Colorado Greets Summer's Arrival With Winter Snow; Also More Storm Videos

Snow in Colorado over the weekend. Photo via Twitter @CoDude5280

The Summer Solstice brought a rare winter storm to Colorado and other sections of the Rocky Mountains.

Some of the higher totals included 4.9 inches in Cameron Pass and 4.2 inches in Berthoud Pass.  Mountain summits really got clobbered, with a report of two feet of new snow at Steamboat Springs.

The new snow prompted the Arapahoe Basin ski area to extend its season to the final days of June.

June snow happens from time to time in the Rocky Mountains, but this was awfully late in the season and awfully deep for the Summer Solstice

Here's the mid-winter like scene in Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado over the weekend:



Storms continued to batter other parts of the nation Sunday. A tornado touched down around South Bend, Indiana. There were also many reports of wind damage across the South and Midwest.

Here's a close range video of a tornado hitting South Bend, Indiana. The twister badly damaged a day care center behind the CVS Pharmacy in the video:



Here's traffic cam footage in Georgia the other day showing extreme thunderstorm winds thrashing and collapsing traffic signals. Glad I wasn't in one of the cars there:

Cool Video Of Skinny But Intense Little Tornado In Indiana

In this screen grab, you can see the skinny white tornado
to the left, between the brick house and the white truck

Some of the tornadoes that ripped through parts of the Midwest last week hit in Indiana.

One tornado in particular, near Corydon, Indian was especially interesting

It was the skinniest little thing. If your arms were outstretched, they would almost stretch from one side of the tornado to the other.

The tornado later widen and intensified, becoming an EF-1 strength storm that damaged homes and buildings in nearby New Middletown.

A home security camera captured the drama, then after that, there's an even better video in the same neighborhood as a guy captured the tornado dancing past his house. :



Here's the even better video. Quite wild!

Comcast Truck Causes Snow Crashes In Viral Video

These cars slid of an Indiana road this week on a snowy day in patt
because a Comcast truck was blocking one lane of traffic
surprisng motorists who had just crested a hill.  

There's a video that hit big today about some car slide-offs and crashes in Indiana this week that appear to be have been caused by a Comcast repair truck.

In the video, which you can see below, a Comcast truck is blocking one lane of traffic on a slushy, icy two lane road while the guys make repairs to some sort of cable problem along the road.

There's a upward grade on the road before the Comcast truck, and then it goes downhill just prior to where the Comcast truck is parked.

Motorists crest the hill, and are then surprised to see the Comcast truck blocking things. Some of the motorists either slide off the road because they can't brake in time, or they crash into each other.

The Comcast guys seem oblivious. The guy making the video points out that the Comcast guys are creating a hazard.

The Comcast guy replies that they put out the correct number of traffic cones warning of the danger. Which is likely true for optimum driving conditions, but not for the conditions in winter storms.

Sure, some of the motorists might have been driving too fast for the conditions, but must the Comcast  repair guys make things worse?

Why, yes, they must!

The guy shooting the video manages to put his own makeshift cones out, but it's not enough. We see a  pickup truck slide into the back of a braking car, then skid into not one, but two front lawns.

After that mishap, the guy taking the video yells at the Comcast worker.

Who basically shrugs. Comcast Guy says, "I have work to do."

To which our videographer responsds, "You got work to do. Is that cable more important than people's safety?

I actually feel for the Comcast workers, because they're between a rock and a hard place. It's corporate America, where workers must do what is proscribed in company rules, even if it makes no sense. If they don't, they're fired or punished.

They might have been able to park the trucks in a safer spot, but maybe that would have violated company rules?

But if the publicity gets bad, which it does here in this viral video, they're still in trouble.

As the video went viral, Ed Marchetti, SVP, Technical Operations put out a statement, which read in part:

"Safety matters most - especially in dangerous weather conditions like this. 

We are actively investigating what happened when our technicians were on site to restore services during an outage and we will reach out to those who were impacted buy this incident.

Within the next 24-48 hours, my team will meet with our technicians across the company to use this example of how important it is to make everyone's safety a priority in everything we do."

In other words, the employment of these Indiana Comcast workers is toast.

I'm glad that Comcast will emphasize safety, and I hope they follow through

I'm sure the people in that neighborhood were bummed that their cable access had been knocked out. I'm sure they wanted Comcast to fix the problem ASAP, as would I.

But I'd rather live without cable TV, and suffer through an afternoon unable go watch the Steve Harvey show, than see motorists get killed or injured because somebody is trying to enable me to watch the show.

Let's let common sense rule in winter weather, please.

Here's the video:

Tornado Outbreak Blasts Indiana, Ohio, And Still Watching the Tropics

Large tornado near Defiance, Ohio Wednesday
Photo by Jaycee Riley.  

We're past the time in the spring and early summer when we get those terrible Midwest tornado outbreaks, but as yesterday proved, you can get these tornado swarms any time of year.

Wednesday, numerous tornadoes touched down in Indiana and Ohio, and some of them were quite large, and as you'd expect, there was a LOT of property damage.

Surprisingly and happily, there are no reports of any serious injuries. About 15 to 20 people did receive relatively minor injuries caused by flying debris.

It didn't hurt that the National Weather Service kept issuing timely warnings, so people were able to take cover ahead of the twisters.

Such was the case in hard-hit Kokomo, Indiana, where a Starbucks restaurant manager hustled patrons into a rest room just before the tornado hit, flattening the building.

The stronger interior walls of restrooms held, so everybody in there was fine. It wouldn't have been the case had they been out in the main area of the Starbucks. There's dramatic video of the Starbucks blowing over from a worker inside a nearby Chile's restaurant, which stayed intact during the tornado.

The Kokomo Tribune reported roughly 500 people displaced from their tornado-damaged homes. The tornado there was considered a quite strong EF3 with winds of 165 mph or so.

Electricity is still out in parts of Kokomo and schools are closed today. Wednesday's tornado took a path similar to another destructive tornado that damaged some of the same neighborhoods in November, 2013.

The supercells that scattered the tornadoes in Indiana continued on into Ohio, where there were more large ones, mainly over rural areas.

That region is not out of the woods. Indiana and especially Ohio are at risk for tornadoes and severe storms today, but the threat of tornadoes is lower today than it was yesterday.

TROPICAL TROUBLES

Forecasters are still watching a big patch of showers and storms entering the Caribbean Sea today for signs that it could develop into Tropical Storm Hermine.

The thing is still totally disorganized, but is producing enough huge thunderstorms to raise the risk of severe flash flooding and mudslides in Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic today.

Forecasts are pretty consistent that this thing will eventually head toward the Bahamas and Florida, but what will this "thing" be?

Heat content in the ocean water east of Florida is at record highs, and that would tend to help a tropical storm or hurricane develop.

But that's not the only ingredient. If upper level winds are wrong, it won't develop. Still, Florida, the Bahamas and possibly eventually the Gulf of Mexico coastline should watch and see what this thing does.

Here's the view from inside a Chili's Restaurant in Kokomo, Indiana as a tornado blew over the Starbucks next door on Wednesday:

Skating Through The South And Blasting Through Winter

Ice storm damage in Helena, Arkansas. By
Stephanie Arnold via KATV.  

Another big winter storm is ending for most of the places it blasted yesterday, and the eastern part of the nation is settling in for more Arctic air.

This is one of those winter that, in general, wasn't so bad at the beginning but really built up to a big crescendo toward the end.

The big problem with yesterday's winter storm was the freezing rain and ice accumulations stretching from Arkansas to North Carolina.

Widespread power failures are still going in Arkansas, Tennessee, northeastern parts of Georgia and sections of North Carolina. (Plus there's probably a few nearby areas I skipped.)

NBC is reporting this morning at least 330,000 homes and businesses across the South have no power because heavy ice accumulations brought down trees, branches and power lines.

It's cold where there's no power, too. Arctic air punched back into the region behind the storm. For instance, it was 14 degrees this morning in Nashville, where about a half inch of ice paralyzed the region.

You start to get power failures during freezing rain if the ice accumulates to about a quarter inch thick. In Tennessee, ice was as much as three quarters of an inch thick, reports the Weather Channel. Many areas reported at least a half inch of ice.

Car crashes, were of course common. Some of them were because people were driving too fast for the conditions.  The city of Memphis, Tennessee reported at least 73 car crashes in about 16 hours, the Commercial Appeal newspaper said. 

WAVY-TV in Virginia had a camera set up on the side of the road in Hampton, Virginia, when this happened:



Notice the SUV stopped just inches from the camera (and the guy standing by filming.)

No serious injuries were reported in this crash.

North of the ice zone, it was heavy snow. Coleman, Kentucky picked up 18 inches of snow, and widespread totals of six to twelve inches were reported from Missouri to Virginia.

As expected, the outer edges of the storm were clipping southeastern New England as of Tuesday morning.

Luckily, after six feet of snow in the past month, this won't amount to much, but it won't help. An inch or two could fall in the Boston area today, and Cape Cod and the Islands expect two to four inches.

Ice storm damage in Memphis, Tennessee.
Photo by Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal

Although it will remain very cold in New England for at least the next week, it might not snow all that much more in the next few days. There will be nuisance snows on several days through the weekend, though.

However, with (cross your fingers!) no HUGE dumps of snow into Saturday, municipalities in New England, with help from outside agencies like the Vermont National Guard, can do some power snow clearing.

You know, get tons of bucket loaders out there to dig the snow out of the streets and store it
in "snow dumps" fields.. or even disposing of it in the ocean, a move that is only legal in extreme cases, due to the pollution contained in the snow from the streets. I think this does qualify as an extreme case.

Speaking of extremes, the cold is locked in through much of the week. The National Weather Service in Indianapolis said the town of Seymour, Indiana got down to 13 below this morning. So did Burlington, Vermont. Of course 13 below in Vermont is not as rare as it is in Indiana but it's still damn cold.

Plus, the overnight low got down to minus 30 in Saranac Lake, New York, minus 26 in Whitefield, New Hampshire and 24 below in Morrisville, Vermont and Sherbrooke, Quebec.

This comes after dozens of cities and towns reported record lows. Erie, Pennsylvania reached 12 below, its all time record low for any date. Watertown, New York reached 34 below on Monday.

Another surge of Arctic air will blast into the Midwest and East Wednesday and Thursday. There's a chance Nashville could get below zero. If that happens, it would be the latest in the winter that has happened on record.

I'm watching another possible snowstorm in the Northeast on Sunday or Monday, but I have no details. Forecasting computer models are all over the place with this, so there's nothing I can hang my hat on yet. We'll see.

The weather pattern is stuck pretty much for the rest of the month. There are still some very uncertain signs the weather pattern could change in early March, but I'm not 100 percent sure it will yet, and it could always change into a pattern that brings more snow and cold to places that don't need it.

Stay tuned.