Big Storm Update: Tornadoes Hit NM; More Wind, Floods, Blizzard, Severe Weather Today

The giant storm in the Plains already looked
really wound up shortly after dawn
this morning. 

That big storm we've been talking about continues to raise havoc over the middle of the nation.

The storm spun off a couple of relatively rare tornadoes in southeastern New Mexico, causing six injuries and a lot of damage in the town of Dexter. Another dramatic-looking tornado passed near the town of Loving.

Storms roared across Texas, creating 80 mph gusts in Grand Prairie, Texas and 78 mph at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport early this morning.

There is the risk of more severe weather today, this time in the lower Mississippi River valley. The main risk from this is damaging straight line winds. But there also might be a couple more tornadoes.

Today, the focus is on the Plains, from near the Front Range of the Rockies out to near the Mississippi River.

It'll be a blizzard to the west, transitioning to a flood further east. And a TON of wind.

Yesterday was actually a lovely day in eastern Colorado. Temperatures reached the 60s with at least a little sun.

Today, rain will change to snow in Colorado and a blizzard will set in across the northeastern part of the state, including the cities of Denver and Colorado Springs. Further out into the Colorado Plains, where winds during tonight's blizzard could gust to a whopping 75 mph.

The Denver Post reports this might be the the strongest Colorado blizzard in decades. Flights in and out of Denver are already canceled, even before the bulk of the storm arrives.

A rare, large tornado neaer Hagerman, in southeastern
New Mexico on Tuesday. 

Obviously, travel is not recommended later today and tonight in Colorado, and in other areas that will get an intense blizzard out of this.

This blizzard zone also includes the eastern half of Wyoming, western Nebraska, western and central South Dakota, central and eastern North Dakota and the northwestern tip of Minnesota.

In parts of western South Dakota, up to two feet of snow might fall with winds gusting to 60 mph. That's pretty damn extreme.

There won't be as much snow further east, but the wind will certainly howl as the storm reaches its deepest barometric pressure, which might set records in Kansas tonight. Winds gusting to at least 75 mph could hit portions of northern Texas, western Oklahoma and the western half of Kansas tonight.

Along and near the big storm's path, there's an ugly variety of weather planned.  As an example, let's look at Yankton, South Dakota, where many of my relatives live.

High winds overnight collapsed this communications tower near
Abilene, Texas. Photo by Joe Fry via Twitter.

This morning, Yankton and environs is under a flood warning, due to snow melt and an expected inch of rain.

Snow and rain mixed now will change to rain. The melting snow and wet air is also creating dense fog. The rain this afternoon and tonight will probably also be punctuated by thunderstorms.

Tomorrow, the cold air will rush into Yankton and change the precipitation to snow, which will probably accumulate to several inches.

Winds could gust to more than 55 mph. Yankton's not alone. A lot of places in the northern Plains along and path of the storm face these conditions.

Here in Vermont, we're still expecting nothing too dramatic from this storm. A minor weather disturbance this evening seems destined to throw another handful of unwelcome snowflakes on especially northern sections.

But this snow won't be as surprisingly big as what happened Monday night, when north central and northeastern Vermont got a surprise 3 to 10 inch snowstorm. This snow also brought the depth of the snow atop Mount Mansfield to 116 inches. This, or whatever paltry amount falls tonight, will almost certainly be the peak depth for the season up there.

Funnel cloud over Mesa, Arizona as the giant storm began
to organize in the desert Southwest Tuesday.
Photo by Jon Morley via Twitter.

The warmth then temporarily comes in Thursday and Friday to melt some of the snow. Rainfall with this larger system Friday will be relatively light, so that won't contribute much to run off from the snow melt.

Still, there's a lot of ice jams or potential ice jams around in the rivers, so that could cause problems Friday and Saturday.  

The warmth here in Vermont will be short-lived, as we'll get into a chilly pattern again for the beginning of next week. No full on spring yet!

The good news for the nation as a whole is that after this one, the weather pattern across the nation will change somewhat. There will be less of a propensity for large storms to crash onto the California shores, then cause snowstorms, floods, severe weather and whatnot across most of the rest of the nation.

There will be minor systems in the week after this one, but nothing really major. So most people definitely get a break.

Brief video of a large, relatively rare tornado in New Mexico Tuesday:

Extremely Rare Tornado In Snow. I'll Call It A Snornado

A tornado going over snow-covered ground, and
pulling up snow into its circulation in New
Mexico recently. This is an extremely rare,
if not unprecedented event I'm not aware
of any other tornadoes on snow. Photo by
Lydell Rafael, via Twitter.

Earlier this month, a relatively weak tornado touched down in New Mexico.

Tornadoes aren't super rare in New Mexico, but this one was really out-of-this world unusual. It was the first one I've ever heard of that moved over snow-covered ground. A lot of other weather weenies have said the same.

There was a pocket of very unusually cold air over New Mexico, part of this month's storminess that has brought feet of snow to some mountainous areas of the West and brought snow to oddly low elevations. It has even snowed a couple times on the Las Vegas Strip this month.

Pockets of cold air above the Earth, like the one in New Mexico, usually produce convection - that is towering clouds that form into thunderstorms, or at least very heavy showers of rain or snow.

This cold air aloft touched off snow squalls in New Mexico.  The air was so unstable, though, that it managed to produce a tornado.

Tornadoes are extremely rare on snow covered terrain because the cold snow almost always stabilizes the air in the lowest layers of the atmosphere near the ground. That is supposed to  cut off the ability for any columns of rotating air to actually touch down. Not this time.

The recent New Mexico storm was a landspout tornado, which is usually weaker than the traditional big Midwest tornadoes. A landspout is certainly one form of tornado, but there's a difference. Weather.com offers this definition describing the difference between a landspout and other tornadoes:

"A tornado is spawned from a parent thunderstorm with a rotating updraft, but a landspout isn't. A landspout requires a towering cumulus cloud to be present over a boundary of converging winds near the surface."

The New Mexico snow tornado was an odd duck of a landspout, meteorologist Bryon Morton, a meteorologist at television station KOAT Alburquerque explained on Twitter:

"This is not a traditional tornado. It's formed by colliding outflows from convective snow squalls that result in a spin up near the surface, whch is transported upward via an updraft. There are no rotating wall clouds or mesocyclones involved. Spectacular & rare nonetheless!"

By the way, a mesocyclone is an area of rotating winds in a supercell thunderstorm. Mesocyclones often, but don't always produce tornadoes.

I have not seen any reports of damage from this snow tornado (snornado?) near Tinian, New Mexico. But it sure was something!

Hurricane Bud In Pacific, And Are Hurricanes Getting Even Wetter?

Hurricane Bud looking impressive in this satellite photo from Monday

The second Category 4 hurricane in a week is spinning off the west coast of Mexico this morning. Unlike last week's Aletta, this new one might actually do some damage.  Mostly from flooding.

And it could even wet some of the deserts of the American Southwest. Here are some details:

HURRICANE BUD

It's got an interesting name - Hurricane Bud - and it might sideswipe Cabo San Lucas later this week. By then, Bud's winds will have diminished to nothing too spectacular at all, but it could easily create a lot of heavy rain and flooding in southwestern Mexico, including the Baja Peninsula.

As of this morning, maximum sustained winds were 130 mph with Hurricane Bud, but it's moving northwest into cooler waters, which will start that weakening trend.

However, heavy rains often linger with the remains of hurricanes long after they weaken. Bud wil be no exception.  It will probably still be a tropical storm when it reaches Baja California, and then soak western Mexico with up to 10 inches of rain. Flash flooding is a very good bet in that neck of the woods.

It looks as if moisture from Bud will make it all the way up into Arizona and Mexico. On one hand, this is good. The Southwest has been plagued by wildfires pretty much the entire spring, and some nice rains will help. This system might give Tucson and Phoenix their first rains in three months. 

On the other hand, it doesn't take much rain in the deserts to set off flash flooding, and some of the downpours associated with the  remains of Hurricane Bud at the end of the week could cause some local high water in Arizona and New Mexico.

GULF OF MEXICO STIRRING

Hurricane experts are watching an area of disturbed weather in the Caribbean Sea east of Central America that is likely to eventually drift north. Once it hits the Gulf of Mexico, there is a chance - albeit rather slight at this point - that it could become a tropical storm.

Even if it doesn't, this storminess will bring a slug of heavy rain somewhere into the Gulf Coast toward the weekend or early next week. At this point the target area for the potential heavy rain seems to be Texas and/or Louisiana, but we'll have to wait and see on that.

While nobody is hitting the panic button over potential flooding yet, this kind of thing makes people in and around Houston nervous, given the catastrophe of last year's Hurricane Harvey flooding there.

HURRICANES GETTING WETTER?

Flooding from Hurricane Harvey in Port Arthur, Texas last year.
Photo by Marcus Yam/LA Times/Getty Images

Hurricanes, tropical storms, tropical depressions and the remnants of dead and dying tropical systems almost alway dump heavy rains wherever they go. Inland flooding is often the biggest risks of tropical systems. Note Harvey, mentioned above.

New research into hurricanes are leading to worries about heavier rains and worsening floods from future tropical systems.

The journal Nature reports on findings that hurricanes in general are traveling at a forward speed of 10 percent slower than 70 years ago.

That's bad because the longer a hurricane stays over an area, battering from wind and waves will also last longer. Worse, the heavy rains will go on in any one place for a greater period of time, resulting in worse floods than if the hurricane raced past a particular locations.

Some hurricanes have always slowed down and stalled. Again, witness Harvey in Texas last year. However, it looks like these stalls and decelerations with hurricanes are happening more often.

Once again, we can blame climate change. As NPR reports:

"Climate change is causing the poles to become warmer, which in turn affects the atmospheric pressure. There is less and less difference in pressure between the poles and the tropics, and that causes the big currents of wind between the two areas to slow down. 

Storms ride on those currents of wind, like a boat in a stream."

Which means if the winds carrying tropical systems slow down, so will the hurricanes. Just another reason to dread hurricane season, huh?

Cool "Tumbleweed Tornado" in Albuquerque

 Zillions of tumbleweeds in the air amid a New Mexico dust devil, or
more accurately, tumbleweed devil. Cool! 

Dust devils, those whirls of air that happens sometime in dry, windy, sunny weather are pretty common in arid areas of New Mexico.

Sometimes, there's an added dimension, like this really neat, I guess I would call it a "tumbleweed devil" near Albuquerque, New Mexico last week.

Watch: