LiveBlog: April 3rd Flooding and Severe Storms

9:11pm
I think the worst is over. The storms that blew up this afternoon and this evening seem to have taken some of the steam out of the approaching squall line along the cold front.

Originally I kind of thought this last round of storms would be the worst, with high straight line winds and possible embedded short lived tornadoes. Instead the line seems to have become pretty broken with no storm or tornado warnings in sight:

Today sure has been a wild ride. Thanks everyone for reading.

8:14pm
This is probably some of the coolest time lapse video I've ever taken from my roof mounted weather cam. If you watch closely on the left side of the screen, away from the rain shaft, you can see some rotation. No tornado reports from around here, but plenty of witnesses said they saw the rotation approaching Canal Winchester:

6:31pm
That was interesting. For the first time this year I was genuinely worried we were about to take a direct hit from a tornado here in Canal Winchester. Dogs and kids in the basement while I watched out the front door and saw a sudden wind shift that got my attention.

I'll post roof video shortly, it's pretty impressive.

5:29pm
Tornado Warning now for Columbus. It appears the storm has weakened some now, but there's still enough rotation to warrant the Warning.

Severe Thunderstorm Warning for the southern part of this line in Pickaway.

Send pics of any funnel clouds you may see.

5:13pm
Residents of London, OH should be underground right now. This storm is holding together and still looks capable of dropping a tornado. Earlier when it was west of South Charleston it looked a lot more promising, but this thing still means business.

This storm will be in Galloway within the next 15 minutes and downtown Columbus shortly after:

4:57pm
Ok, round two is quickly turning in to more of a bow echo event, as opposed to singular celled. This means tornadoes are less likely, but high wind and hail are more likely.

But don't completely rule out tornadoes. That cell in Dayton keeps dropping tornado warnings, and it's headed right toward Central Ohio:

4:10pm
There's our first Tornado Warning of the day, near Dayton for a HP cell with a small rotation. This will be the first of many of these:

3:18pm

A busy day at work has prevented me from updating this as much as I'd hoped. Here's what's happening:

Tornado Watch

The SPC has a Tornado Watch out across the area until 8pm tonight. That may even be extended later depending on what happens with a QLCS developing late tonight.

Heavy Rain:

I've gotten 1.37" so far today in Canal Winchester, but areas north have seen 2-3" already. Even though the heavy, training storms have moved out of the area, our ground is completely saturated. A storm with heavy rain could bring brief flash flooding.

Setting Up For Storms:

We have clearing in Southwest Ohio that'll get close to Central Ohio, which will be a favorable spot for severe storms to fire up:

Storms have already developed in Southern Indiana and have become more linear than single celled. That could lessen the tornado risk, but we'll just have to see if more actually develop in the clear area and move this way. As of now temps are still cool, in the mid 50s. It's in Southwest Ohio where the clearing has brought the warmth and higher dewpoints.

I'm really interested to see what happens next.

9:03am
An awful busy morning across Central Ohio with a lot of different threats to keep an eye on across the area. First, the flooding, which has become a bigger issue with the heavy rain that's setup across Central Ohio and raising the Flood Watches further north in to our area. At this rate I don't think it's out of the question that we could see a couple inches in some areas.

Storms are already firing on the southern base of this morning's precip shield, which could lead to some training of heavy rain across the I-70 corridor later today:

As of now I think that means the severe threat will be pushed further south where breaks in the clouds will be allowed to develop by late morning. It's there that instability will be able to build and single cell thunderstorms will pop. That's where I think the risk is for now. This is a fluid situation and could change if breaks in the clouds happen further north toward our area. As of now the HRRR still simulates thunderstorms breaking in the late afternoon to early evening hours across Central Ohio, so it's a wait and see game. I'm basing my idea off of experience, so we'll have to see if the models win out.