Cristobal Bubbles, PA/NJ Slammed, Norway Slides

Badly damaged house in New Jersey following yesterday's derecho.
Photo by Jessica Beym, NJ Advance

While tropical weather geeks keep their eye on Tropical Storm - now Tropical Depression - Cristobal, there's been plenty of weather ation in the United States and elsewhere.

Dramatic videos are the botoom of this post. One of the shows an incredible landslide in Norway I'll get to in a minute,  

DERECHO AND SUPERCELLS

In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, a derecho swept southeastward from near Lake Erie across the Keystone State and finally off the Jersey shore during the late morning and early afternoon Wednesday.  This was followed in the late afternoon and evening by supercell thunderstorms that prompted a tornado warning in Philadelphia.

Winds gusted to 65 mph or so both during the early afternoon derecho and the evening tornado warned storm.  I don't think Philadelphia had ever previously had two 60+ mph storms on the same day.

A derecho, by the way, is a long lasting, fast moving line of severe thunderstorms that almost always cause severe wind damage. That was the case yesterday. The official definition of a derecho is a line of storms that survives over a distance of at least 240 miles and produces peak winds of at least 58 mph over most of its path.

This derecho produced winds of up to 89 mph in New Jersey, with gusts in the 65 to 80 mph range thorugh a long swath of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The derecho killed at least three people, including one at a golf clubhouse that was hit by an immense falling tree.  Many homes were damaged, most by falling trees. A large apartment complex lost its roof.

A derecho usually stablizes the air immediately behind it, so it was remarkable that the atmosphere recovered enough to produce those supercells over Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the evening.  Those storms just added to the damage and the power outages.

Tornado-warned storm over Philadelphia last evening. Photo bu
Ashley Corin 

And - just what they need - more severe thunderstorms are possible today in parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

CRISTOBOL

Cristobol has been downgraded for now to a tropical depression as it meanders inland over souther Mexico.  It's still expected to take a northward turn, emerge over warm Gulf of Mexico waters, and strengthen somewhat as it moves north toward Louisiana by early Monday.

Intensity forecasts are really, really uncertain, but at least for now, it's not expected to reach hurricane status before landfall.

LANDSLIDE

The following isn't directly related to weather, but wet weather could have contributed to it.  A huge landslide 2,000 feet wide and 500 feet wide swept at least eight houses out to sea along the northern Norway coast.

Miraculously, nobody was injured, as most of the houses were vacation places and people had left after the weekend.  A dog was rescued in the afternmath of the landslide.  Scroll down a ways for the incredible video.

Here are some videos, first with scenes from the Pennsylvania storms:



Another view of the storm's intensity



Let's go overseas to Chcchnya, which had its own battle with severe weather:



Here's the Norway landslide. I was oddly rooting for the big white house to survive, but I knew that was impossible

More Incredibly Photogenic Supercells In Plains Yesterday

I know I just did this yesterday, but I can't resist posting another time lapse of a supercell storm.

This one is near Jetmore, Kansas last evening is absolutely beautiful, so I have to post it. So here you go:

Plains Storms Yield Awesome Time Lapse Weather Porn Videos

Supercell in western South Dakota on Monday.  

Supercell thunderstorms have raked parts of the northern, western and central Plains this week, producing a few tornadoes, lots of giant hail, winds, and flash floods.

More of that kind of weather is due today, especially in eastern Wyoming and Colorado, and much of Nebraska and Kansas.

I'm sure we'll have lots of chasers making lots of great images and videos today, since I think today's storms will be more widespread than they were Monday and Tuesday.

A lot of storm chasers and videographers are employing time lapse video to capture the movement of these rotating supercells to great effect.

Here's some examples of this week's weather:

For starters, here's a  photogenic supercell that almost produced a tornado in western South Dakota on Monday

 

Here's another rotating supercell over Strasburg, North Dakota, which produced damaging winds, baseball sized hail, a flash flood, and maybe a brief tornado:



Now, we have a supercell that blew up southeast of Scottsbluff, Nebraska just before sunset last night. It seems to split in two, but no matter what, it's spectacular.

Beautiful Supercells In Texas, Oklahoma

Beautiful supercell storm from White Knuckle Storm Chasing.  

As expected, some supercell thunderstorms erupted in parts of western Texas and Oklahoma on Thursday,  spewing big hailstones, torrential downpours, dangerous winds and a few tornadoes.

The tornadoes were brief and hit sparsely populated areas, which is a good thing.

One reason why that's a good thing is because we can enjoy images of the storms' beauty without the sadness of lost lives and property.

More big storms are expected in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas today.

Here's a video of some of the storms from chaser Jason Cooley:

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: