Tornadoes Are More Powerful Than We Realize

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The threat of severe storms will track along the periphery of a hot dome of high pressure that's covering much of the nation in the Midwest and Northeast into this weekend.

Here's what we are tracking: Showers and thunderstorms are moving through parts of the Tennessee Valley and East.

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Widespread reports of severe weather stretched from Nebraska to the mid-Atlantic on Friday into Friday night. More than 400 filtered reports of damaging winds, hail and tornadoes were logged, making it one of the busiest days of the year. The storms in the Midwest produced multiple possible tornadoes in Iowa, hail as large as tennis balls in Wisconsin and Nebraska, and wind gusts as high as 90 mph in Iowa.

B​elow is a look at the latest radar showing any active watches and warnings.

Here's how the heat dome is helping to trigger severe weather: Upper-level high-pressure systems create heat waves in summertime like the one we're seeing this week in the central and eastern states.

I​t's common for disturbances in the upper atmosphere to track in a clockwise direction along the periphery of those highs. The rising air created by those disturbances overrides hot, humid air near the ground, which can trigger the development of bouts of thunderstorms.

Chris Dolce has been a senior meteorologist with weather.com for over 10 years after beginning his career with The Weather Channel in the early 2000s.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.