PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — After several days of sunshine, some severe weather is moving across the area tonight, bringing with it the possibility for heavy rain, high winds and lightning.

The National Weather Service has issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch for Allegheny, Beaver, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties. The following counties in West Virginia are also under a watch: Brooke, Hancock, Marshall, Monongalia and Ohio.

The watch is in effect for much of the area until 2 a.m. and could be expanded to other counties.

A first line of showers came through mainly to the east of our area this afternoon, and a second round of showers and storms are moving toward the area tonight.

KDKA’s Jon Burnett says embedded within the clusters of precipitation in the second round are some fairly heavy downpours.

“Showers and storms on the way tonight some of which could contain damaging winds, small hail, lots of cloud to ground lightning and heavy downpours,” says Burnett.

The dew point is also up. Burnett says humidity is kicking in for the overnight hours and into early Sunday, but then a front goes through and things dry out.

Sunday’s high will be 82 degrees.

“Low pressure goes by to our south [Sunday], drags most of the moisture with it and we’ll start to slowly clear out. I don’t think [Sunday] morning will look that great, but I do believe from dawn on, it will be dry,” Burnett says. “Then, as we head into Monday, things dry out nicely, low pressure moves away, high pressure moves in, that clears things out and we set up for what’s going to be a nice, long, warm but dry or mostly dry stretch.”

Then, the beginning of next week will see the return of warmer temperatures and sunshine.

“As we head into the early part of next week, the whole system moves away from us, high pressure builds in and the sun returns,” said Burnett.

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