Tornado Watch

The atmosphere around our viewing area has rapidly destabilized as we have gone through the past couple of hours. At the Gastonia airport, the temperature jumped from 60 to 67 degrees and the dewpoint jumped from 53 to 62 degrees in 1 hour's time!

A tornado watch is in effect for Cleveland, Gaston, Mecklenburg, Union, Cabarrus, and York counties. That watch is officially set to expire at 5am Thursday morning.

Look for a strong line of storms to blow through the area over the next 3 to 4 hours. Damaging winds are a distinct possibility, and a couple of isolated tornadoes will be possible as well. For those of you that are meteorologically-inclined, this is a situation where we have tremendous amounts of shear involved, so LEWPS and bow echos will be likely from time to time.

Stay weather-alert throughhout the night tonight. Jeff will continue to have continuing information for you on News 14 Carolina.