>> these tornadoes, if we have tornadoes now, they may be the kind that you cannot see coming. >> you won't see them coming. for us, it's almost like being completely dark because you have the rain coming through that tornado. almost like a tornado coming in to complete darkness and that's what we'll see with these storms. these storms here are not going to have the strongest winds with them. we may see an isolated tornado, but not a lot of those tornadoes on the ground.

round 2 is essentially catching up to round 2. that's staying along the i-95 corridor. there is still that potential. southern maryland you haven't seen a whole lot. southern maryland, you're really going to get into this down around towards the lexington park area and st. mary's county as line number two actually starts to push line number one actually farther to the east. once they meet up, everybody is going to have the potential for the very strong winds. here's the strongest storm once again in eastern howard county,

anne arundel county that is in effect until 7:15. actually, 7:30. excuse me. and then washington and fairfax county. you folks in montgomery county, frederick county, you're looking out there saying, hey, everything is okay and then it is but then here comes round two. watch out for that. we are not out of the woods yet. >> thank you, doug. we are still on the air. "nightly news" will follow us at 7:30 tonight at which time we expect the tornado warning will hopefully have been dropped. stay tuned because whatever happens, doug and veronica are going to be right on top of it and we'll be right here. >> stay tuned for "nightly news" right after this at 7:30. and now we are going to talk about the flash flooding. >> reporter: that's right. we're here at kenniworth avenue

and if you thought you could come off of 295 and go through the flooded water, that's not the case a semijust plowed through, ripping off the yellow tape that is stopping people from going into the flooded water. some folks thought it was okay. i tell you, there are some good guys over there. they saw it was a potential hazard a danger. what did they do? they took that yellow tape and extended it across the roadway to make sure these cars don't go into that flooded water. you know, we cover these storms all the time. we hear about firefighters and police saying, now, stay away from standing water. stay away from it. you don't know how deep it s and sometimes the message does not get through to folks because right over there there are three cars submerged in the water. i guess i could call them water-logged and firefighters came out here. they rescued the folks stuck in there. they are safe but their cars still remain on the scene. a lot of folks are just fascinated by this. they are standing around, looking at it, taking photos and

putting it on twitter at nbc washington. a lot of folks are trying to figure out, are there people in those cars? there is no one in the cars. they have been rescued. the cars have been stuck there. a tow truck was going to plow those cars out of there. i guess the tow truck driver said, forget it. i'm out of here. my tow truck could get stuck. right now the area of nanny burrows northeast off of 295 is blocked. it's roped off. there are d.c. metropolitan police on the other side over there and they also have the area roped off. if you plan oncoming through here exiting 295, make sure you stay away. don't play russian roulette. the last thing you need is your flooded getting flooded out, the water getting above the front bumper. if you plan oncoming through here, make sure you stay away. jim? >> we've certainly seen that it could be much worse than that.

you could end up in a situation where the water is deeper and much more dangerous. >> indeed. >> i get the impression that there's not a bunch of traffic going through that area right now. is that correct? >> reporter: that is correct. it's roped off but people are getting off of 295 and getting right back on 295 realizing that i got off at the wrong exit because this place is flooding right over here. let me move out of the way and if you are a d.c. police officer, you're watching this, you might want to come out here. not telling you how to do your job but there are folks standing through here, people still trying to go through the water. officials put up the tape. when people come through, they rip the tape and people are still trying to go through the flooded water over there. >> the traffic situation that you were stuck in for several hours on the way to that scene, be did it abate? >> reporter: no. there are still at times bumper to bumper traffic. now we're back here in d.c. in

northeast. we were stuck in traffic for three hours. i was wondering, am i even going to make it on television today? well, you can see that we did because we exited right over here and we were able to establish a live signal with what is called the mast down and thank you to my photographer. that's the mast. that's the top of the live truck that goes up in the air. my photographer here made sure that he could tune in with what is called the mass down so we could talk to you viewers and then we can broadcast live. back to you in the studio, guys. >> thank you, reporting from northeast d.c. >> we're going to go out to bel-air, maryland. power lines are down. as we understood at one point they were on fire. some of those lines, as they went down i think bel-air is not

all that far, doug, from where you say the tornado warning is live. we are told that power lines are down and that some of them are live and, in fact, on fire at this point. that is not water damage. that looks like wind damage in bel-air and again, there is water still up there. >> it's just now been allowed to expire. this is to the north and east of baltimore. this is a baltimore chopper that we're looking at. bel-air right along route 1, up along i-95. this was potentially hit by teernd. they had a tornado warning in

that area. no longer tornado warning but any time you see damage like that spread all across the area, that gives you at least some indication thaw may have had a tornado there. no confirmation just yet. could it have been straight line winds? yes. that is also a possibility. we'll wait for the national weather service to get out there and show us what happened here. but from the looks of this and from the looks of how everything is just scattered across the area, there's a power line down there with that wire completely down. the pole is completely down. that is something that tells me that these winds were upwards of 60, 70 miles per hour and then you see something like that. i can't even tell what that is, to be honest with you. but that is twisted metal all across that area. dangerous storms made their way through the region of bel-air to the north and east of baltimore. we still have the tornado warning to the south of baltimore, right around portions of anne arundel area. so this area here, saw the possible tornado earlier. that same system, this is the same storm that had a tornado warning in our region around

anne arundel county earlier. that same storm made it up towards bel-air and now we're looking at another storm in behind it that could be causing a possible tornado in your area. >> this is bel-air, maryland, although our screen says baltimore, maryland. >> what is interesting, doug, did you notice that when the helicopter was zooming over, you had damage in one area and then the other building, the white building with absolutely no damage at all and then he gets over here and then you see all of the roof tiles off the building there. there he goes back up again. you see the building in the middle? it looks like no apparent damage and then over to our left, as you're being looking at the screen, more damage there like something was hop scotching along the way. >> and it's a very good point, jim. hop scotching is one of the terms that he used. the tornado hopping across the area. you see a tornado come down and then as i was talking about, they come down very briefly. these are not long-lived tornadoes. they are not tornadoes that you see out to the west. these are mitd atlantic

tornadoes that really hop across the area. you'll see one section of your community that is damaged and then you go just across the street and your neighbor's house is a-okay. that's what we're seeing here. you can see the power lines are still on fire up there towards bel-air. this is bel-air maryland to the north and east of the baltimore region but we'll continue to watch that area for you, too. because this is the storm system that came through us. >> doug, i'm thinking people watching are wondering the same thing i am. is it safe for the helicopter to be up there? >> that's a good question. i was wondering the same thing. i was actually surprised that our chopper was up earlier. this area right now, it does seem to be safe. our chopper 4 obviously in contact with us at nbc. they are making sure that they stay out of the thunderstorms. they do not warrant to be anywhere near the thunderstorms. that's the good news, that they do keep in constant contact with us across the area. you see numerous trees down there, numerous limbs down. these are newly built homes.

they have been fairly recently built. you can just see the gutters coming off these houses. they didn't see the biggest impact but i'd be surprised if they didn't see some of the stronger damage. you can see where all of the lights are, that's probably where they saw some of that bigger damage. >> you know what, nighttime is coming in the next hour and a half or something like that. normally doesn't that mean that storms tend to abate and lose their energy and is that something we can expect with this next line that's coming through, doug? >> with this scenario, this is a much different scenario that is playing out. the upper level dynamics are so strong, that even though the sun goes down, we will lose those storms right on through the evening hours and we're looking at round two right now, back around i-81, i'm watching that to see if there's a lapse in the strength of that storm and it does look like round two is starting to weaken a little bit.

round one may be taken over. we may still see where we see those very strong winds. jim, normally, you're right. when we see the sun go down, the storms start to die out. this is a different situation where we have the potential for the very strong storms right on through the nighttime hours. this is something that we'll be talking about through the next couple of hours, too. >> talk a little bit if you would -- you've been predicting, warning about this line of severe weather since early this week. talk about the circumstances that made this happen. >> we're talking about upper level energy. what i mean by that is an area of upper level low pressure sitting over our region and it's spinning and that area of low pressure makes its way across our region. where is it right now? up towards cleveland, ohio. that's where the actual area of low pressure is but you see this push, this push that pushes line number two -- again, line one and line two pushes towards the east. those are very strong winds that are pushing the storms our way

and then at the surface you get flow out of the south or out of the southeast and that creates that turning motion in the atmosphere and that's all you need to produce severe weather. we saw some sunshine today but we didn't see a whole lot of it but the instability was there due to the atmosphere. that's why we've seen this potential tornado outbreak that we've seen and the severe thunderstorm outbreak. the biggest scenario still to play out potentially is the winds. here's the area of concern as well as that first line. let's take a look at that first line once again and you can see that there is no longer any red. they've allowed that tornado warning to expire through anne arundel county. still raining fairly heavily around the d.c. area and back to the west, back towards winchester, that's when we're seeing round number two come through. to the south of that line, a little better down here. let's hope it stays that way but

i wouldn't be surprise if we see it come across the blue ridge, reintensify. the best news is the tornado warning around the odonton area and glen bernie, it's still a thunderstorm warning. >> been listening to you for quite some time, my man, and i always got the impression that when the storm passover the clouds, they lose power. why would they intensify? >> once they move over the mountains, they encounter the warmer air and then you have more instability, more buoyancy in the atmosphere. >> a lot of stuff different about this pattern of storms. all right. thank you, doug. we are going to go back out to shamari stone. it looks like they are getting

heavy rain. >> reporter: that's right. i'm right off of 295 and we said, forget being a block away. let's bring our news 4 viewers a little closer in a safe area to the scene. let me move with my photographer and zoom in a little bit. those three drivers, they tried to come through the water. their cars are still stuck here. you hear that? that's the thunder that doug was talking about and it's moving through this area the rain is picking up. there's a lot of folks trying to drive through here and this driver, you can see, live television trying to go through and that's the problem. that driver did not know how deep it is. yeah, it's standing water but he or she didn't know how deep it was and firefighters and metropolitan police want you to

stop doing this. here's the problem. there was yellow tape extending here, preventing people from driving over. a semi , i guess he wanted to be mr. tough shot, plowed on through this water and ripping the yellow tape. let's give some props. some gentleman saw this and said it's unsafe. it's a hazard. after this bus passes through, if you could come over here, here we go. those folks decided to come right over here and put up this yellow tape to prevent people from driving through into this floodwater right over here. i stepped in it. it's about -- in a safe area, it's not embellished. it's right up to my ankles but it was up to my knees i would say about an hour ago. a lot of folks are fascinated by this. they keep oncoming down here. if you plan oncoming over here, make sure you stay away in your cars. it's very unsafe. back to you guys in the studio. >> i've been in that area more

than a few times. if you were to walk over there under the bring, you'd go deeper than your ankles, my friend. i'm not suggesting that you would do it but that road dips right under the bridge. >> well, here's what we'll do. we'll do it safely. i was over there before. it was ankle. we tell the truth. i'm right over here and it's still knee-deep but as you can see, this is what you were talking about. it's obviously deeper over here because those cars tried to go on through and then all of a sudden they got stuck. right now on i'm on a more elevated level. jim? >> thank you. be careful. >> back to veronica johnson in the weather center with the latest of what is happening. i can hear the sound of an alarm going off. >> i'm going to be hearing that sound in my sleep tonight. i've heard enough of it today. we continue to see warnings come

up and as we take a look at this image right now, the entire area is under a severe thunderstorm watch. for the area that just filled in, that's a severe thunderstorm warning right now and it's for areas of hagerstown and west of frederick right now. that would be in washington county, jefferson county, and berkeley county. if i can get a time on that one. but in terms of where we are finding those storms right now, you can see where the heaviest rain is. we've got that batch now right around i-81. that's the second part of the line that we've been talking about. then we have heavy storms down south. east of fredericksburg, making their way up towards the waldorf area, for southern caroline county, northern essex and king and queen counties, this is going to head over the northeast. for the second line moving pretty fast, we expect to be dealing with these storms for the next two hours. that's how they time out n terms

of rainfall amount, surrounding area, what we've seen is a tremendous amount of rain in a short period of time. here's some of the amounts from north up in frederick county almost two inches of rain for princes county, howard county, a whole lot of rain. these pictures have been absolutely incredible today. alexandria, virginia. look at that. that funnel cloud dropping out of the base of the cloud. college park, maryland, we talked earlier about some of the intense weather right around route 1 and 95. frees down around the area. powerlines also being reported down around the area with many power outage. and take a look at this image. of course you just saw a couple of minutes ago where we were talking about some of the damage up north around bel-air,

maryland, we're going to be headed there shortly to give you a report for the 11:00 p.m. forecast. probably even some roads are blocked. maybe even roads in your neighborhood may be blocked from some of the trees throughout the area. it's going to take us a while to clean up after the storm system. good news is, we have quieter weather coming our way for the weekend. back on the rainfall amounts right now, i also wanted to take one more look here at the radar to show where the most intense storms are around winchester, d.c., down soud around fredericksburg and even up north still showing signs of rotation. a tremendous line. this is all part of the same front, too. take a look at that, williamsport area and hagerstown. one continuous line and it is there from that area in pennsylvania, down towards winchester when we're probably going to be seeing very intense winds as it makes its way

eastward. we've already had 60 miles per hour winds reported. doug? >> veronica, taking a look at graphics 29 here and jim asked the question earlier, what kind of a system is this that brings this type of severe weather? here are the storms coming through. here the line of storms, the parent storm is way up here into michigan and they are wrapping around. you can see the storms wrapping around into canada and back down and around. that's the strength of the storm. you can see the line here. see the line continuing to progress all the way towards the east. that's why we knew this would be a severe weather day. we saw this area of low pressure. it was down to the south and west. that's where it was yesterday. as we move to the north and east, we knew the push would be into our area and that's what we're seeing right now. these line segments here, producing very strong winds ahead of the line as it makes its way in here. we have round number one here.

round number two back to the west. all of these have severe thunderstorm warnings. the entire part of west virginia under severe thunderstorm warnings and washington county and through portions of maryland. down to the south, south of fredericksburg, another warning here. that storm is making its way in towards portions of southern maryland. once again, southern maryland. you've largely dodged this storm. i think you're going to see it over the next few hours and you could see very strong winds. really watch out. if you live in southern maryland, charles county, coward county, you folks are next. the areas that have seen some clearing skies, montgomery county, prince william, western prince william and down to the south, you're next as far as round number two goes. we have round number one moving off to the east. we still have round number two to go for many of you. starting to cut off here, you can see the line up to the

north. that's why we have the severe thunderstorm warnings here but they've fallen apart. that's some good news. will it reintensify? it could. we have a lot of stain built left here. any time we see clearing, even if we saw sunshine out there, it could add some potential to these storms to, add some strength to these storms. by the way, we're still looking at a tornado warning with this. they have reissued that tornado warning around portions of anne arundel county as the storm tracks up into the baltimore area. we're not quite done yet. we'll continue to watch this for the remainder of the night. now a tornado warning actually for areas of baltimore, including, it looks like, the inner harbor here. i have to get out there and see exactly where this is. let's take a look at graphics 22. veronica is looking at graphics 22 and zooming in. here is the harbor. right in here. right in there. right around i-95.

the tunnels there, that area under a tornado warning and that warning is most likely going until 8:00 tonight. we'll continue to keep you posted. >> doug, when it's a snowstorm, you talk in terms of a timeline, when it will begin and when it will end. what does the rest of the night look like? what's kind of time frame that -- when we'll be in the clear? >> i think this will all be over, round number one moving through here for the next couple of hours and then here's round number two coming into the metro area and about the next two to three hours and then it's out of here. we're sitting at 7:30 now. by around the 11:00 news, we'll see it moving across the chesapeake bay and eastern shore. most of us will be able to breathe a sigh of relief. it will make its way through here this weekend as we get back into the 70s this week and looking great. 76 on saturday. 79 on sunday. a lot of sunshine. hopefully it will not be a

weekend when a lot of us are doing clencleanup around the yard. >> so for all of the youngsters that don't go out on the town until 11:00, they are good to go? >> they are good to go. >> and we'll be in bed. thanks doug. there's a storm forminging over tipton, maryland and we'll tell you about perhaps later in the broadcast if something -- actually, we're going to take a look at it now there and also flooding up in baltimore county. that's the storm that seems to be forming over tipton airport. >> oh, it is. that is not live. that's how it looked earlier this evening. or this afternoon, rather, as it was forming over tipton, maryland. fairly dramatic pictures. there was also flooding in baltimore county. high water filling the roads there. several yards, sidewalks, everything in this particular neighborhood. chopper 4 spotted yet another

car. there he goes, trying to make his way through a flooded street. he might have made it this time but he ought to consider himself lucky. that's a real bad move, folks. don't do that. we're going to stay on the air until 7:30. we'll keep you posted on the latest developments. "nbc nightly news" will immediately follow this broadcast at 7:30. we'll continue to bring you updates on the tornado warnings and other severe information. that information will be at the bottom of your screen. >> and we hope that you'll stay with news 4. we'll track the storms throughout the evening. our whole team will be working throughout the evening and they will keep you posted. get the latest information on nbcwashington.com. team coverage at 11:00. there is other news tonight and "nbc nightly news" will be covering that. new developments in the trayvon martin case. >> that and more. and that's a live picture behind us. if we look weird sitting in front of this weird picture it's