8/9: Severe Weather

Radar around 2:15EDT on 2009/08/09. Blue polygon is severe thunderstorm watch, red polygons denote severe thunderstorm warnings and magenta polygon indicates a tornado warning.

A severe thunderstorm watch was issued a little over 2 hours ago for parts of western New York and northern Pennsylvania. While I'm not heading that direction (too many trees, not road network really and my own agenda of things to get done) I'll be monitoring things from here. The storms are moving SE and the biggest threat seems to be severe winds.

State College is not currently under the watch; however, a watch in this area and points east may be necessary. Yet, cloud cover has been more plentiful over the eastern part (especially far east) of the state, which lies in the path of the mesoscale convective system. Temperatures over eastern Pennsylvania are in the 70s while the west are mainly in the 80s. Dewpoints are quite high, nearing 70 degrees state-wide.

I would anticipate a severe thunderstorm watch by later this afternoon for State College (may not extend all the way to New Jersey border due to the more persistent cloud cover limiting instability. As of 230EDT, severe thunderstorm warnings across the northern tier of counties from Warren to Tioga.