Wow! What an afternoon! We were ready for some thunderstorms... but geeeez... really? These were some kinda nasty!
The parameters were good for storms today but nothing like this. LIs were -2 to -5 and CAPEs were running around 1500 to 2000. Sure, that's good for some decent thunder but not usually enough for tornadoes. Until today.
Just enough sunshine broke out in the early afternoon to give the atmosphere a good juicing. Storms crossed the Indiana line and began to strengthen in the afternoon heat. In western Ohio, we had our first reports of funnel clouds and a possible tornado on the ground. Suddenly, we had tornado warnings for Franklin County and the metro area.
We tracked the storms for more than three hours on live television. The early-evening newscasts were preempted by storm coverage. We scrambled crews to areas that were reporting damage.
Hopefully, we were able to get the warnings out soon enough to give people time to take cover. Our hearts go out to the folks in Athens County where we're hearing unconfirmed reports of fatalities. We'll know more once the sun comes up and teams can do a daylight assessment.
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