Chief Meteorologist Patrick Rockey’s First Warning Forecast
Monday's blue skies and sunshine will be giving way to a real weather mess on Tuesday. A powerful storm system will bring us multiple threats, including damaging winds, flooding and even tornadoes.
Clouds will increase while you are sleeping, but we should wake up to generally dry weather early Tuesday.
But rain will spread across the region from west to east through the morning hours. And our winds should also pick up in intensity.
But the bulk of the rain and wind, along with the highest tornado threat will arrive in the late afternoon and evening. Just about all of us are under a heightened risk for severe storms, with a rare Level 3 threat for Dare County.
This storm system could even spawn a few supercell thunderstorms, which have the potential to produce significant tornadoes.
Even outside thunderstorms, this storm system could bring us wind gusts in excess of 60 mph, which can do damage.
Those strong south and southeast winds may also produce significant flooding in some areas, including the Albemarle of North Carolina.
And heavy downpours could also cause more localized flooding. The line of storms moving in in the late afternoon and evening could create some heavy downpours in some spots, leading to some flash flooding.
This line should push offshore for most of us by midnight. But we could see some lingering storms along the North Carolina coast into very early Wednesday morning. Stay tuned.
