PITTSBURGH – The second weekend of April will end on a stormy note across the Northeast with late-day thunderstorms threatening areas from Ohio to New York.
A cold front dropping southward out of the Great Lakes region will likely lead to the development of a west-to-east-oriented line of showers and storms by late Sunday afternoon across portions of the interior Northeast and upper Ohio Valley. The storms are expected to push southward into the evening hours.
“The majority of the day is actually really nice, but then once the storms pop up, it’s kind of this west-to-east line that’s going to move down toward the south,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Ari Sarsalari said.
An area of rain showers moving through portions of upstate New York on Sunday morning should limit the severe weather threat along and north of the New York State Thruway (Interstate 90). However, breaks of sun are expected to destabilize the atmosphere from the southern tier and Catskills of New York into Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.
Overall, nearly 42 million people across the region face the risk of severe storms on Sunday. The general timeframe of the worst weather is between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m. EDT.
NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) has posted a Level 3 out of 5 risk of severe weather for portions of western and northern Pennsylvania and east-central Ohio. This includes some larger Pennsylvania cities, such as Pittsburgh, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Altoona and State College. However, the threat is mostly to the east of major cities in Ohio, including Columbus.
Damaging wind gusts are the primary concern with this round of severe storms, but hail and a couple of tornadoes are also possible.
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A slightly lower, but still notable, Level 2 out of 5 risk of severe thunderstorms stretches from parts of eastern Ohio into Pennsylvania and the southern tier and Catskills of New York, including Canton and Youngstown in Ohio; Allentown, Reading and Bethlehem in Pennsylvania and Binghamton and Poughkeepsie in New York.
The SPC’s Level 1 risk extends as far west as Columbus, Ohio, and as far east as Philadelphia, New York City and areas just west of Hartford, Connecticut.
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“If you live in places like New York City, even though the severe threat is not quite as high there, the storms won’t arrive until pretty late, probably after 9 or 10:00 to around midnight or so,” Sarsalari said. “It’s a brief round of storms, and then it’s out of here.”