MORGANTOWN – Hotter than a firecracker. Humid, too.
That’s what’s crackling for the rest of the week going into Saturday’s Fourth of July holiday, Chris Leonardi of the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh says.
A persistent “heat dome” – which is a high-pressure system basically stalled over the Midwest right now, Leonardi said Monday – will deliver temperatures into the 90s all week long.
With a weather dud expected for Independence Day.
Rain.
“Unfortunately. We’re looking at heavy thunderstorms. And things are really going to be humid.”
Today’s high of around 91, will also carry a heat index that will make the prevailing weather conditions “feel” like 101, the forecaster said.
After that, look for highs in the 90s for the rest of the week, including Thursday’s near-record call of 96.
“The dome is going to ‘push’ all that heat down,” he said.
Meanwhile, people making their home in the mountains of West Virginia are getting pushed around more of late by winds and clouds.
Tornadoes are getting to be more common across the north-central quadrant of the state, along with western Pennsylvania.
Both regions experienced tornado touch-downs last Monday.
An EF-1 tornado was reported on the ground in Fayette County, Pa., the NWS confirmed, and later that evening, a EF-0 twister snapped trees on Bunner’s Ridge in outlying Marion County.
The service used the Enhanced Fujita Scale to rate tornados and windspeeds, with zero being the weakest and 5 carrying the strongest winds and most damage.
In 1944, an F-4 tornado with winds of more than 200 mph leveled the tiny town of Shinnston in Harrison County. More than 100 died in the storm.
The Fayette and Marion county funnels, in contrast, spun with winds in the 80 mph range.
“That’s weak for a tornado,” Leonardi said, “but a tornado is still a tornado – especially if your house is in the path of it.”
In West Virginia, tornadic activity is in a spinning upswirl.
A total of 18 of them touched down in the state in 2024, in fact, which was a weather record.
Climate change is part of it, Leonardi said.
For example, he said, the infamous “Tornado Alley” of Kansas and Oklahoma is shifting a bit to the upper Midwest these days, based in part on ever-warming temperatures.
Ever-changing technology is making it easier for meteorologists to determine a tornado over, say, an intense storm with straight-line winds.
“We know a lot more than we did,” he said.
You can thank your cellphone, he said, for that enhanced storm-cell awareness.
“With social media, somebody’s always sending us a video.”
Garrett Neese of the Uniontown Herald Standard contributed to this report.
