Nationwide, The Past Couple Of Days Was Weirdest Weather Weekend I Can Remember

Weymouth, Mass is buried in snow. Note the stop sign.
From @Jenni4Cole on Twitter.  

The weather was officially off the rails this past weekend.

Officially, because I say so.

Extremes happen all the time. Extremes also seem to be getting more and more frequent and, well, extreme.

This weekend was a classic case of that.

Let's give you some examples, in no particular order or level of weirdness.

-- Normally, if there's freezing rain or drizzle, the temperature is just a few degrees below freezing. Today, there was a little freezing drizzle in northern New York and Vermont when temperatures were between zero and five above.

--Speaking of which, you want the ultimate in horrible weather? Then you should have been in Massena, New York Sunday afternoon. At one point, the temperature was two above, freezing drizzle was falling, the wind was from the northeast gusting to 35 mph and the wind chill factor was 22 below.

---If you weren't crazy happy about the weather in Massena, and I don't know of anybody who was, you didn't have to go all that far south to find something better. Washington, DC tied a record high of 68 degrees. But just 60 miles to the north of Washington, the high temperature barely cracked 40 degrees. It was in the 70s in Virginia.

Meanwhile, in normally wintry Billings, Montana
the last snowbanks finish melting amid bare ground
in temperatures this weekend that topped 60 degrees.  

--Speaking of warmth, some cities in Montana were well into the 60s, even threatening 70 degrees. This in a place where temperatures can easily fall to the 20s below zero this time of year.

The average high temperature in Billings, Montana between Jan. 27 and yesterday was an incredibly warm 50.2 degrees. During the same period last year, the average high temperature in Billings was 16.8 degrees, says the National Weather Service there.      

--Or how about Salt Lake City, Utah. Saturday? The high temperature was 68 degrees, the second hottest February reading on record. The overnight low Saturday was 51 degrees in Salt Lake City, the warmest overnight low on record in February. Salt Lake City has "endured" 34 consecutive warmer than normal days, and that streak will continue for at least a week more, probably longer.

-- Also in warm news, how the hell does Oklahoma manage to get into record highs in the upper 70s with a north wind blowing in February? That happened Sunday.

---In central California, they were on the lookout for possible rotating severe thunderstorms that could maybe produce a brief tornado. Luckily, nothing touched down.

While flooding from heavy rain hit parts of northern California
over the weekend, a massive forest fire destroyed 40 homes and tore
across these hills near the Sierra Nevada range well inland from the coast. 

---Also in California the "Pineapple Express" series of storms brought up to a foot of drought-denting, flood producing rains in the northern part of the state. As those floods were raging, a wildfire destroyed 40 homes and spread over 11 square miles near the base of the Sierra Nevada. 

--- And we can't forget Boston and environs. Another snowstorm started there, and is continuing today. Another 20 to even 30 inches could come down in some towns before this finishes tonight. Even after the snow from previous storms compacted on the ground, there's still more than four feet of snow covering everything in some parts of the state.

Latest forecasts point to the risk of another 10 to 25 inches of snow from a possible storm there Thursday. And New England is in for an Arctic blast like one that hasn't been seen in 20, even 40 years.

The weird weather rolls on.