DETROIT – Wednesday marked the third straight day of severe weather across the northern tier of the country as a cold front marked the demarcation of where air masses clashed.
Damage from hail, gusty winds and tornadoes was reported throughout the eastern Great Lakes, but the greatest concentration of impacts appeared to be in northern Ohio.
Communities across the Buckeye State were placed under Tornado Warnings as the storms worked from west to east across the state.
Tornado Watches were also issued for cities such as Cleveland and Columbus, as well as Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, which continued until well after sunset.
Significant damage was reported by local authorities in the town of Bucyrus in northern Ohio.
Police advised residents to stay off the roads while crews attended to debris and downed power lines.
A resident told FOX Weather she was one of five people inside a Family Dollar store when the roof partially collapsed during a storm’s strong winds.
Video taken after the cell moved through showed extensive damage to the store.
“Everyone is fine. Thank God! Terrifying though,” said Leeuh Berry.
Similar images of damage were taken around the town, and PowerOutage.us estimated that more than 20% of Crowford County was without electricity.
The National Weather Service office in Cleveland is tasked with surveying damage from Wednesday’s storm to determine the number of tornadoes that impacted the region and their strength on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.
Significant damage was also reported in Windham Township, which is about a two-hour drive from Bucyrus.
Portage County Emergency Management said at least one tornado touched down in the community and damage assessments were underway Wednesday evening.
Despite the widespread damage, no injuries were reported associated with the tornadic activity in Northeast Ohio.
At least 17 tornadoes were reported in the Midwest on Tuesday, seven of which have already been confirmed by National Weather Service storm surveys. The strongest twister so far received an EF-2 rating south of Virgil, Kansas. Another tornado that struck south of Topeka, Kansas, injured at least two people when their RV was flipped over.
Right after the system that produced severe storms during the first half of the week, a new system will dive out of the Rockies and bring a mess of storms and severe weather to the South while forcing down some much cooler air.
Scattered strong to severe thunderstorms capable of damaging winds, large hail and perhaps a couple of tornadoes are possible Thursday from parts of the lower Ohio Valley and into the southern Plains.
The SPC has issued a Level 3 threat for the areas of concern. The affected cities include St. Louis, St. Charles, and Florissant in Missouri, as well as Evansville, Indiana and Clarksville, Tennessee.
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The FOX Forecast Center said storms along the southern end of the cold front will be the most intense and could produce damaging wind gusts and large hail from southwestern Missouri into Texas.
The frontal system will slow down and possibly stall briefly from Friday into Sunday, resulting in repeated rounds of showers and storms from Texas into parts of the mid-South.
Most of this area has been rather dry recently, which should inhibit the overall flash flood threat. However, the repeated rounds of storms could produce localized areas of flooding.
As the cold front slides southward, much cooler air will drop south out of Canada, leading to some impressive temperature changes, the FOX Forecast Center said. Locations across the central and southern Plains that were in the 80s at the start of the week will see their highs struggle to get out of the 50s by Thursday.
“This cool air is going to get all the way down to I-20,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Britta Merwin said. “So if you live in the Gulf Coast, it’s not going to be you … drive up towards Shreveport, and you’ll feel it.”
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The cooler temperatures will gradually expand farther south and eastward into the weekend, with near- to below-average temperatures expected to reach everywhere east of the Rockies, except Florida, by this weekend. The coolest temperatures relative to mid-April averages will be found over parts of the High Plains, where high temperatures could be upwards of 15-20 degrees below average.