Just Can't Get Enough Of Those Storm Videos

Maybe this is becoming too much of a habit, but I've got more videos to share.

The first is the most dramatic. It shows people frantically trying to get off a boat in a severe storm. Suddenly the entire marina next to them goes flying as an apparent tornado hits. It looks like the debris somehow missed the people in this surveillance video:



The first part of this video is pretty impressive. It shows a supercell thunderstorm moving into Charleston, West Virginia on Monday. That wall of rain and wind is impressive. This storm did produce at least one tornado.



I'm sure the store manager in this video is having a bad day. A storm and flood caused roof damage at a Tesco Supermarket in Scotland a few days ago. Here's the scene inside the store:



Finally, lots more drama. Dash cam video from a guy in a car caught in a tornado that hit the Dayton, Ohio area a couple weeks ago. Surprised he wasn't hurt, with the trees flying and the roof of the nearby house appearing to disintegrate:

Extreme Flooding Hits Northern Britain

Large swaths of northern Great Britain are
under water this weekend due to record flooding.
Photo from Getty Images

Record rainfall and record floods are hitting Scotland, Wales and northern England as another powerful winter storm - this one named Desmond -  trashes the region.

They're saying 2015 is going down as the hottest year on record globally. It also seems to me to be the year of the flood.

It seems every time I turn around some record, catastrophic flood has gone on somewhere in the world in 2015.

It's hard to pin a specific weather event on climate change, but the warmer the world gets, the more likely an extreme precipitation event can occur. 

Warmer air can hold more moisture, and if you get the right kind of storm, this added moisture can cause downpours much more torrential than would otherwise be the case.

In Britain, the hardest hit area seems to be fairly populated areas around Cumbria, where hundreds of people have been evacuated from badly flooded neighborhoods. Photos and vidoes from Britain show whole neighborhoods swallowed by water and scores of emergency workers pulling people from
flooded houses and apartments.

One death has been reported so far, but that might go up.

Evacuations in Carlisle, England this weekend.
Photo by Paul Kingston/NNP 

Up to 13 inches of rain in a day in a town called Honister might break a record for most intense rain in the UK, according to The Telegraph. 

Prime Minister David Cameron called a COBRA meeting, which is a gathering of top ministers that occurs when a really, really big emergency is going on.

Balmoral Castle, the Scottish retreat where Queen Elizabeth likes to go, was under threat from floodwaters, but so far hasn't suffered any damage of note.

Cumbria had record flooding in 2005 an 2009 and flood defenses were subsequently bolstered and made bigger to cope with more intense floods. But today's torrents overwhelmed even these new flood walls.

The flooding this time is also much more widespread than in 2005 and 2009.

Another storm is due to hit Britain early next week, which could complicate this situation even more.

Here's a news video of the flooding from Cumbria:

Cool Image: Nightime Satellite View of Massive North Atlantic Storm Fed By Wicked Jet Stream

From @livingearthapp on Twitter, here's a cool nightime satellite image of a massive storm swirling in the North Atlantic Tuesday night.

Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to see.

You can see the lights of western Europe, dawn breaking over Asia, and some of the lights of eastern North America peeking off to the left.

But the main story is that storm. You get big storms in the North Atlantic this time of year, so this is to be expected. But they are beautiful, aren't they?

Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to see.

H/T to Anthony Sagliani, @anthonywx on Twitter, for calling this to everyone's attention Tuesday night.

The storm is part of an incredibly fast jet stream that has developed across the North Atlantic, stretching from the northeastern United States all the way to Britain and Scandanavia.

This unusually fast jet stream is having a variety of interesting effects today. It helped strengthen what should have been a weak weather front crossing the Northeast this morning.

The jet pushed air away, making more air rise along the front, so a well defined blast of 1-3 inches of snow in just a couple hours fell in the New York City metro area during the rush hour. Boo! Hiss!

The heavy snow band was heading toward Boston at mid-morning.

Ahead of this front, some of the jet stream's screaming winds have mixed down to the surface over parts of southeastern New England. Winds could gust as high as 65 mph over Cape Cod and the Islands today. 

It's even windy where I live, in the northwestern corner of Vermont. Winds are gusting to about 35 mph at my house this morning.

If you're in a hurry to get to Europe today, or wanted to get there fast yesterday, this screaming jet stream is a good thing.

The high upper level winds pushed airliners bound from the United States to Europe wicked fast. It usually takes a little over six hours to fly from New York to London.

But according to Mashable, British Airways Flight 114 bound from New York to London completed its journey in five hours and 16 minutes.  

A representation of the powerful jet stream
screaming across the North Atlantic this week.  

Other flights had similar fast trips.

Of course, heading from London to New York took longer than usual. You can't have everything.

The fast jet stream is contributing to the development of some strong, very windy storm in northwestern Europe, too.

The storminess, and the jet stream, is feeding off a strong contrast between low pressure to the north, and high pressure to the south. Northern parts of Great Britain, in particular, are caught in the pressure gradient between the north and south.

The Telegraph UK said one of the jet stream-fed storms struck Scotland last night, bringing winds of up to 113 mph to the town of Stornoway. That's the highest wind measured there since 1970.

There is some structural damage, widespread power failures and tree damage in much of Scotland, including in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

It was the same storm that you see in the satellite image at the top of this post.

Storms in Britain, and the jet stream, will calm down a bit over the coming days. But this is the season where you sometimes get especially powerful jet streams in the Northern Hemisphere.

Which is partly why it can get so damn stormy this time of year.

I guess we need to keep hanging on to our hats.