Severe storms pushed east on Thursday, putting Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas on alert for damaging winds and possible tornadoes. A Level 2 out of 5 severe weather risk covered portions of the Florida Panhandle, while a broader Level 1 risk stretched from New Orleans to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Damaging wind gusts were the main threat, but a few tornadoes remained possible through Thursday evening. The front that drove the storms was still moving south and east after destructive weather and flash flooding hit the South from Louisiana to Georgia on Wednesday.
That earlier round was not just a rain event. Wednesday night’s severe storms produced multiple tornadoes in Mississippi and left damage in several counties, underscoring how fast the threat can escalate when the atmosphere stays primed for more storms.
On Thursday, the risk zone covered the Florida Panhandle as well as southern Alabama and Georgia, and repeated storms were expected to track over the same areas as the front settled and began to stall. That raised the chance of flash flooding across southern Alabama, Mississippi and southern Georgia, where water from one round of storms could be followed by another before the ground had a chance to recover.
The pattern left Tallahassee and communities across the region watching two threats at once: straight-line wind damage and the possibility of isolated tornadoes. The bigger story, though, is that the front is not sweeping through quickly. It is slowing down, and that gives the storms more time to keep renewing themselves over the same corridor.