2026 Mid-Atlantic Severe Storm General Discussion

[CAPE]

Took a quick shot of it rolling in.

 

[AmericanWxFreak]

Velocities on the other side of the bay look gnarly


.

[CAPE]

So far just heavy rain and lots of T&L. Minimal wind. I'm good with it.

[frd]

Ordinary storm here dropping about .80 so far. What is not ordinary is the incredible change here this month with active storms and much higher rainfall.  I guess some is luck, but the pattern has shifted it seem. Also, machine learning from 15 days ago pointed out several threats which did happen.    

According to my rain gauge total July rainfall so far has been 6.80 inches.  Wow !   

[weatherCCB]

0.72” in 20 minutes 

[SnowtoRain]

1.03" and pouring, just south of tornado warning some gusty wind but nothing out of the norm, over 10.00" for the month

[CAPE]

1.7" for the day. Lots of thunder on the back edge.

First month above avg since Feb. Just over 6"

[RDM]

Got hit by the split here ivo Vienna.  As the line approached it went N & S of us.  Just a few drops.  Not even enough of a trace to wet the driveway...  sigh. 

[CAPE]

1 minute ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

Got another severe sprinkle.  A whopping tenth of an inch that almost wet the ground.  While 100 yards south got a 1/4".   Yet another fail.

Badlands profile pic man. Do it. Totally flipped it here.

[EastCoast NPZ]

2 minutes ago, CAPE said:

Badlands profile pic man. Do it. Totally flipped it here.

I made that post earlier from the 2nd batch of rain this afternoon that went around us.  There was a 3rd batch a while ago that dropped .5" finally.  Better than nothing.

[Chinook]

new tornado warning by Surry, Virginia (AKQ)

 

[WEATHER53]

1 hour ago, zwyts said:

shellacked

Have you relocated?

[RickinBaltimore]

Another round of heavy rain coming down now

[AlexD1990]

Well, had a tornado warning with the couplet basically over my head. Just a lot of torrential rain, incredible lightning and a bit of wind.

[CAPE]

Looks like more scattered stuff developing to the NW. Hearing continuous thunder.

1.82" for the day as of now

[Eskimo Joe]

4 hours ago, AlexD1990 said:

what the heck? I cant remember the last time a SVR got upgraded to a TOR

Central and Western PA were upgraded earlier this summer. At one point there were over six tornado warnings going in a severe thunderstorm watch.

[osfan24]

Drove home from OC this evening and it was pretty fierce around Cambridge. Extremely heavy rain, lots of lightning and quite gusty.

[The Dude]

1 hour ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Central and Western PA were upgraded earlier this summer. At one point there were over six tornado warnings going in a severe thunderstorm watch.

Montgomery and Frederick County were upgraded on July 18.

[zwyts]

1 hour ago, WEATHER53 said:

Have you relocated?

not yet.  probably November

[ThePhotoGuy]

Seems that the Riviera Beach/Pasadena area got hit hard again (same area as 10 days ago). Reports of a lot of trees and wires down. It looked like the power was out at my house for a few hours. 

[high risk]

13 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Latest HRRR is very GFS-esque. Total whiff for everyone.

           The guidance trends were really interesting.   Things were looking encouraging for fairly significant storms in the early runs on Tuesday, and then the cycles right after the raob data became available looked fairly lousy (as noted in your post).   Then, the HRRR started locking in again on the more significant solutions.

         

[high risk]

19 hours ago, vortex95 said:

00z HRRR was good for big storm coverage in the DC Metro.  06z has backed off somewhat.  00z was putting it all in one big hit 3-7pm.  06z has sct storms in the area around 5pm, then good coverage e-cntrl and sern VA, then a second decent area coming from the PA border spreading SE 8pm-midnight.

00Z RRFS crushes DC metro at 5pm.  06z was a little less impressive but still solid.  It does have the best storms in the RIC area.

The MCS that moves from OH overnight to WV and wrn VA by noon appears to weaken enough and far enough away, so by peak heating, we should be ok in the much of the DMV.

The best winds at 500 and 250 are S of the DC Metro, so I see why 5% tor risk is in sern VA. The NAM has excellent 925 and 850 winds in the DC Metro w/ nice curved hodographs, but the RRFS is less impressive and the GFS/ECWMF as well.  Again, best winds fields are S and SE closer to the NC border.
 

           It was interesting how the overnight runs looked pretty good, and then the 12Z suite (and a HRRR cycle or two after that) didn't look as good, before the HRRR locked on to the solution by late morning.     And I'll be curious to see how many tornadoes are actually found.  There were probably way more warnings than needed, but I'm wondering if they'll find more than the current count of one (good video of a tornado on the Eastern Shore north of Cambridge).    Ultimately, we probably weren't far off from a more significant tornado event, but as you suggested in your post, the low-level winds were probably just a bit too weak, although I think that the low-level profile was slightly better than what the RRFS and GFS/ECMWF were suggesting last night.

[vortex95]

Radar loop from 2000 to 2230z here.  You had a line w/ the pre-frontal trof moving SE and isolated storms moving NE ahead of it, and some were supercells, esp. those one just E of the bay.  One clearly split and one produced the tor in Trappe.
 

[vortex95]

1 hour ago, high risk said:

           It was interesting how the overnight runs looked pretty good, and then the 12Z suite (and a HRRR cycle or two after that) didn't look as good, before the HRRR locked on to the solution by late morning.     And I'll be curious to see how many tornadoes are actually found.  There were probably way more warnings than needed, but I'm wondering if they'll find more than the current count of one (good video of a tornado on the Eastern Shore north of Cambridge).    Ultimately, we probably weren't far off from a more significant tornado event, but as you suggested in your post, the low-level winds were probably just a bit too weak, although I think that the low-level profile was slightly better than what the RRFS and GFS/ECMWF were suggesting last night.

Things turned out close to what the models where showing, at least for the DC area  Plenty of wind reports, some hail, and one tor so far.  Odd, a lack of svr reports in the RIC area and much of cntrl VA, where the highest tor probs were initially. 

I had a quick 1.00" even of rain (WxU site just up the street) and it got quite windy, but no damage in my immediate area.  Kind of avg for a storm.

[Kmlwx]

Looking ahead, the various AI guidance is pretty darn quiet (quieter than I've seen in a while) for the next 8+ days. Beyond that, we'll see. 

I know we have some heat lovers...but I personally am glad we are at least beyond the peak climo heat period in the area. 

[Eskimo Joe]

Looking like another 48 hr + power outage from storms that weren't terrible. BGE is an absolute joke of a utility company.

[dailylurker]

Glen Burnie gets the golden thunderstorm award for the season. That area gets hit every single time there's a chance of a thunderstorm. If there's a chance for severe that's where it always happens. Frederick is in second place lol

[Roger Ramjet]

1 hour ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Looking like another 48 hr + power outage from storms that weren't terrible. BGE is an absolute joke of a utility company.

Mine was out for 11 hours. Came back at 3:30 am. Dominion is usually pretty good.

[Kmlwx]

2 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Looking like another 48 hr + power outage from storms that weren't terrible. BGE is an absolute joke of a utility company.

Meanwhile all the PEPCO hate from the 2000s and 2010s has largely faded. Their tree trimming program and preventive maintenance has been absurd the past 10 years or so. 

An event like yesterday in the earlier 2000s could have easily have 250K+ customers without power in the region. 

[wxmeddler]

Just now, Kmlwx said:

Meanwhile all the PEPCO hate from the 2000s and 2010s has largely faded. Their tree trimming program and preventive maintenance has been absurd the past 10 years or so. 

Trees are the real killer to reliability. A major issue is that we're getting to the point in some of the older suburbs / planned communities that the trees planted at the time of housing construction are reaching the post-maturity age. They are going to fail/fall, and unless the landowner / HOA / town / county is on top of it (they are not), then you're gonna get outages with 30 mph gusts.