Here's the top weather story for Aug. 24
AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno and Ariella Scalese take a look at the top story for Aug. 24.
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00:00 top story as mother nature has cranked up the furnace for the latter half of August
00:04 as a massive heat dome continues to stifle the country from the Gulf of Mexico into the
00:09 Great Lakes states with the hottest weather of the summer.
00:12 Excessive heat warnings are in place for over 100 million Americans, 19 straight stretching
00:18 from Texas and Louisiana to Minnesota and Wisconsin.
00:21 Meanwhile, locally damaging thunderstorms are in the offing from Michigan to western
00:27 New York today as storms erupt on the northern fringe of the heat dome parked over the middle
00:32 of the nation.
00:33 Wind gusts of the strongest storms could be anywhere from 50 to 60 mph, but the accurate
00:37 local storm acts all the way up to 70 mph.
00:40 And Bernie, a lot of the storms this morning are starting with the very heavy rain.
00:43 Yeah, they are.
00:44 In fact, let's take you to Little Rock, Arkansas where we're going to have an accurate weather,
00:47 real field temperature between 115 and 120 degrees today.
00:52 Before I get to the heat, I do want to show you this complex of rain and thunderstorms
00:56 that we are following for you this morning straight out to the radar.
00:59 Here's the zone that has really gotten a lot of rain here overnight where we've had about
01:05 three to six inches of rain.
01:06 That does include the Detroit metro, although most of the heaviest rain has been on the
01:11 southwestern side of the city.
01:13 I want to take you in toward Detroit.
01:15 There's that heavy rain from Ann Arbor where I've seen about three to four inches of rain
01:19 to Saline, Monroe, Trenton and Taylor.
01:22 Some big time problems here on the roadways, look out along I-75.
01:26 Let's zoom on out and take you into western parts of Ohio where we're tracking this band
01:31 of rain from Defiance, Lima, Kenton, down toward Marion.
01:36 Some downpours here.
01:38 This will also impact I-75.
01:40 Let me zoom on out here and you can see where we have the flash flood warnings in that zone
01:45 where we've had about three to six inches of rain.
01:47 These flash flood warnings go through the morning hours and again extend from Sterling
01:51 Heights all the way down toward the Marion, Ohio area as that rain continues to push into
01:56 the area.
01:58 This will tend to diminish as we go through this morning, but of course we're looking
02:02 for additional showers and thunderstorms as we go through today.
02:06 All of those showers and thunderstorms, by the way, on the northeastern periphery of
02:10 where we have the heat.
02:11 This is where we have the heat today, where we have the heat advisories and the excessive
02:16 heat warnings as we talked about.
02:18 It covers a large area from the central Gulf Coast states all the way up into the upper
02:22 Midwest and when you tally it up, it is a big number here.
02:27 I have my calculator out closing in on 128 million Americans.
02:32 That's how many people are going to be impacted by this heat today and that does include the
02:36 Chicago area.
02:38 We broke the record yesterday in Chicago.
02:40 The record was 97 in 1947.
02:43 We did reach a high of 98 degrees.
02:45 Today we're going to do three degrees better.
02:47 101 degrees today.
02:49 Look at the area above 100.
02:51 In Nashville you miss out, 99, but Little Rock, Jackson, Dallas, Wichita, Omaha, a little
02:57 cooler in Minneapolis today, big cooling coming tomorrow.
03:01 But that 100 degrees in Chicago, it hasn't happened much.
03:04 I took out the history books here.
03:06 I'm a history buff.
03:07 I love history.
03:09 So the last time it hit 100 degrees in Chicago was July 6, 2012 and I believe this was the
03:15 time frame of the super derecho that formed along the northern edge of the heat.
03:20 Today we're going 101.
03:21 By the way, the record today in Chicago, 101 set back in 1947.
03:26 Lots of records today.
03:27 Cedar Rapids, St. Louis, Fort Wayne, Toledo, all the way toward Louisville and again, these
03:34 records will start to come down or I should say the temperatures will start to come down
03:38 a little later on this week.
03:40 Christina, how about Ariella?
03:42 Yeah, what's Christina up to this morning?
03:44 I don't know.
03:45 Not, not in the heat, certainly.
03:46 No, definitely not.
03:48 But we were talking about riding the periphery where he is, where we've seen the storms and
03:51 Bernie was showing you radar.
03:53 Some of those totals here and I want to look at some of these weather stations.
03:56 Look at this 7.34 inches of rain.
03:59 Also storms producing hail over an inch and very powerful winds upwards of 40 miles per
04:04 hour.
04:05 So powerful storms that have rolled through and we're still seeing a lot of that activity.
04:09 So you may be getting up wondering if it's a good time to get out, go for that morning
04:13 walk, wanting to know what the commute is going to be like.
04:16 Well, you can use AccuWeather Minutecast.
04:17 So we take a place around Pittsburgh here and you can see that the rain is going to
04:21 be continuing for at least the next 45 minutes and you can also drag this out to see when
04:25 the rain will stop, get lighter, get heavier.
04:28 A good tool that you could use right at home.
04:30 So our setup for today, we're taking a look at the exclusive AccuWeather forecast on this
04:34 Thursday as we watch this warm front lifting to the north.
04:37 So the humidity is also going up after a pretty nice day for most of us in the northeast yesterday.
04:43 More in the way of those showers and thunderstorms continue to spread east.
04:46 We will be looking at another round of severe weather moving through as we head into really
04:50 tonight this evening through tonight.
04:52 Again, Columbus, Pittsburgh down to Charleston, West Virginia.
04:55 Hail and flooding downpours a big concern.
04:57 A lot of these areas can see a repeat of what we're dealing with now.
05:01 So I think flooding a big concern, but also some of those powerful winds 50 to 60 miles
05:04 per hour possible throughout our afternoon and night.
05:08 So I do want to quickly play this out because we were showing you where that heavy rain
05:11 is now.
05:12 It's starting to fizzle out, but then I think we'll start to see things ramp up again as
05:15 we head throughout this evening and that heavy rain will continue to push into Ohio and Pennsylvania
05:19 yet again.
05:20 And then we'll see some clearing here as we head into Friday and then through the weekend.
05:25 So heads up here for some changes on the way.