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After two days of violent weather that featured deadly tornadoes, 80-mph winds and tropical downpours, more severe thunderstorms are a threat from the Plains to the mid-Atlantic through Wednesday night.
The storms can bring frequent lightning strikes, hail, strong wind gusts and blinding downpours and also can cause disruptions to daily commutes, as well as other travel and outdoor activities.
A boundary separating relatively cool air to the north from hot, muggy air to the south has been the focus of these powerful storms during the first part of this week.
This boundary will be in a similar location over the Plains and Midwest on Wednesday and Wednesday night, thus setting the stage for individual thunderstorms to develop and possibly congeal into storm clusters.
The weather battle zone and greatest risk of locally severe thunderstorms will sag southward in the Eastern states on Wednesday.
AccuWeather.com MinuteCast[TM] has the minute-by-minute forecast for your exact location when showers and thunderstorms threaten. Type your city name, select MinuteCast[TM], and input your street address. On mobile, you can also use your GPS location.
During Wednesday, the potential for gusty thunderstorms and localized severe weather will stretch across Wisconsin and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan but can extend to northern Illinois, northern Indiana, northern and central Ohio, much of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and northern Maryland and Delaware.
Cities in the path of potentially severe thunderstorms include Chicago; Detroit; Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Pittsburgh; Philadelphia; Wilmington, Delaware; and Atlantic City, New Jersey. The worst of the storms will likely stay south of New England and much of the New York City metro area.
More storms will erupt over the High Plains late on Wednesday.
If you can hear thunder, you are at risk of being struck by lightning.
Because of the speed of many of the storms and the potential volatility of the weather pattern, people spending an extended period of time outdoors will need to keep an eye out for rapidly changing conditions.
Spotty storms can also pop up away from the rim of the heat within the hot, humid air mass. Most of these storms will only affect a small area.
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Recent rainfall has caused record flooding on the Big Sioux and Rock rivers in northwestern Iowa. Both of these rivers flow into the Missouri River, which could reach flood stage in Omaha, Nebraska, this weekend.
Late in the week, a push of cooler air from eastern Canada will shove storms farther south along the East Coast, but the zone of storms will hold over the Plains.