Dramatic Videos Show The Weather Could Always Be Worse Where You Are

A five story building begins to topple into a
river in China during severe floods recently. Video
is below. 

It's a somewhat cloudy Sunday, and us Vermonters are destined to endure a very rainy, quite chilly Monday.  

As Trump would tweet: Sad!

To prove it could always be worse, what follows are some videos that show some pretty dramatic storms elsewhere in the world. T

hey will make you happy that your biggest weather problem is a dreary, wet and cold midsummer start to the workweek.

The bad weather has hit all corners of the world, as you'll see.

For starters, we've had a week of repeated severe storms stretching from South Dakota, through the Great Lakes and on into the Mid-Atlantic states. (There was even a rogue, isolated severe thunderstorm Saturday in southern Addison and Rutland counties in Vermont, but I don't think there was widespread damage.)

Not true elsewhere, though, as this video of a terrible hailstorm Tuesday in South Dakota. The hail, with wind, even managed to split a tree in this view of a back yard during the storm:




New Zealand has been hit this past week by a massive winter storm. (Southern Hemisphere, so it's winter there.)

Some areas received up to 10 inches of rain. One of the hard hit cities was Churchchrist, which has had a rough time in recent years. That city had a destructive, deadly earthquake in 2011.

Here's a video from New Zealand:



Farmers have to work in all kinds of weather, and Clinton Monchuk this past week was spraying fungicide on his malt barley fields near Lanigan, Saskachewan, Canada, and was accompanied on  his chores by a tornado:


In Cornwall, England, severe flash flooding hit this week and several people had to be rescued.

Here's a view that includes massive amounts  of flood water flowing into the sea:



Finally, this includes some of the most dramatic footage: Watch a truck and a building fall into rivers amid severe flooding in China in the past few days:

Watch This Incredible Saudi Arabian Flash Flood

Saudi Arabia is an arid country, but when it does rain,
flash floods often result, as desert soils tend not to absorb
water very well. This image is of a Saudi Arabian flash
flood in 2013 that killed at least 16 people  

Flash floods are almost always dramatic, and sudden, which, um, is why we call them flash floods.

There was quite an example in Saudi Arabia recently when heavy rains fell on the desert country.

Not sure exactly when this happened, but the video was uploaded on April 9.

Desert sands and rocks don't absorb heavy rain well, so on the rare occasions where it does rain hard, the water runs off in tremendous flash floods.

Sometimes they come in enormous waves, as you will see in this video: Pretty wild!

Watch This Plane Get Hit By Lightning In Atlanta

A plane apparently waiting for a storm to clear
at the Atlanta airport was struck by lightning Tuesday.  

Planes in flight get hit by lightning all the time.

Aircraft are designed to take such hits with little or no damage, and passengers inside the planes are pretty much always safe, even if the lightning bolts scare the bejeezus out of them.

The strike here is a bit different.

In Atlanta, Georgia, Tuesday, there was a ground stop at busy Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as a strong thunderstorm with lots of lightning swept through.

Jack Perkins was aboard one of the planes stacked up on the ground waiting out the bad weather, and he decided to film the long line of airliners waiting to take off.

He captured a dramatic lightning bolt smacking into one of those planes.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution had no word if there was anybody on the plane at the time of the strike.

There's no reports of any injuries among anyone aboard the plane, though I've seen a lot of jokes that the plane had to return to the gate for "bio cleaning" the soiled seats left by passengers who had the wits and other things scared out of them by the lightning.

Here's the video:

Weird Thunderstorms Abound This Weekend, And "Shelfie" Photos

An amazing shelf cloud at dawn in Wisconsin shared
on Twitter by photographer Shawn Hamachek.  

For the second morning in a row, I was awakened to rumbles of thunder as storms, just around dawn or a little after, rolled near or over my home in St. Albans, Vermont.

This morning's storm was not severe, but it did have some dramatic clouds that I managed to get some photos of.

The photos are OK, but pale in comparison to a storm around Green Bay, Michigan yesterday.

This was a severe one, and had a pronounced shelf cloud.  Shelf clouds often form in front of a strong or severe storm, along the gust front as it approaches. Shelf clouds resemble giant snow plows or tsunamis and are often quite scary looking.

But they aren't tornadoes, so that's good.

Dramatic shelf cloud in Wisconsin by Adam Bisner.  

Big thunderstorms in the northern hemisphere usually approach from the west, and usually come along in the afternoon or evening.

So shelf clouds are usually dark. The thunderstorm is blocking the sunlight behind the shelf cloud, so they're usually black and ominous.

Yesterday's storm in Wisconsin was odd in that it was severe, fully formed and coming through around dawn. So the sun, rising in the east, was able to light up the shelf cloud.

It was beautiful, especially in the photo with the calm lake water. Before the storm rolled over, the wind was calm, and so was the lake.

So photographer and storm chaser Adam Bisner and photographer Shawn Hamachek caught some great colors in the shelf cloud, which was leading the way for the dark and scary thunderstorm approaching.

Not a good morning for breakfast
on my St. Albans, Vermont deck
this morning. Not as dramatic as
Wisconsin but click on photo to
make it bigger, and see some
of the thunderstorm structure.  

By the way, you've heard of selfies, right? Those obiquitous photos people take of themselves and spread on social media.

Us weather geeks do something different. We refer to all these photos of shelf clouds as shelfies. Social media types take selfies. Weather geeks like me take shelfies.

Speaking of odd things and odd storms, there was a BUNCH of thunder and lightning in and around Los Angeles, California overnight.

It usually doesn't even rain in that neck of the woods this time of year, but the remnants of Hurricane Dolores, which was off the coast of Mexico last week, drifted north into the southwestern United States.

The Dolores remnants made southern California and Arizona strangely humid this weekend. The air is usually very dry there.

The result: Thunderstorms. California certainly needs the rain. Los Angeles got 0.32 inches of rain from the storms Saturday. That's not much,  but is smashes the old record rainfall for the date of 0.02 inches.

Like I said, it doesn't really rain in most of California this time of year, but this was an odd one.  Fresno, Calfornia had 0.36 inches of rain Saturday, also a record. The old record was just a trace. Fresno is also already having its wettest July on record, with 0.43 so far, breaking the old record of 0.33 in July, 1913.

Los Angeles also had a record high for the date Saturday, too. It was 85 degrees. (The biggest heat waves in Los Angeles tend to come in the late summer and fall, it's relatively cooler there in July.)

The California storms won't solve the drought, but the rain can't hurt.

Or can it? In the deserts of the southwest, it does. The heavy thunderstorms on the steep slopes, the sandy soil, have been causing flash floods. There were some Saturday, more are likely in the region today.

Some of the storms have been severe, too. Needles, California, again, deep in the desert, had a severe, torrential thunderstorm with wind gusts to 64 mph.

Today, more traditional severe thunderstorms, if there is such a thing as traditional severe weather, will hit much of the eastern Great Lakes and the Northeast today. New England is under the highest threat.

Time to get my camera ready for more shelfies.



Shelf clouds often resemble snow plows, big waves or tsunamis and can be very scary-looking since they are usually low-hanging. Sometimes they may found only a couple hundred feet above the ground. There are two other phenomena that might rese

Bus Sinks Washes Away; Streets Awash In Icy Water In South American Storms

A bus falls into a sinkhole in Brazil. Luckily everybody got
out in time before it went under  

While we here in the United States are watching for the possibility of severe storms in the central part of the country today, there's been wild weather elsewhere.

First, we have today's viral weather video of a tourist bus in Brazil passing a flooding area. The high water has undermined the road, and the bus sinks into it.

Luckily, the bus was merely stuck at first, so everybody on the vehicle was able to get off of it and get to safety.

Then the bus plunges. Pretty dramatic. Watch:



Bogota, Columbia had its own share of rough weather in the past few days. Here's a video of what happens when a tremendous amount of hail and rain fall in a short period of time.

Scary Video: Truck Crash On Sunday's Ice: I-95 New Jersey

Amazing how calm the people in the car filming were when this happened during the ice nightmare on the Northeast U.S. roads on Sunday.

Truck skates perilously on ice, I-95 (New Jersey Turnpike)

Scary Video Of Trees Blowing Down In Australian Traffic

Just a few twigs on the road during a wind storm
And then....... 

Back on December 29, a motorist was driving along a scenic road in a forested area in Victoria State in Australia.

It had abruptly gotten windy, and small branches, twigs and pieces of bark began falling onto the road.

Then the wind really gusted, and the motorist caught this on his dashcam:


The wind storm only lasted a few minutes, but it really did its damage. It took more than two hours to clean up the mess, says the Herald Sun of Australia. 

As you can imagine, traffic really backed up, too. Luckily, nobody was hurt. In the case of the people in the car with the dash cam, the driver made a split second decision to brake hard to avoid the first falling tree, rather than try to race to get past it.

Still. Yikes!

Video: Very Scary Landslides in Washington State

One of the homes knocked off its foundation
by todays landslides in Washington state.   

This morning at the tail end of my post about the nation's cold weather, I talked about the heavy rain, flooding and landslides in Washington State. 

I specifically mentioned the city of Hoquiam, which early this morning had six inches of rain and counting.

Here's the results. Watch this scary video of a landslide shoving a house off its foundation.

KIRO-TV also has more detail on that home that was destroyed. Other homes in Washington were damaged or destroyed in today's flooding and landslides.

The rain has tapered off in Hoquiam and surrounding areas, but the damage is done. Flooding continues, as does the threat of more landslides.

In this Hoquiam neighgorhood, I think the residents had been evacuated before this. At least I hope so:

World "Weather Porn" Stormy Images Emerge Again

A wicked looking storm in Iowa on Sunday.  

Just because it's fun, and there have been plenty of nasty storms worldwide in the past few days, I'll give you a bit of weather porn, as I do occasionally.

Don't worry, for the uninitiated, weather porn is safe for work. It's just images of dramatic or bad storms that's all.

I don't have any photos of the surprise tornado in Worcester,  Massachusetts last evening, so we'll make do with other storms. (Residents had received a tornado warning, but earlier in the day, it seemed doubtful any storms would become that severe in New England)

Click on any of the photos in this post to make them bigger and easier to see.

Lightning lights up an Italian supercell storm.
Photo by Gianluca Prioli.  

The first image in this post, by @NPZChasers, via Twitter, shows a shelf cloud ahead of a severe thunderstorm in Iowa yesterday.  

It looks like a giant whale about to eat the landscape.  No whales actually ate anything in Iowa that I know of, but there were widespread reports of damage in the storms.

The second photograph is an incredible nighttime shot of a supercell thunderstorm at night, lit up by lightning. The photo was taken by Gianluca Prioli in Gabicce Mare, Romagna, Italy.

In this photo from Italy, note the wall cloud (the dark cloud at the bottom of the storm that looks sort of like a fedora.) Wall clouds often, but don't always produce tornadoes. No word on whether a tornado touched down in this storm.  

Lightning in Croatia. Photo by Ivan Rajcic. Add caption

The third image is by Ivan Rajcic, who left his camera lens open as an intense thunderstorm passed through part of Croatia. There was just an incredible amount of lightning with this storm.

Very pretty shot, though, considering the danger involved.

Dramatic Video: Watch A Landslide Take A Baltimore Street, Cars With It

There's a street in Baltimore, Maryland that sits high above some railroad tracks running through the city.  

Aftermath of the Baltimore landslide.  

Residents said for months, the street showed signs of collapsing onto the train tracks far below but the city would just pour asphalt on the spots along the street that sort of sank.

On Wednesday, torrential, flooding rains hit large swaths of the East Coast, including Baltimore. Watch what happens to that street, and the cars parked along it:

Wild Storm Videos Keep Cropping Up, Here And Abroad

Media attention over the past few weeks has focused on weather disasters like Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the huge tornado outbreak last Sunday in the American Midwest, and the record flooding in Sardinia.

Here's one more in a series of dramatic tornado videos coming out of the Midwest.

In this one, a gas station security camera is aimed at the the house across the street. Notice the details: The car on the road very, very quickly turning around right before the tornado hits, the fact that the gas station in the foreground seems to sustain little damage, but watch what happens to the house across the street, and how quickly it happens.


There have been other storms lately, too. For those of you who like "weather porn" those videos and images of dramatic storms that get us weather geeks all excited,  I have a few gifts for you.

First, we take you to Australia. I found a couple videos of a huge hailstorm that struck parts of the country last week. There was widespread damage from hail that in some places was at least the size of baseballs.

Here's what it looked like from an upper floor balcony as enormous hailstones crashed landed into a river below:




Here's another view of the Australian hail. If you can't wait for the drama to start, things start to get interesting at the four minute mark and get really exciting starting at about 5:50:




Finally, videographer Dan Robinson put together an awesome, awesome compilation of big thunderstorms around Charleston, West Virginia over the years. The video features shelf clouds, whih form along the leading edge of thunderstorms. If you see a shelf cloud, chances are very high you are about to get hit by a really bad thunderstorms.

Check out a lot more of Robinson's excellent work at www.stormhighway.com

Here's Robinson's shelf cloud video:

Latest Weather Porn: Why They Call Them Flash Floods

Earlier this month a huge flash flood hit the Colorado town of Manitou Springs.

I already wrote about it once, but I have to share this other video that came out of the disaster, because it is so wild.

The Mantou Springs, Colorado flood earlier this month.  

It demonstrates why they call them flash floods. At the beginning of the video, the situation doesn't seem that bad. But in 10 or 15 seconds all hell is breaking loose.

The video also shows why they always keep saying not to drive your car into even what appears to be shallow flood waters.

In this clip nobody is driving any of the cars, they're all parked. But you can see how water that really isn't that deep can sweep vehicles away.

In any event, this "weather porn" video is a fascinating second look at one of the most dramatic flash floods in the nation this year, in a year in which there have been more floods than I can remember.

Here's the vid:

Quiet Weather, So We Post a Dramatic Storm Time Lapse

The weather is quiet over Vermont and the northeast as we begin the workweek, so, in our never-ending quest to display weather porn, that SFW, kid-friendly series of storm and extreme weather videos and images, we bring you a time lapse of a supercell thunderstorm over Kansas more than two years ago.

The speeded up video really shows how the storm rotates and really, really tries to form a tornado. (The storm apparently did eventually produce a tornado, but after the sunset, so there's no good videos of that funnel.

Still, this video is quite spectacular: