Cool Images, Videos Of Some Of This Week's Weather: Wild Sunsets And Tornadoes

Storm chaser Daniel Shaw captured this image of an
immense supercells thunderstorm east of Roswell, New
Mexico earlier this week. 

The nation's weather has calmed down somewhat from last week's super active weather, but things are still going on, which of course gives us cool weather images and videos.

Videos are at the bottom of this post.  

One thing all of us weather geeks have been talking about this week is the evening supercell thunderstorm east of Roswell, New Mexico.

Several storm chasers captured the huge amount of mammatus clouds on the rear flake of the immense storm's anvil at sunset. Quite an otherworldly scene.

Also this week, tornadoes and severe weather struck across the south. Tornadoes caused damage in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, where one tornado blew a fire station apart while firefighters huddled beneath fire trucks.

More tornadoes and severe weather is already spinning up in the Southeast today, and is expected to continue the rest of the day.

Here's the video of the New Mexico sunset supercell:



Here's a family's view of a close encounter with a scary tornado in Autryville, North Carolina on Tuesday.

Not Many Severe Storms, But Cool Pictures

Storm clouds over Georgia, Vermont
Tuesday looked tornadic, but there
was no rotatio. This was a shelf cloud
with a scud cloud beneath it.  

The strong storms in Vermont and New York on Tuesday didn't turn out to be too widespread in terms of severity, but at least they were photogenic.  

You can see some of the photos I took of the storms over northwestern Vermont in this post.

Click on them to make them bigger and easier to see.

We expected some strong to severe storms to develop Tuesday and they did, here and there. Most of them were in New York State, with very few if any of the strongest ones making it into Vermont.

There were, as expected, scattered reports of flash flooding, too, especially near Saranac Lake, New York and near Eden, Vermont a little southeast of Jay Peak.

We knew the cold front causing the potentially rough weather would slow down as it approached Vermont.  It actually stalled for a little while over New York, delaying the arrival of what would have been the strongest storms from arriving in Vermont.

By the time a lot of them did, they were weakening as the sun was going down. Sun adds energy to the atmosphere, and makes storms potentially stronger.

During the hottest part of the afternoon, some thunderstorms would turn at least potentially severe and try to run out ahead of the New York State cold front.

Roiling storm clouds over a Fairfield, Vermont
farm house on Tuesday. 

There were a couple severe storm warnings in parts of northwestern Vermont, but these storms weakened a bit as they exited New York State and got to the Green Mountain State.

That's because the storms ran out ahead of the best atmospheric energy and upper level wind fields as they got more and more away from the cold front.

Still, in far northwestern Vermont, in Swanton, I did experience a rather dramatic thunderstorm that featured and awesome shelf cloud, dime sized hail and wind gusts in the 50 to 55 mph range, I'd guess.

That storm did cause a little tree damage in some parts of Swanton.

Dime sized hail was also reported in South Hero, Vermont on Lake Champlain,

Some of the storms really were big rain makers. Around Saranac Lake, New York flash flooding blocked part of Route 86 and had Route 3 down to one lane, the National Weather Service office in South Burlington reported.

Storm clouds approach Swanton, Vermont Tuesday.  

In Eden Mills, Vermont, not far from the Canadian border, a whopping 2.9 inches of rain fell in an hour and 15 minutes, and a storm total of 4.8 inches came there in just three hours. That's as much rain as normally falls in five weeks this time of year.

The storm total came to 5.3 inches in Eden Mills. Woodstock, New Hampshire got 5.92 inches of rain. Wow!

The heavy rain was spotty. Radar estimates of the rainfall perhaps just ten miles away from Eden Falls put the rainfall total and less than a quarter inch.

Radar estimates of the rain show spot totals of over three inches east of Rutland and south of St. Johnsbury, but nearby areas had as little as a tenth of an inch.

By late afternoon at my St. Albans, Vermont house, about a half inch of rain had thankfully soaked my gardens. Meanwhile, just two miles up the road to the east of my house, everything was still dry and dusty.

Storm clouds over Milton, Vermont Tuesday  

It just depended on where the thunderstorms chose to roam, I guess.

Today, there will be more scattered showers and thunderstorms across northern New York and northern New England. There will be little if any severe weather.

However, storms in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, northern New Hampshire and western Maine might have small hail and gusty winds.

More scattered severe storms are possible with another cold front in northern New England Friday afternoon, but at this point I'm not expecting any kind of widespread outbreak of severe weather then.

A Couple Of Images, Videos To Remind You Severe Weather Season Is At Peak

Incredible cloud structure of a storm that
had a tornado warning with it near Eads, Oklahoma
last week. Photo by Everett Occhipinti, on
Twitter   @Ejocch  

Another round of severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail barrages and floods is set to blossom across the Great Plains Friday and especially Saturday as we are in the peak of severe weather season.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center says preliminary data shows there have been 384 reports of tornadoes so far this year in the United States.

That compares to 325 through May 31 of last year, so the trend in the past two or three years of fewer tornadoes seems to be waning.

There will certainly be a number of new tornado reports by Monday.  We can hope that none hit populated areas, but of course you can't count on that kind of luck. Just ask the people picking up the pieces from last week's tornadoes in Van, Texas and Delmont, South Dakota. 

I've said it before: It's sad that we get such incredible photos and videos of the incredible power of nature, but the unfair tradeoff, at least to us humans, is the sadness and tragedy of fatal tornadoes in innocent American towns.

All we can do is warn people in harm's way, and keep the science research to improve those warnings and build more tornado-resistant buildings.

And we will still gape in awe at these storms. Like this time lapse of a storm that came this close to producing a tornado as it swept through a part of Texas last month.



This next video has been widely circulated, but is still worth showing here. It's a tornado passing by or through a rainbow in Colorado earlier this month:

More Severe Weather In Midwest Today

A tornado near Deerhead, Kansas Wednesday evening
(Note the rainbow just to the right of the tornado)
Photo via Twitter, @Mark_Tarello.  

As expected, tornadoes, hail and severe thunderstorms slammed parts of the middle of the country yesterday, and more is coming today.

So far, there have been a total of 10 tornado reports from yesterday, all but one of them in open country in remote parts of Oklahoma and Kansas. (There was another tornado in Missouri)

The Oklahoma and Kansas tornadoes didn't cause much damage, and storm chasers got some decent images, so all is good.

So far.

That the tornadoes hit rural areas, and didn't last long, is of course great news. Let's hope that happens again today, but the rough weather is going to move into more populated areas.

The greatest chances of bad storms today are in the southern Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley, then down into the lower Mississippi Valley.

Beautiful mammatus clouds with a thunderstorm near
Slaton, Texas Wednesday. Photo via
Twitter by Mark Mahalik.  

In these areas tornadoes, large hail and severe winds are all possible. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center also said it can't rule out a large, strong tornado or two.

The area most under the gun includes Milwaukee, Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Indianapolis, so as you can see there is a threat to populated areas.

Of course, I don't want to overhype this. As is almost always the case with severe weather outbreaks, most people will suffer no damage or injuries in this zone.

But a few unlucky people will. That's enough to heed warnings in those areas.  

If you get a tornado warning, definitely go hide in your basement under the warning expires. Don't go for a walk or a drive if they tell you a storm with large hail and damaging winds is approaching. Just hang out in a sturdy building away from windows until the storm passes.

A huge hailstone that landed
in Sullivan, Missouri Wednesday  

Watch out for flash floods, too. There was renewed flooding in Kentucky and surrounding areas yesterday as strong thunderstorms unleashed torrential rains on already oversaturated ground.

The same risk exists in the same part of the country today. If there's water on the road ahead of you, you can't be sure how deep it is. Just turn around if you encounter that.

The storms will move into the mid-Atlantic region tomorrow.

The storm system causing all this rough weather has a bit of a silver lining. It's going to push a warm front through New England early Friday, so that region of the country is in for a few days of mild spring weather.

There was two inches of new snow in most of Vermont last night, including outside my window in St. Albans, Vermont. So a warm spell would be welcome.

I don't know how long the warmth will last, but it will certainly go on for a few days before the chilly regime possibly returns later in the month.

Incredible Images: Storm In Turkey, Drops Tornadoes, Slams Beaches

A storm surge slams into a fire station
along the Black Sea coast of Turkey in late September.  

Severe storms, tornadoes, storm surges and other havoc slammed much of the country of Turkey in the last week or so of September.

Damage, as you might imagine, was widespread. People also caught a lot of the storminess on camera.

Here, scaffolding collapses in the wind in the middle of Istanbul:



Here, American servicemen capture on video what might have been a tornado:




Most dramatically of all, a storm surge blasted in from the Black Sea, abruptly filling buildings with water and sweeping cars away. This is wild:

Weather Images: Fires, Storms And An Autumn-Like Satellite Photo

The Northwestern United States is still burning, as is western Canada.

There's big storms and flash flooding around Texas, and that cool air is hanging on, for now in the Midwest.

Which leads us to today's random images. (Click on each one to get a bigger, better view)

The first shows a apocalyptic scene in British Columbia in a view of a forest fire in that neck of the woods. Forecasts call for more hot, dry weather, in British Columbia, so no relief seems to be on the way.

A little rain might come down more to the north, so that might help. Meanwhile, the city of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories is choked in smoke, and there have been evacuations in British Columbia.

Elsewhere in Canada, storms are a problem. The second image, from @PrairieChasers on Twitter, shows a supercell storm in Alberta yesterday.

Today, supercells, severe weather and tornadoes are forecast in southeastern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Meanwhile, the American Midwest has been engulfed in cool, autumnal weather this week. This satellite photo shows how the warm July sun stirs up lots of little cumulus clouds as the sun warms the land, creates little updrafts, which condense into clouds as the updrafts rise into the cold air.

Near lakes, the sun doesn't warm the water so much, so you can see how clear it is, with no clouds over and near lakes.

It's going to warm up dramatically in the Midwest over the next few days, as summer comes back for a return engagement.