Sunday Evening Severe Storm Potential: Rain Timeline And Wind Forecast

Sunday November 15 2020

The winds have been increasing today and will continue to grow stronger through the evening. There have been numerous warnings with the cold front as it has passed through the mountains. As I prepared this post at 4 PM, there was no watch or warning in central Maryland, but there is a good chance more might be issued in metro areas this evening.

The peak wind gust forecast has much of the area getting close to 50 mph.  It’s important to note that the line of rain is moving east at 40 mph.  Severe Thunderstorms get a warning when gusts reach 58 mph, so a little more push to get there is possible.

We will explore the rain timeline slider and live radar comparison below.

Wind Gust Forecast

Wind Advisory

The extent of the advisory is Frederick in Maryland and York/Lancaster in PA.  But, there may be more advisories added farther east. It may be for Wind alone, or combined with the storm line as a Severe Thunderstorm.

NOAA Discussion

This report from NOAA highlighted our region for the risk of:

Low Topped Storms

• Widespread Winds of 50 mph or higher
• Scattered 60+ mph gusts
• Severe Thunderstorm Watch: 60% Chance to be issued

When is this possible?

The best short range model forecast has the cold front crossing metro Baltimore and Washington around 7 PM )plus or minus 30 minutes)

Radar Snapshot at 4 PM

At the time of this post, I grabbed the Doppler Radar image to compare to the short range modeling. This can help us assess the timing of the line of storms slower or faster than the model forecast.

Here we see the line between Cumberland and Hagerstown

Radar Simulation —> slider 4 PM tp 11 PM

• Compared to the doppler snapshot at 4 PM above, this looks on time so far.
• Compare the slider timeline to the Live Radar widget below.
• *The line of strong storms may only last 10 to 20 minutes as it passes by you.