Thunderstorm Wind — Lancaster, South Carolina

2024-08-18 · near Lancaster, Lancaster, South Carolina

Event narrative

Lancaster county dispatch reported multiple trees down within the city limits.

Wider weather episode

Scattered strong to severe storms develop during the late afternoon hours on 8/18. The environment featured a gradient in instability with weaker instability across the western Midlands (mixed layer CAPE around 1000 J/kg) to stronger instability across the central and eastern Midlands (mixed layer CAPE around 2000-2500 J/kg) with sufficient effective bulk shear around 30-35 knots. There was a gradient in moisture with Precipitable water values ranging from 1.5 inches to 1.8 inches in the eastern counties. Some drier air aloft was moving into the area with some downsloping winds at 850/700mb as the upper trough axis approached. The best forcing remained to our north over VA/NC.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (34.7217, -80.7686)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1194204. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.