Mountain Escarpment High Wind Event Likely Early Tuesday

Good Sunday evening,

Hope you are enjoying the SuperBowl LVII. While there is a break in the action the forecast team continues to monitor an active weather pattern across the Western Carolinas in the short term.

Late tonight, moderate to heavy rainfall is expected to move in and Monday will feature a chance of thunderstorms and possible severe weather in the Piedmont.

As you can see on the video, a surface low across the Mid-South will intensify in a hurry Monday and will pass to our north and west. That places us in the warm sector.

By early Tuesday as the low pressure passes by, we will have a quick rise in pressure along with strong wind energy at 850 mb (roughly 5,000 ft.) that will pass through the mountains and northern foothills.

You can see on the image above, the isobars run parallel to the Blue Ridge which is a signal we see during high wind events across western North Carolina.

At 5,000 ft, some very strong winds will lie along the escarpment from near Tryon northeast to Jonas Ridge and Globe. Winds energy could reach 75 mph by the Tuesday morning commute.

At this time we see a window of about 12 hours (Tuesday 12 am – 12 pm) in which some locally damaging winds (in excess of 60 mph) are possible from the escarpment and down into some valley locations. For Marion, Lenoir and Morganton, wind gusts of around 40 mph are quite possible.

We anticipate the National Weather Service to issue some wind products for those locations on Monday.

Those driving high-profile vehicles will be impacted by this for the Tuesday morning commute. Power outages and downed trees are possible as well. Be Weather Aware!