<\/p>\n The flood potential<\/p>\n After months of below-normal precipitation<\/a> leading up to a July that has been the wettest month since March 2024, \u201cbase\u201d stream levels are relatively low, said O\u2019Hara.<\/p>\n And neither the Delaware nor Schuylkill<\/a> Rivers are in imminent danger of sloshing over. <\/p>\n However, rain rates of 2 or 3 inches of hour are enough to generate flash flooding along streams. During a localized downpour on Monday, Pennypack Creeks in the Northeast rose to minor flood stage.<\/p>\n Heavy rains flooded downtown streets and swamped cars in Hammonton, Atlantic County.<\/p>\n How much for Philly?<\/p>\n With July thunderstorms it isn\u2019t simply a question of how much for Philly, but how much for South Philly, Center City<\/a>, Germantown<\/a>, or Fox Chase<\/a>. <\/p>\n Even though everyone might get rain, the heaviest rains will be concentrated, said Chernard.<\/p>\n What is almost certain is that some places are going to get a soaking.<\/p>\n At least no smoke is in the forecast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min With the atmosphere behaving like a shaken bottle of champagne, potent storms were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[108501,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-254452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-flood-thunderstorm-watch-philadelphia-weather-tornado","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}