For National Weather Service forecasters, one inoperable radar is manageable; three down is a problem.

It’s not that they won’t be able to see what’s going on in those regions. Other surrounding radars will be able to pick up the most dangerous storms, supercells, which are characterized by rotating winds and produce tornadoes.

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What they won’t be able to see is debris and rotation in the wind closer to the ground — in other words, the tornadoes themselves, which are a real threat Wednesday afternoon. The chance of destructive, deadly severe weather is so significant, the Storm Prediction Center used their highest risk level to convey the threat.

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Severe storms, mainly with damaging wind gusts, very large hail and flash flooding, will be widespread Wednesday. Very strong tornadoes are also likely for some locations. There’s a large “moderate” risk zone from Kentucky to the Florida Panhandle and east into South Carolina. A moderate risk is the second-highest out of five levels the center uses to characterize the severe weather threat for the day.

Within that region, a high risk has been issued in parts of Georgia and South Carolina, including the cities of Macon, Augusta and Columbia. In their rationale for the high risk, forecasters noted “there is increasing confidence that long-track supercells will be likely.”

Supercells are the kinds of storms that produce tornadoes.

It’s the same region that was hit hard by severe storms Monday, when witnesses sent 24 tornado reports to the National Weather Service, mainly in Georgia. At least five people died in storms in the Southeast on Monday and Tuesday, weather.com reports.

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On top of all that, flash flooding is likely — perhaps more likely than usual in these situations. Forecasters are pointing to a large swath from Alabama to South Carolina where moisture is going to converge between two fronts.

One of the offline radars is in southwest Georgia. The other two cover southeast Alabama, which John DeBlock, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the Birmingham office, is responsible for. All three cover parts of the region at highest risk for destructive weather.

DeBlock says they’re going old school Wednesday — back to the basics, so to speak.

“We’re going to lean on that mesoscale meteorology,” DeBlock said in a call. “On the really bad days, you don’t wait for the [radar] signatures to issue a warning.”