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Labor Day Weekend Not So Summery for Much of U.S.

Conditions for tornadoes diminished, but strong thunderstorms were expected through the middle of the country and into the Northeast.
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The Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer, has been wet, windy and distinctly unsummery in many parts of the U.S., with strong thunderstorms expected through the middle of the country and into the Northeast.

Flash flood and severe thunderstorm warnings were in effect for the New York City area, where John F. Kennedy International Airport reported arrival delays as long as an hour and 38 minutes.

While conditions for possible tornadoes settled down Sunday, a strong jet stream that dipped south over the weekend dropped heavy rain that created floods in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Several feet of standing water left stalled and stranded cars on the streets of Lake Charles, Louisiana, where "you really don't know which way to go to avoid the water," resident Rosa Herbert told NBC station KPLC. The threat was moving north and east Sunday, with thunderstorms, some of them potentially damaging, expected in several areas in addition to New York:

  • The eastern half of Wyoming into southwest South Dakota and the western Nebraska panhandle.
  • A band of major Midwest cities from Kansas City, Missouri, through St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit.
  • East Tennessee northeast through most of West Virginia, western Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland into the Northeast.

Tornadoes remained a possibility in the Midwest, but that was lessening as the storm system tracked farther north, The Weather Channel reported. The main threats weren't expected until late Sunday, with strong winds causing possible damage from Iowa all the way through northern Wisconsin, lessening overnight.

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