Flash Flooding, Other Storms Continue To Plague Nation

Good Samaritans rescue a 70 year old man from a flooded car in
Rockford, Illinois Monday.

Flash flooding is turning into a big problem in many different parts of the nation this week. Other storms have produced big hail and even a couple New Hampshire tornadoes.

I mentioned the Houghton, Michigan flood the other day. Other hard hit areas include Rockford, Illinois.

Many homes and businesses, including a hospital, were flooded there, and motorist were rescued from stranded cars. Three to five inches of rain fell in Rockford in just a few hours.

Parts of Texas, such as Port Arthur, hit so hard by Hurricane Harvey flooding last year, went under water again.

Snow plows clear heavy accumulations of hail from a highway
in Colorado this week. 

Today, the greatest risk of additional flooding includes coastal Texas and Louisiana, and an area around southeastern South Dakota and Iowa. (I hope the sump pumps are working great in my mother-in-law's house in Yankton, South Dakota!)

Meanwhile, the problem in Colorado was hail, especially in Greeley, Boulder and the Denver suburb of Aurora.

Some of the hailstones were the size of tennis balls, so you can imagine how many cars and roofs were damaged in these heavily populated areas.

Finally, we talked yesterday about those tornado warnings Monday in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  

It turns out two tornadoes were confirmed in New Hampshire. A hiker in the White Mountains took a photo of a weak tornado skipping across the hills and forests around Lincoln, New Hampshire. Another tornado, and EFO with 75 mph winds, took a nine mile path near Bath, New Hampshire.

Here's some videos:

First,  a rescue from a flooded car in Rockford, Illinois:



Here water in Rockford gushes into a hospital:



Here's an intense hail storm in Greeley, Colorado:



In Greeley, hail washed into a low spot in one neighborhood and ended up being two to three feet deep, as this news clip shows:

Bill Nye And I Had A Disagreement

I'm glad Bill Nye is an advocate against climate change
but not all weather events are caused by global warming.  

I like Bill Nye.

I also like the fact that he's sounding alarm bells on climate change. It is something to worry about, as  rising seas and increasingly erratic weather threaten the well being of so many people now, and especially in the future.

However, sounding the wrong alarm bells can backfire, as it did yesterday.

Nye posted an image of a television screen with CBS This Morning that showed an image of a tornado marauding through a Kentucky town on Tuesday.

Nye's accompanying Tweet read, "More severe weather. More suffering. More expense. Let's all take climate change seriously."

The implication was that Monday and Tuesday's United States tornado outbreak was at least influenced by global warming.

Perhaps a little, who knows? But I Tweeted back at Nye and said (with abbreviations cleaned up here)

"I agree with your stance on global warming, but tornado outbreaks like this one, though tragic, are normal this time of year."

Which is true.  Outbreaks like the one this week happen almost every year, regrettably. This one killed at least two people and destroyed lots of homes and businesses. Definitely not a good thing.

But attributing a tornado outbreak, the kind that have always happened, to climate change is incredibly dicey, to put it mildly.

The reasons I objected to Nye is that his Tweet seemed factually incorrect and gave ammunition to the people who try to deny climate change.

Climate change activists are irrational alarmists goes the party line.

And sure enough, The Federalist, a conservative publication, weighed in with an article about Nye's Tweet.

The Federalist in an article titled "Bill Nye Is a Huckster" said snarkily:

"If people trusted global warming alarmists, they might function under the premise that severe weather events are something unique to this particular age. It was only the discovery of fossil fuels that forced man to wrestle with the terrifying hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and rain showers. Before the Fall of Man, it was San Diego for everyone all the time."

The thing is, certain weather events are getting more common as the planet warms. Other things aren't really changing, as far as we know. There doesn't seem to be any particular trend in the number of tornadoes.

But deadly heat waves, droughts, and extreme storms have increased in some regions, and that could e a sign of climate change.

No single weather event can conclusively be tied to climate change. But unlike the tornadoes this week, some disasters are consistent with what scientists say are the fingerprints of climate change.

Take Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, which was overrun by an extreme wildfire this month.

True, wildfires have consumed towns and cities before. On the same day as the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, a wildfire roared parts of Wisconsin and Michigan That Peshtigo Fire of 1871 killed an estimated 2,000 people.

That's a lot worse than Fort McMurray, isn't it?

However, a wildfire as extreme as the one in Fort McMurray, that early in the spring that far north in Canada, might be a symptom of climate change. A lot of factors came together to create that disaster, but climate change could well have been one of them.

Nye might have done better to cite Fort McMurray instead of a tornado in Kentucky.  Climate change denialists will always attack climate change activists for their "alarmism" So we need to be careful to be alarmed only by things that are really alarming.

Rationality is on the side of people advocating for confronting climate change and trying to do something about it. It's a lot better than bringing a snowball onto the U.S. Senate floor in the dead of winter to "prove" climate change doesn't exist.

I don't mean to dwell on a single Tweet by Bill Nye or attack him. I'm just using his Tweet to make a point.

Here's my thing: We shouldn't panic over climate change. We're not all going to die in three hours because the world has gotten so hot.

But we should rationally, and as quickly as possible, deal with it. Find alternatives to fossil fuel. Understand better how the world's climate and environment will change with a warming world so that we can deal with it.

Doing so will help us economically, competitively and morally. The following is a cliche, but still: Why should we hand over a world to our grandchildren that's worse than the one we have now?

We really don't need any more Fort McMurrays.

Tornado Outbreak Likely In Central Plains Tuesday

A severe thunderstorm that had a tornado warning associated
with it near Ellsworth, Kansas Sunday.
Photo from Twitter via @basehunters.  

UPDATE 2 p.m. EDT:

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center just updated their forecast for tomorrow.

There's still quite a risk for severe storms and tornadoes in the central Plains.

When I wrote my summary this morning, I speculated that the Storm Prediction Center might upgrade the risk to the highest on their five-point chart.

In this update, they kept the risk level at moderate, which is fourth out of fifth highest.

High risk implies they expect numerous strong, long tracked tornadoes. Moderate in part means there could be some, but not numerous strong, long tracked tornadoes.

A fine distinction, but one nonetheless.

At this point, conditions don't point toward many, many super big tornadoes, but there could well be a few. Still definitely a dangerous situation.

The Storm Prediction Center also expanded the area of expected moderate risk southward into far northern Texas as they expect a greater aerial coverage of dangerous storms.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION ISSUED 6 a.m. EDT MONDAY

The forecast is ominous for the central and southern Plains Tuesday afternoon and evening as there is an outbreak of tornadoes and severe storms looming.

 Some of these tornadoes could be quite big and particularly dangerous.

If any of these hit populated areas, that would be very, very, VERY bad.

At this point, the area of biggest concern seems to be southern Nebraska, a wide swath of central Kansas and a good chunk of northern and central Oklahoma.

It's  the classic area this time of year to be under the gun for large tornadoes and severe storms.  In that respect, this ominous forecast isn't really all that unsual for this time of year.

The area often finds itself in a storm's "warm sector" near and just south of a warm front, and near and just east of a cold front and/or dry line, which is a sharp line with high humidity to the east and very low humidity to the west.

Add to this mix winds sharply veering winds with height and and unstable atmosphere that encourages very strong updrafts, and you get a twister outbreak in "tornado alley," which this region is often called.

The area I'm describing is under a moderate risk of severe storms and tornadoes Tuesday. It's the second highest level of alert on a five point scale from NOAA"s Storm Prediction Center.

Actually, the SPC might be toying with the idea of bringing this up to their highest risk level forecast, but they first want to see more data to determine whether that high risk is warranted.

For the record, if the SPC puts out a high risk alert for tornadoes, that's kind of rare. They only do that, on average, maybe three times a year.

Whether it ends up staying a moderate risk or a high risk, this likely storm outbreak is one to take seriously.

Tornado near Nelson, Nebraska Sunday, via Twitter @povlen13

As the Storm Prediction Center writes in its analysis issued very early Monday morning describing Tuesday's threats: "Strong, potentially long tracked tornadoes, very large, perhaps giant hail and damaging wind gusts will be possible with any storm that develops in the warm sector."

You know to be nervous when the SPC highlights the chance of strong long tracked tornadoes.

They seldom predict "giant" hail, which the kind of softball to even grapefruit sized hail that trashed some towns near Dallas, Texas earlier this month.

Of course, whether there is a lot of damage and risk to life depends upon where these potential strong and long tracked tornados touch down.

There is a lot of open, sparsely populated areas in the area of moderate risk. We can certainly hope that the strongest tornadoes and biggest hail comes down where very few people live. Big tornadoes are a thing of perverse beauty when they roll over wide open plains without hitting houses, businesses or occupied cars.

However, violent tornadoes obviously become terrible tragedies when theyslam into cities and suburbs, as they did in Moore, Oklahoma in 2013 and through Joplin, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 2011.

The large metro areas most at risk Tuesday from strong tornadoes include Wichita, Kansas, and Oklahoma City, where Moore is a suburb.

Let's just hope the supercells that will produce the tornadoes bypass these cities.

The threat of severe weather and possible tornadoes in parts of the nation will continue daily today through at least a week, as the weather pattern will favor this kind of weather.

There is a lot of uncertainty on many days as to exactly where and how extensive severe weather might be, though potential hot spots include areas  around Chicago, on Wednesday in the central and southern Mississippi Valley and perhaps northern Texas Friday.

There were a few reports of tornadoes Sunday in southern Minnesota and Nebraska, but it doesn't seem damage was all that great, which is a good thing.

Up until now, the number of tornadoes the nation has had so far this year is below average, continuing a trend that has lasted nearly four years now. Which is a good thing.

However, this week's storm systems will certainly boost the number of reported tornadoes this year

Tornadoes, Storminess Is Sign El Nino Is Raging

Massive nighttime tornado illuminated by lightning
last night near Miami, Texas. Photo from @stormpics. 

It was a wild night in the Plains last night and things continue wild this morning.

There were no fewer than 38 preliminary reports of tornadoes from Monday afternoon through this morning from Nebraska to Texas.

Some of those tornado reports might be duplicates, but I'd bet there were at very least 20 tornadoes yesterday.

The tornadoes evolved into a nasty squall line, along which there were a few tornadic spinups, that was roaring across northern Texas this morning. This includes the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where there were numerous damage reports. 

It looks like Louisiana and Arkansas might be under the gun for severe weather much of the rest of today.

Meanwhile, a blizzard is raging in the High Plains of eastern Colorado into far western Kansas. High wind warnings cover an enormous area basically from Seattle all the way eastward to around the Dakotas.

Flood watches cover a large area of the lower and mid Mississippi Valley as several inches of rain are forecast over the next couple of days. Flood watches and warnings also continue in the Pacific Northwest as massive amounts of moisture flood in from the Pacific.

I do believe all this excitement is due in part to El Nino, which has become the strongest on record by many measures. 

El Nino, the periodic warming of eastern and central Pacific Ocean waters, tends to energize the jet stream, particularly when the El Nino is strong, like this one.

That means the nation is due for a very stormy winter. Not necessarily a particularly cold one, but a stormy one. That's particularly true across the southern third of the nation and along much of the Wst Coast.

So far, southern California has largely escaped the beginning of the storms, which is too bad because they need drought relief. Little or no rain is forecast there for at least the next week, and there is an elevated fire danger.

The Pacific Northwest is usually relatively dry in El Nino years, but so far, that's not the case. Possibly, the storm track off the Pacific will slip southward as we get more and more into winter, which would dry out the Northwest while soaking California.

At least the Sierra Nevada mountains, which had the lowest snowpack on record earlier this year, is starting to get winter storms. On the other side of the range. Reno, Nevada is off to its wettest start to its wet season on record.

I would also like to see research on whether this El Nino was boosted by climate change. I'm sure strong El Ninos have always happened, and El Ninos are naturally occuring, with or without climate change.

But I wonder if the water temperatures were already elevated by climate change, making it easier to attain this very strong El Nino.

That idea makes sense. An extreme weather event or weather pattern gets more extreme because it's juiced by climate change.

Plus, there is research that suggests that climate change could increase the number of "super El Ninos" like the one we're in now.

If that's the case, then the already rising trend of extreme storms could continue. In any event, with this El Nino underway, expect plenty more severe storms, floods, blizzards, wind and maybe southern tornadoes through the upcoming winter.

Nasty Northern U.S. Severe Weather Outbreak Continues Today, Tuesday.

Tornado near Ludlow, South Dakota Sunday
from @SeanSchoferTVN via Twitter.  

A vigorous weather disturbance is moving generally west to east across the northern United States, and it's leaving a trail of severe storms and tornadoes with it.

Yesterday, Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska suffered through it. There were unconfirmed reports of some tornadoes with supercells, but the big story was wind and hail.

Hail bigger than softballs plunged through house roofs in parts of Nebraska, and winds gusted to more than 80 mph in storms in parts of Montana and North Dakota.

These same areas were pummeled by storms Saturday, too.

The round of storms managed to hold much of their punch overnight, and before dawn, severe thunderstorm watches and warnings were up in much of South Dakota. This storm system is so strong that thunderstorms don't seem to weaken as much as they usually do in the predawn hours.

As of 5 a.m. local time Monday, Sioux Falls, South Dakota was reporting a thunderstorm with winds gusting to 62 mph.

The heat of the strong June sun tends to encourage updrafts that create stronger storms, so storms usually reach their peak intensity in the late afternoons and evenings. This trend will continue with the current storm outbreak as it travels east.

However, as I've already said, those in the path of this cold front can expect at least some severe storms in the late night and early morning hours, when severe weather is usually less likely.

This afternoon, it looks like the timing is such that the disturbance will be in Wisconsin, Michigan and northern Illinois. With the heating of the day, intense storms will fire up in these areas again.

All kinds of threats are possible with this batch of storms, including a few tornadoes. Most of the havoc will be caused by hail, very strong winds and local flash flooding from today's storms in the Great Lakes region.

Keep an eye to the skies there.

Overnight, the storms will crash into southern Ontario, and on into New York and Pennsylvania, and maybe into western New England, places like Vermont late at night.

The storms might weaken some with the loss of daytime heating, but overnight severe weather with strong winds and hail remains possible, given the strength of the eastward moving storm system.

It's been so wet in northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. If no more rain falls this month, Burlington, Vermont will still have its sixth wettest June on record, with more than seven inches of rain so far.

Heavy downpours with some of these storms could cause some local flash flooding in the region. That's not a super high possibility, but it's something to watch out for.

Jet stream level winds are also stronger than normal for this time of year, and that will also help encourage severe weather.

Tuesday afternoon, it's the Northeast's turn for severe weather. The biggest threat will depend upon where the best instability and the strongest upper level winds set up during the peak of the sun's heating in the late afternoon and evening.

It also depends upon where and when a subtle line of lower pressure sets up ahead of the cold front by afternoon. It's near this so-called "trough line" where the worst storms will probably fire up

My guess, and the location might shift some, is the highest chance of severe thunderstorm winds, large hail, and even a tornado or two, is interior southern New England, the Hudson Valley of New York, eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

So from the eastern Dakotas this morning on into the Great Lakes today, and on into the Northeast Tuesday, watch the skies and take shelter if storms threaten. Some of these could be really nasty.

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:

Tornado, Flood Season Hit Hard Wednesday And It's Going To Get Worse

Brett Wright captured this tornado Wednesday
near Verden, Oklahoma.  

Oklahoma City and environs are a mess this morning, and things aren't going to get better anytime soon.

The city is used to severe weather, but the Oklahoma City was rocked to its core by several tornadoes, hail the size of baseballs in some spots, and record flooding.

See the tornado videos at the bottom of this post.

This all started Wednesday, and by this morning water rescues were still ongoing in parts of the city.

Oklahoma City had 7.1 inches of rain Wednesday. Hail fell for 67 consecutive minutes at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City. The airport was shut down amid tornado warnings and flooding.

The Oklahoman newspaper reported no deaths from the tornadoes, but 12 people were injured, two critically in the area.

Tornado near Halstead, Kansas on Wednesday. 

One tornado destroyed a motel and a storage facility, and damaged other buildings near Interstate 35 in Oklahoma City, Rescuers had trouble reaching the area due to flooding and debris on the roads, says the Oklahoman. 

Major highways like Interstates 35 and 44 closed due to flooding and flying debris. There was quite a bit of tornado and flood damage in the Oklahoma City suburbs of Newcastle, Bridge Creek and Norman, all communities that have been devastated by major tornadoes in the past decade.

Wild animals, including tigers, escaped from an animal park in Tuttle, Oklahoma when a tornado struck, but the animals were later rounded up.

Extensive damage was also reported in Kansas and Nebraska, where the small town of Roseland was hit hard by a tornado. Flash flood warnings and alerts are scattered in areas from Nebraska to Texas this morning as heavy thunderstorms continue.

Torndo damage near Mount Hope, Kansas.  

Up to nine inches of rain fell near Lincoln, Nebraska.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center this morning had 50 preliminary reports of tornadoes from Wednesday in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Severe weather, tornadoes and flooding are expected to continue today, Friday and especially Saturday in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and some surrounding states.

Until now, it's been a quiet severe storm season. This week, clearly, it's not.

Severe thunderstorms, large hail, torrential downpours, and a few tornadoes are expected to repeatedly hit the central and southern Plains today and Friday.

Saturday looks awful. The ingredients seem to be coming together for a major severe weather outbreak, complete with strong tornadoes in from southern Nebraska into large parts of Texas. Once again, Oklahoma City appears as it it will be near the epicenter of Saturday's expected major storm outbreak.

Flooding will continue, too. Forecasters expect three to seven inches of rain, with locally higher amounts in the central and southern Plains over the next week.

From StormChasingVideos.com, heres a scary tornado, with multiple vortices,  near Lincoln, Kansas:


Here's a video inside a developing tornado circulation in Norman, Oklahoma on Wednesday:



Video of tornadoes, severe storms, and damage in Newcastle and Moore, Oklahoma:

More Wild Photos Of The Nation's Week Of Extreme Weather

You name it. Tornadoes. Fires. Floods. Hail. Dust. Sandstorms. Snow.

From @basehunter via Twitter. A scary, spinning supercell
thunderstorm that was producing an EF-4 tornado in
Louisville, Miss. on Monday. Add caption

The nation has been clobbered by extreme weather this week, and photos and videos of the chaos are continuing to surface.

This post contains a few more of the disaster movie type scenes we've seen this week.

This post contains a few more examples of disaster movie type scenes we're seeing this week.

A collapsed garage in the Florida panhandle after
epic flooding early Wednesday.

From @bearlysoberrr on Twitter, flooding inside Pensacola
State College on Wedneday. 

The opposite extreme: The aftermath of high winds
and a dust storm in Kansas this week, via @kkqtopeka on Twitter.

Rare, Strong November Tornado Outbreak Likely Today

Unfortunately, you're likely to see news of destructive tornados and storms later today as a strong November storm is likely to cause a rare late season tornado outbreak in the upper Ohio Valley and parts of the Great Lakes states today.

This enormous double tornado hit
Indiana in 1965, killing 14 people.
Similar destructive tornados are possible
in Indiana and surrounding states today.  

This storminess is also going to affect Vermont and the rest of the Northeast tonight, but luckily, we'll get no tornados are anything extreme like that.

The National Storm Prediction Center has put an area centered around Indiana under a high risk of severe storms today.

That's unusual. They put any given region in the United States  under a high risk alert only a handful of times a year, and not often in November.

Big tornado outbreaks, like the one that might happen today, are usually creatures of the spring and early summer, but there is normally a smaller, secondary peak in tornado activity in November.

That's especially true in the past couple of decades for some reason. The November peak in tornados seems to have gotten a little bigger.

Today's expected tornado outbreak is also more north than you'd normally expect in November.

The culprit is a storm that's very strong and getting stronger as it heads into the Midwest.  The storm has something called a negative tilt.

What that means is the dip in the jet stream that supports the storm has a northwest to southeast orientation, instead of the usual direct north to south arrangement.

When a storm has a negative tilt, it can cause a lot of extra instability and a lot of wind that changes direction as you go upward in the atmosphere.

Such an arrangement can make thunderstorms spin, and create tornados. That's what's expected to go on today.  Even in places in the Midwest and parts of the Northeast that don't get any tornados, a strong squall line will cause damaging thunderstorm winds.

I did say the storm will also affect the Northeast. The storm will move up into Canada and swing a cold front through tonight.

Up here in Vermont and surrounding states, you'll notice the wind really start to pick up later today and tonight from the south, gusting as high as 50 mph.  It'll be a rainy, stormy night. And when the cold front comes through, before dawn in Vermont, you're likely to hear a particularly gusty downpour, possibly with a rumble or two of thunder.

After the front goes by, it'll be another gusty day Monday with temperatures falling in the afternoon. By Tuesday, we'll be in another early season chilly spell, with highs not getting out of the 30s.

But that won't be a problem, compared to the havoc that might hit the Midwest today. Let's hope any big tornados that do form stay in open country, away from any towns or cities.

Some of the Coolest Funnel Clouds Are Overseas

Two YouTube videos popped up this week that depict absolutely gorgeous funnel clouds.

One shows a waterspout over the Baltic Sea with a rainbow in the foreground. Love how the funnel and the rainbow sort of bend in the same sort of way, almost like dance partners:





The next video shows a tornado in Kazakhstan this week. I love how the dark funnel is set off against the brilliant blue sky in the background. Really nice use of color, Mother Nature!