Heavy Rainfall and Severe Thunderstorm Threats for the Plains and Southeast

A frontal boundary extending from the western High Plains to the Southeast will focus additional showers and thunderstorms this weekend. Some of these storms may become severe, alongside frequent lightning, and isolated instances of flash flooding. Meanwhile dry conditions will continue for the Great Basin where fire weather concerns linger. For the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, seasonable weather. 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.