While a widespread severe weather outbreak is not expected in the Northeast, storms capable of causing disruptions and damage at the local level are likely Tuesday afternoon and evening.

People spending time outdoors or on the road should keep an eye out for rapidly changing weather conditions.

A mosaic of showers and thunderstorms will form during the midday and afternoon hours over the Northeast. A few of the storms will become severe, capable of producing frequent lightning strikes, moderate hail, damaging wind gusts and flash flooding.

Some neighborhoods will be hit with downed trees and power outages as well as street flooding and travel delays.

The greatest risk for these storms extends across Ohio, western and northern Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey, much of New York state, much of New England, southern Ontario and southwestern Quebec.

Cities that could be hit by a severe thunderstorm include Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Scranton, Albany, Buffalo, New York City, Hartford, Boston, Burlington, Vt., Concord, N.H., Portland and Augusta, Maine, London and Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec.

Storms will also fire farther south in the mid-Atlantic and Appalachians. While these are likely to much more widely separated, they can still briefly become severe.

In some cases the storms will be small in size, developing and dissipating rather quickly. In other cases the storms can organize into a squall line, move along for a few hours and cover a hundred miles.

Most of the storms will diminish soon after dark. However, in a couple of cases a complex of storms rolling in from the Midwest can survive well into the night.

Additional thunderstorms will fire through the remainder of the week. Thursday is the most likely day where an organized, broad area of severe weather occurs on the I-95 corridor from Washington, D.C., to New York City and Boston as the main batch of energy from the Midwest reaches the East Coast.

The frequency of thunderstorms, and especially downpours, will increase significantly during the coming weekend into next week and will raise concerns for flooding.