The Severe Weather Train Rolls On In The United States.

A tornado touched down near Sanford, Florida Monday. 

Right on schedule, around 11 a.m. this Tuesday morning, the wind abruptly began to howl outside my windows in St. Albans, Vermont.  Winds appeared to be gusting to over 40 mph, and I've already seen a few twigs and small branches come down, as of 11:30 a.m.

The strongest winds here won't last much longer, and the pale in comparison to some of the violent weather parts of the nation have seen this spring, as I've noted a few times before.

Vermont is getting hit by a dynamic, fast moving storm system coming in from the west. The worst of the trouble with this storm, though, will go by to the south for the rest of the day.

A pretty good squall line was in the beginning stages of forming in central New York and Pennsylvania late this morning, and it will sweep east, scattering a few pockests of damaging wind with thunderstorms from southern New England down to the Washington DC area.

This outbreak of bad weather won't be nearly as bad as what's been going on in the south, but you will hear news today of fallen trees, power outages and a few trees through house roofs and crushing cars today from Connecticut and Massachusetts to Virginia.

It's a continuation on a really active weather pattern this spring that has featured a fast flow of air across the United States jam packed with a variety of storms.  As we well know, these storms have left a series of snowstorms, floods and especially tornadoes behind.

The one affecting the Northeast today is unlikely to produce any tornadoes. But it is ushering in a blast of unseasonable cold air from Canada that will probably do damage in its own right. Freeze warnings are up for much of the Middle Atlantic States and areas in and around Ohio tomorrow night.

A lot of orchards are already blooming in that area - prematurely due to warmer than normal winter and early spring weather - so this could cause a lot of damage.

Up here in Vermont, things aren't that far along, so there won't be widespread crop damage, but as I noted yesterday, you might lose some of your daffodil and forsythia blooms.

THEN, MORE SEVERE

The next severe weather threat is already getting going near Colorado. Today, the first round of this system will likely create a few spots with gigantic hailstones in and near Oklahoma today.  A few towns might get some baseball sized hail, which really stings.

The storm will push east, and cause a risk of some severe storms and a couple tornadoes in eastern Texas and the southern Mississippi Valley on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, like the trend line we've seen so many times this year, the threat of severe storms and tornadoes on Thursday now appears to be greater than originally expected in parts of the Southeast.

The parent storm system looks like it will move a little more slowly than originally forecast, allowing more very humid air to infiltrate the Southeast than earlier thought. It also will allow the parent storm to strengthen more before moving off the East Coast.  Together, that helps increase the tornado threat, especially in Alabama, Georgia, and northern Florida, as it looks now.

There's even a chance, once again - sigh - of some long tracked, strong tornadoes down there.

They don't catch a break, do they? Just yesterday, some dramatic looking tornadoes crossed Florida freeways, damaging buildings and trees on their way through, but thankfully causing no serious injuries and deaths.

Unfortunately, the strong Mississippi tornado I mentioned yesterday did kill one person. It was another EF-4, the second strongest catagory you can get, within a 30 mile radius with a week.  It's rare for the United States to get much more thank ten EF-4's per year, so having that many within a small area in just a week is something else.

Severe storm researcher Tony Lyza (@tlyazawx on Twitter) posted on that social media platform that shows at least 14 EF-2 or stronger have hit a narrow, roughly 150-mile wide corridor of Mississippi beween Interstates 10 and 20 since mid-December. That's an incredible density of relatively strong tornadoes for such a small area.  So yes, this is odd!

It still looks like severe weather might temporarily settle down for a time until early May, but that's not guaranteed. Just remember that May is typically the most active and dangerous month for tornadoes in the United States.

Video: Tornado crosses Interstate 75 near Marion Florida Monday:


Turn up the sound on this one. A tornadic supercell was passing near the viewers. That rumbling was either a tornado going by or constant thunder from the incredible amount of lightning you see in the video, or both.  I bet the people shooting the video are glad the storm didn't hit them full on: