No Big Storms Here, But Plains States To Take Battering Today For 3rd Day.

Quincy Vagell tweeted this photo of a tornado and
lightning near Grover, Colorado Monday. 

The brief heat blast here in northern New England is slowly coming to an end today, without many fireworks.  

We did have more record highs in Vermont Monday. The temperature of 94 degrees broke a record high in Burlington for the second day in a row.

The day's minimum temperature of 71 set a date record for the warmest minimum temperature for June 12.

Montpelier on Monday had a record high of 88 degrees. So did the summit of Mount Mansfield, at 76 degrees.

Often, when a heat wave ends, as is currently happening, severe thunderstorms break out. But the timing of the front, as noted yesterday is all wrong, so we didn't get severe storms and won't.

There were a few isolated thunderstorms as the cold front sagged south from Canada, but no big deal.

The cold front is moving more slowly than earlier thought, and as of mid-morning the humidity hadn't cleared yet. Plus, an area of showers and thunderstorms along the front will affect portions of Vermont later this morning and early afternoon, especially from about Montpelier south.

Further south, there might be some strong storms in southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic states as the cold front invades the hot weather still sitting over those locations this afternoon.

Aftermath of a big hail storm in Coon Rapids,
Minnesota on Sunday.

While we had nothing scary in terms of storms, the Northern Plains and Front Range area of Colorado and Wyoming and Montana have had lots of bad weather lately.

Sunday, a storm complex and derecho formed in South Dakota, raced across Minnesota, including the Minneapolis area, and on into Wisconsin.

The hail and wind damage was wild with that one, as you can see in the video of the storm below, in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, northwest of Minneapolis.

On Monday, there were 32 preliminary reports of tornadoes, mostly in Wyoming and Nebraska. Luckily, no deaths have been attributed to the twisters, though there were a few injuries and some houses were destroyed in strong tornadoes.

There's a video at the bottom of this post of a destructive tornado in Harrisburg, Nebraska on Monday.

Today the action moves back to the northern and central Plains, especially the eastern halves of the Dakotas (watch the skies, dear relatives of mine in Yankton, South Dakota!) and eastern Nebraska and much of Minnesota and northwestern Iowa.

Not everyone in this region will get severe weather of course, but there is the risk of tornadoes, huge hail and damaging straight line winds.

Back east over Vermont, it'll actually feel almost chilly Wednesday behind the cold front with highs only in the 60s and low 70s and lows in the 40s to around 50.

It'll turn more humid again over the weekend with the risk of showers and storms, but it won't turn super, super hot like it's been the past couple of days. Still maybe uncomfortable on Sunday, though, depending on the timing of weather fronts

Here's the incredible hail and wind storm in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota on Sunday (The filmmaker replaced the cacophony of hail with a nice song:



Next, a news video of so much hail in Coon Rapids, Minnesota Sunday that people had to get their snow blowers out to clear it:



Finally, a destructive tornado in Harrisburg, Nebraska Monday:

Wild Weather Extremes Now In The Great Plains

The National Weather Service hazards map was
busy this morning with blizzard and winter storm
alerts in the norther Plains, and fire and wind warnings
in the southern Plains. 

Yesterday, my relatives in the southeastern South Dakota city of Yankton enjoyed temperatures in the low 70s, which is incredibly warm for them this time of year.

By tonight, Yankton will be in the low 30s, it will be snowing, and winds from the  north will be gusting to 50 mph.

That's just one of many examples of some real whipsaw, extreme weather going on in the Great Plains at the moment.

Yankton will be on the southern edge of a winter storm that, as mentioned yesterday, is poised to bring blizzard conditions to parts of South Dakota and Minnesota.

Further south, in southeastern Colorado and western Kansas, there's an extreme fire risk today after record high temperatures yesterday are followed today by super dry air and winds of 60 mph or more.

Southern California is also under the gun for fire weather today.

The cold front with this Plains storm is also providing a rude awakening after temperatures in the central and southern Plains yesterday reached their highest levels for so late in the season on Wednesday.

Denver reached 80 degrees, tying the record high for the entire month of November. This record is unusual in its own right, but if you are going to have a monthly record high in November, it would be in the warmer early days on the month, not right before Thanksgiving.

Denver's forecast high today is just 41 degrees, so that's quite a change.

Dodge City, Kansas reached 87 degrees Wednesday, by far its hottest reading for so late in the season. By Friday, the high temperature will only reach the upper 40s there.

If you want wild swings in temperature, the Great Plains are usually the place to go anyway. The kinds of extremes this week in the region are a little bigger than usual, but it has happened before.

Places that are far away from the moderating effects of oceans tend to have wilder temperature gyrations. This week is a terrific example of that.

Year-to-year differences in the Great Plains are striking, too. Two years ago Wednesday,, there was snow around Oklahoma City. Last year on the same date, tornadoes threatened that city. Then, on Wednesday this year, Oklahoma City recorded a record high temperature of 86 degrees.

Winter in Spring From Dakotas To New England

Is is shaping up to be one of those winter during
spring types of years?  Forecast for this week
isn't too promising.  

During the course of our recently ended record warm winter in New England, I was kind of afraid winter would arrive just as spring does.

And sure enough, it's happening.  

Eastern New England got through a nor'easter yesterday morning that left several inches of snow. It melted rapidly in most places across southern New England, anyway but still.

Next, up, northern New England for wintry weather. Actually that expected snowy or icy or icky weather extends in a broad arc from northeastern Colorado through parts of South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and then on into northern New England.

That next storm we've been talking about gathering forces in the central Rockies and western Plains is indeed doing so, and will spread snow across those central and northern Plains areas I just mentioned.

Here in the Northeast, a wavering front connecting to that storm out west is setting up shop over and near New England later today.

That will be the focus of several days of occaional snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain. across northern New York, and much of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The more north you go, the more likely you'll see snow or ice.

Once you get into southern New England, it'll be mostly a cold rain.

In northern New England, the first salvo will come tonight in the form of wet snow. It won't come down all that hard, so there will maybe be an inch of slush in the valleys and up to three inches in the higher elevations

The front will sort of waver north and south Wednesday through Friday as the Midwest storm rides along it, heading east.

In a zone from the Adirondacks, through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, it's still hard to say who will get rain, who will get snow, or ice, or how much and where. It depends on where the weather front is set up at any given time, and how much chilly air is bleeding south from a cold air mass over Quebec.

But the fact there will be a strong temperature contrast between, say Montreal, where it will be below freezing, and New York City, which will flirt with 70 degrees, makes me nervous.

Often, when there's such a contrast, precipitation can be pretty heavy. Some computer models crank out up to two inches of rain or water equivalent over northern New York and northern Vermont over the next few days.

If some areas in this zone get mostly snow or ice, it will be troublesome. Luckily, it's late March, and chances are pretty good that most areas even in the north will change to rain at least occasionally, which would minimize the effects.

But of course I can't guarantee the plain rain. There's a chance some areas could stay snow or ice through most of the time Tuesday night through Friday.  The heaviest precipitation looks like it will come along Thursday into the first half of Friday as the main storm system trudges through.

We'll probably get a break in the weather over the Easter weekend in New England before possibly more storminess arrives early next week.

And my fears of winter during spring continue. There are strong signals that the first week of April at least will be quite cold and wintry from the northern Plains through New England.

Fire And Snow, Whiplash Weather, One Extreme To Another, In Central Plains

To say the weather in the Plains states is erratic is an understatement. Especially so far this winter.

Looked like a lovely late afternoon Monday amid 70 degree
warmth in this webcam image from Yankton, South Dakota
but the area around the city was under a fire alert
due to low humidity and strong winds. And
a winter storm is likely Wednesday,.  

Especially this week. For instance, my in-laws in Yankton, in southeastern South Dakota have somehow managed to find themselves simultaneously under an extreme fire danger alert and a winter storm watch.

Those two things seem mutually exclusive, because it is by definition not normally dry during a winter storm, but it's happening.   

Actually, out ahead of the upcoming storm, it's remarkably warm, windy and very, very dry in the central Plains, hence the fire alerts. 

Then, a storm will start getting its act together Wednesday, probably over Kansas or Nebraska. It will strengthen pretty fast and draw cold air down from Canada. 

That's where the winter storm watch comes in. The wintry weather will extend from southeastern South Dakota, through northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, into central Wisconsin and a good chunk of the lower peninsula of Michigan.

No winter weather alerts are in effect in New England, at least not yet, but this storm is going to cause mixed precipitation, at least off and on in northern New England, Tuesday night through Friday, so be alert there.

As that storm strengthens develops over the Rockies tomorrow, then more intensely over the central Plains Wednesday, very dry, strong winds will sweep from New Mexico to Kansas.

NOAA forecasters are very, very concerned about extreme fire weather in parts of New Mexico, Texas and western Oklahoma Tuesday:

Says NOAA's fire forecasters:

A significant fire weather event should unfold during the day, with the potential for rapid fire spread quite high. Additionally, overnight RH (relative humidity) recovery will be relativelky poor over parts of eastern New Mexico and the Texas/Oklahoma panhandles, keeping fire weather concerns elevated/critical through much of the night."

In other words, there's a high, high risk of some sort of wildfire disaster, possibly involving lots of homes up in flames, in that region.

Southeast of the developing storm, some severe thunderstorms, and maybe a tornado or two, could break out around northeastern Texas, eastern Oklahoma and parts of Arkansas.

Yeah, there's some extreme weather out there over the next couple of days.  

Destructive Tornadoes Possible On Plains Today

Severe storm near Brule, Nebraska Friday.
Photo by Brett Wright on Twitter @WxMstr  

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has a moderate risk of tornadoes today, especially in much of Kansas and Oklahoma.

This could easily be one of the worst outbreaks of severe weather so far this spring, maybe even the worst.

It just depends upon whether the tornadoes cooperate, or mow through urban areas like around Wichita, Kansas or Oklahoma City.

The Storm Prediction Center says some of the tornadoes today could be "significant and long lived." so people in the areas under threat ought to keep an eye to the skies and have a path cleared to the tornado shelters, just in case.

Thunderstorms early this morning might have disrupted the potential for the big tornadoes a little bit later today, but the atmospheric energy entering the picture should be more than enough to stir up some really bad weather.

As a preview to today, there were nine reports of tornadoes on Friday, one of which caused three injuries in Texas.

 Here's a large tornado near Torrington, Wyoming yesterday:

Arctic Cold Front: Summer To Winter In Minutes

It is pretty obvious where the cold front was
in this temperature map from Monday.  

They weren't kidding when they said a big Arctic cold front would knife southward across the Plains Monday.

The cold front raced southward and southeastward, causing some temperature contrasts and changes in weather conditions that were some of the most rapid I've seen.

At one point Monday, depending on where you were in Iowa, it was between 27 and 72 degrees, depending upon which side of the cold front you were on.

In Denver, temperatures at one point fell at a rate of a degree a minute. It was in the 60s in Denver before the cold front arrived on Monday. This morning, it's 12 degrees.

Down in the Texas panhandle city of Childress, it was 87 degrees on Monday. This morning, it's 30 degrees.

The cold front, racing southward, was clearly visible on satellite pictures. It created a broad haboob, or dust storm in the High Plains of eastern Colorado and surrounding areas, as the front was accompanied by wind gust of more than 50 mph.

This satellite photo shows a dust storm along
the leading edge of the cold front in southeastern Colorado  

The haboob looked on satellite images like snow being pushed ahead of a plow.

Which kind of fits, because a lot of areas in the Plains have, or will have, enough snow to plow in the coming days.

The cold front blasted southward faster than it is moving eastward, as the initial push of Arctic air was directed more south than east.

But the front is trudging eastward, and the East Coast will feel it by later Wednesday.

It will get chilly in the eastern United States over the next few days but not super, super cold. But the chill will deepen as we head into next week.

In the frigid Plains and Midwest, don't look for any relief from this early winter weather anytime soon. The cold air might have come in fast, but it's going to stick around.

The weather pattern is getting stuck again. There's a big ridge that is setting up near the North American west coast, and a big southward dip in the jet stream into the central United States. That really weird, extreme jet stream pattern looks like it will stay in place for at least the next two weeks, probably longer.

Expect lots of winter weather, and several threats of snow in most places east of the Rockies and away from the Gulf Coast for the rest of the month.

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. 

More Beautiful Photos Of Giant Plains Thunderstorms

The opening salvo of a week's worth of severe weather broke out last night in the High Plains of West Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Michael Charnick,  @charnick_wx on Twitter
posted this shot of a thunderstorm in Kansas.  

This was really a good batch of severe storms, in that there were no reported tornadoes. (Although some of the supercells attempted, but failed to produce tornadoes)

Cory Mottice shot this supercell in
southwestern Kansas

There were reports of damage from high winds and hail, luckily, most of the strongest storms hit lightly populated areas.

The usual horde of storm chasers were out with their cameras and video recorders, and this post has some of what they came back with.

These storms can be deadly, but there's no arguing that they're absolutely beautiful and dramatic.








Underneath these storms, things weren't as beautiful, but certainly at least as dramatic. Here's StormChasingVideo's view of a hail-choked supercell in Harmon County, Oklahoma: