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Thursday is a WRAL Weather Alert Day with a Level 2 risk for severe weather. The biggest threats will be damaging winds, heavy rain, isolated flooding and hail. Areas north of the Triangle are under a flood watch.

ð¨WRAL Weather Alert Dayð¨Level 2 storm risk expands to cover most of central NC, flood watch in effect north of Triangle

<p>I'm meteorologist, Amy Wilmot in the WRL severe weather center, we have issued a WRL weather allure day. Almost the entire viewing area is under a level two risk for severe storms. These are going to start to arrive later on this afternoon, continue through the evening and maybe even a couple of hours after sunset. The threats with today's storms damaging winds, the potential for some hail and some localized flooding with some heavy rain plan for a slow evening commute are models that we look at are showing widespread showers and storms right during the evening commute and we're likely going to have the WRL storm tracker out there. So, tune in starting at four. We'll keep you posted on how things are looking on radar and out on the roads for the evening. Commute. Here's a look at 3 p.m. We'll have some storms around mainly in our northern counties at that point starts to move into the triangle area between four and 5 p.m. Again, right during the evening commute by 7 p.m. It looks like the focus will be over our southern and eastern counties along I 95 but we still can't rule out some storms after sunset. This is a look at 10 p.m. Certainly not as widespread, but we still have that threat for a few storms. Around 10 o'clock. We wake up Friday morning to some quiet weather. We do not expect severe storms Friday, but we do expect some storms that could have some gusty winds, some frequent lightning and some heavy downpours. So plan for that as we progress through the day in the afternoon and evening on Friday, Saturday had the potential for some hit and miss showers and storms maybe even during the morning. So the timing is a little bit different. We could wake up to a few showers or isolated storms and then we'll see more showers and storms arrive during the afternoon and evening. This is all because we have a cold front that eventually is going to stall right over central North Carolina. It's going to kind of waver back and forth to the north and south and that's why we have the unsettled weather in the forecast, check this out a look at the rainfall potential for the next week, anywhere from 2.5 to maybe four of rain. So we're going to get some decent rain out of these waves of showers and storms that roll through. So plan for storms today, we have the weather alert day, we'll keep the weather office staffed all day, let you know if we get any warnings, high temperatures will stay mainly in the low nineties today. So, not quite as hot as we've been the last few days. We have highs in the eighties starting Friday and that will continue into next week. But notice each day it's pretty unsettled. We have storms in the forecast each day over the next seven days.</p>

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