Storms could slow holiday travel in the Northeast, but much of the U.S. will enjoy reasonable weather over Labor Day weekend

The weather forecast for Labor Day weekend remains mostly optimistic, but some areas face the chance of thunderstorms and possible traffic disruptions.

As a line of showers and thunderstorms moves east-northeast from the Great Lakes, several severe storms with damaging winds and scattered hail are possible this afternoon.

The region most likely to experience extreme weather is between Binghamton, New York, and Charleston, West Virginia.

Most of the action during the day will be west of the I-95 corridor, but a few cities, such as Philadelphia and New York, could still see a shower or thunderstorm overnight.

While they won’t be large-scale extreme weather events, these showers could still cause brief delays at airports or highways in the northeast later on Saturday.

Rain is also expected on the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana this long weekend.

While it’s unlikely to have any significant impacts, flooding is possible in southern Louisiana, where a Flood Watch remains in effect for the New Orleans area and the Mississippi River Delta. Houston could also see a few scattered showers this weekend, but most of the action will likely remain to the east.

It won’t rain everywhere this weekend, but there will be regular waves of rain coming into the country from the Gulf of Mexico.

Three to five inches of rain are expected over the next few days along the Louisiana coast and parts of the Upper Texas coast.

In the Atlantic, the action starts to pick up in September, which is typically the most active month for storm activity in this region. The area of ​​interest in the central Atlantic currently has a 50% chance of developing into a named storm in the next seven days.

Computer model projections also show this storm moving into the Caribbean Sea and strengthening into a tropical cyclone. However, the chances of the storm developing over the next two days are virtually zero, so plans for the holiday weekend remain safe.

This storm was also followed by a tropical wave, but the National Hurricane Center has reduced the chance of this to 10%.