WEATHERTALKBLOG.COM & WGHTFM.CO.NR

August 15th, 2008

Yesterday's thunderstorms dropped a big load of hail across the region. Here are some of the biggest reported:

1 inch: Finksburg, Carroll County; near Fairhaven and North Beach, in Anne Arundel County

0.88 inch: Germantown, Montgomery Co.; Fallston in Harford County, and Bentley Springs, Baltimore County

For more reports of hail from yesterday's storms, click here. And here's more about hail, with some amazing photos. The hail photo at left is a generic image from NOAA, not from yesterday's storm. If you have one, send it in.

There was also another blast of heavy rain in some very localized areas:

Ridge, in St. Mary's: 1.94 inches

Deale, in Arundel: 1.6 inches

Bel Air, in Harford: 1.14 inches

Princess Anne, in Somerset: 1.12 inches

We can expect more showers and thunderstorms this afternoon. Forecasters out at Sterling say we're running a 50 to 60 percent chance for storms after noon. Some could be severe, they say, with large hail and damaging winds The high today at BWI should be in the mid-80s.

Storms could continue past midnight. But the weekend looks great, with sunny skies and highs in the low-80s on Saturday, climbing to near 90 on Sunday.

The near-90 weather will persist into next week. And forecasters are watching developments in the eastern Caribbean near Puerto Rico, where bad weather could develop today into a tropical depression. If so, it could begin to affect our weather sometime in the middle of next week as the storm moves up the East Coast.