Extreme Cold, Snow, Weather Weirdness Continues On And On In The U.S

In Greenville, North Carolina this week, somebody
parked a Jeep during Monday's ice storm. They
then drove away, leaving this Jeep ice sculpture
of sorts behind. The ice had been attached to the grill
of the vehicle, but stayed behind when the driver pulled away.  

The strange, extreme weather in the United States rolls on today.

Mother Nature also seems intent on bullying the same places she's hit over and over again.

Case in point:  On Monday, a large chunk of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys was hit by a huge winter storm of damaging ice that cut power to tens of thousands, and dropped more than a foot of snow in some areas

In the past couple of days, as record cold settled into the eastern part of the nation, the area that had the most intense cold in terms of how far below normal readings were, came to that exact same spotl

Now, again in the Tennessee and Ohio valleys new winter storm warnings are up for a lot more ice and snow tonight and tomorrow. Up to a foot of snow could fall in the mountains of West Virginia.

In and around Nashville, an ice storm warning is up for a quarter to a half inch of ice tonight. Trees are already laden with ice and ready to collapse from the last storm Monday, so this isn't good.

To make matters worse, the ice is forecast to change to plain rain in much of Tennessee Saturday and will come down hard. The heavy rain, the melting ice and the frozen ground which can't absorb water means flooding is a threat as well.

There might even be a severe thunderstorm or two in northern Louisiana, southern Arkansas and western Mississippi with this on Saturdayt.

The storm will be followed by another  Arctic air mass that again make the region the core of the cold wave.

Of course, New England has been the big story, what with all the snow they got over the past month.

The storm in the Tennessee Valley will work its way up to New England for more hassles on Sunday.

Luckily, the snow won't be extreme up there. Maybe two to six inches. Which will make things difficult as people try to find places to put the snow. But at least it's not going to be a two foot dump of white.

However, in most of New England, that snow will change to a period of ice, freezing rain and rain Sunday. That will continue making travel a hassle. Plus, as I noted yesterday, the added snow, plus the rain soaking into it, will add weight to roofs straining under the accumulation that's already it.

There will be more roof collapses in New England.

The snow keeps piling up because no real thaws have happened and none are in sight. Yeah, it''ll probably get above freezing for a few hours Sunday in New England, but it won't last nearly long enough to get rid of much snow.

The Arctic air will rush back in Sunday night for an extended stay, and there are several chances for more snow and ice storms in New England going into early March.

The winter weather is spreading, too. Colorado has been largely left out of extreme cold and snow this season, but now a winter storm watch for possible heavy snow is up for a good chunk of Colorado later today into Saturday.

EXTREMES AND WEIRDNESS

All kinds of weird tidbits have been coming from this extreme weather pattern.
  
Ryan Miller at ABC7 noted shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday that Barrow, Alaska, is 2,247 miles closer to the North Pole than Washington DC, but both cities had exactly the same temperature, 17 degrees.

According to Eric Holthaus in Slate, Cape Girardeau, Missouri set its all time record low Thursday with a reading of 19 below. Paducah, Kentucky reache 10 below, breaking the daily record by 11 degrees and establishing a record low for the third day in a row.  

The snow piles taken from the streets of Portland, Maine
got so tall near the airport that the FAA put a stop to
it, saying the height of the pile could interfere
with flights. Image from WCSH.  

Florida is now sharing in the chill. Record lows were falling all across the Florida peninsula early Friday morning.

Record lows had been tied in Orlando (33), Naples (39) and Miami (42) as of around 4 or 5 a.m. and those temperatures were expected to fall a couple more degrees by dawn.

In Portland, Maine, city officials had to stop piling up snow in a snow dump near the airport and start another one, the Portland Press Herald reported.

The city has been taking snow off its streets and putting it in a snow dump near the airport. The pile near the airport was getting so tall that it threatened to interfere with flights. The Federal Aviation Administration said the snow pile was getting so tall it was nearing mandated height  limits.

The city has found another site in Portland to dump more snow.

I'm sure we'll hear about more extremes and outrageousness in the weather department over the eastern United States over the next few weeks as the weather pattern is still stuck in one that would pump extreme cold and storms into a lot of places east of the Misssissippi River