More Weather Trouble Spots Coming: New England Storms, Southwest Floods, Great Plains Freeze?

Some severe storms are likely in southern New
England Saturday. We hope they won't be as
bad as the tornado in Revere, Mass in July.
(Aftermath of that storm pictured here)  

The nation's ever-active weather keeps giving us more and more to talk about, with tricky, challenging forecasts and some pretty big extremes.

Here's the highlights:

New England Storms:

Scattered severe storms will hit parts of Indiana, Ohio and Michigan today ahead of a cold front. But I think the real show with these storms could hit on Saturday in the Northeast.

It's unusually hot in New England today, with temperatures flirting with 90 degrees, with high humidity. An autumnal cold front is slowly coming in, and the mix will help create some severe storms on Saturday.

The Storm Prediction Center has got a slight risk of severe storms over all but far northwestern New England on Saturday.

However, I think a bullseye for bad storms will extend from the New York metro area, through Connecticut, most of Massachusetts, maybe the southeast corner of Vermont, and on into New Hampshire and Maine.

In those places, strong wind gusts will be fairly common during the storms. There will be some large hail, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear a report or two of fairly brief tornadoes in the region I outlined.

It's odd, but the Northeast seems to be having more tornadoes this year than Oklahoma, in the heart of tornado alley. There have been at least six confirmed tornadoes in New England so far this year. (None so far in Vermont, though) Oklahoma has had only 14, near the lowest on record for them.

On Saturday, the rough weather will go off the coast during the evening, and Sunday will end up sunny and cooler

Southwest

In the Desert Southwest, which has actually been undesert-like this summer with frequent monsoon storms and flash floods, they're under the gun again.

Flash flooding invades Interstate 17 in Arizona
last month. More flash flooding in the Desert
Southwest is likely this weekend.  

Hurricane Norbert could cause some big problems in parts of Arizona and New Mexico, and maybe into southern Nevada this weekend.

No, the deserts aren't going to have a hurricane. Norbert was off Baja California Friday morning and will weaken and fall apart as it moves north into cooler water.

The storm will never make landfall. But moisture from the storms could move into the Southwest, dumping many inches of rain on some towns.

Look for a lot of flash flooding in that neck of the woods. It would be nice if some of Norbert's moisture would make it into California, but that's iffy, especially in the populated areas closer to the coast.  But any rain will help there.

Great Plains Cold

Long range computer models are predicting a nasty outbreak of cold weather in the Great Plains and parts of the Great Lakes next week? Sound familiar. That region has had more than its share of epic cold snaps since last winter. It even got chilly at times in July, thanks to a huge dip in the jet stream that keeps reasserting itself in that neck of the woods.

This time, it could get cold enough in a broad area from the Dakotas to Michigan so that frost could be a problem. Stay tuned.

Western heat:

With the dip in the jet stream in the Midwest, that big ridge of hot, dry air will reassert itself over the West Coast. That means more near record heat, and continued intensification of the drought out that way.

The ridge, or "ridiculously resilient ridge" as it's been dubbed, has pretty much been there in various degrees of strength for a couple years now.  Experts are investigating whether this remarkably stuck weather pattern, the western ridge, the Midwest dip, is linked to climate change.