Weather Is Off The Rails Pretty Much Everywhere Lately

Readers of this blog know I made a big deal out of the big snowstorm that hit western and northern New York and northern New England this week.  

While the Northeastern and Midwestern United
States linger in never ending winter, Germany
has had a week of unprecedented March warmth.
This was the scene last Sunday in Bonn.
Photo by Denis Moller.  

It was a blockbuster. In some places one of the biggest March snowstorms on record. But it certainly wasn't the most extreme weather going on in the world.

Like it has been so often lately, the weather has really been off the rails in many places.

In Germany, the beginning of March proved to be the warmest for so early in the season. The region experienced several days with temperatures in the 70s, which isn't far off from normal mid-summer weather in that neck of the woods. Flowers are already blooming there.

In Egypt, incredible rains fell on what is normally among the driest places on Earth. Luxor, Egypt normally gets 0.04 inches of rain per year. (That amount of rain, for the unintiated is basically a light, brief shower)

But on March 9-10, Luxor got 1.18 inches of rain.  To make things more bizarre, it even hailed there during the storm.

In contrast to the Midwest cold, California had its warmest winter on record, according to the National Climate Data Center 

Despite the storm California had last week, the drought out there actually worsened, as you need much more than one soaking storm to end a drought like that.

To make matters worse, record heat and dry winds are forecast for southern California over the next few days. There's also no sign of any major rain storm in the Golden State for at least a week.

In the Midwest, that snowstorm that I was yelling about pushed some cities, like Ann Arbor, Michigan, Toledo, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana over the edge to make this winter the snowiest on record.

A decidely un-snowy aerial view of a dog sled
participating in the Iditarod in Alaska. Record warmth melted
much of the snow up there.
Photo by Bob Hallinen, Anchorage Daily News  

Up in Alaska, the famed Iditarod dogsled race had an unusual problem: A lack of snow. It was among the warmest winters on record up there, and much of the snow melted.

So you had the spectacle of dogsleds dragging across brown, muddy ground and organizers dumping snow on the finish line along the streets of Nome, because the snow that normally is there wasn't.

For general weirdness, and everything but the kitchen sink weather oddness, here's the forecast discussion from about 9:45 a.m. from the National Weather Service office in Baltimore, Maryland/Washington, DC.

"We sometimes say the forecast has something for everyone. As this forecast has almost every possible weather type/hazard. In the first 36 hours, strong to severe storms, snow, wind chills, strong winds, unseasonably warm (temperatures) fire weather concerns, minor coastal flood potential. There is not much left."

Maybe with all these weather extremes they'll have to start issuing Locust Warnings or something in the near future.