North American Weather (U.S.A & Canada)

[jonboy]

Nearly 100F in Miami

Chart weatherbell

and snowing in new england dont you just love weather!!!

[knocker]

That's interesting.

 

[knocker]

Massive Tornadic Storm Just Misses Dallas; Extreme Heat in South Florida, Cuba

 

Near-record atmospheric moisture for late April teamed up with an extremely strong jet stream to produce a fearsome night of severe weather over north Texas, mainly south of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The most intense storms of the day developed by early afternoon southeast of Abilene, with one large supercell emerging at the south end of the complex. After producing several brief tornadoes and hail as large as softballs from a giant stacked-plate circulation, the storm grew even larger and more threatening after dark as it moved just south of the DFW area. Slowing and reoganizing, it dumped more than 5†of rain on some areas, according to Doppler radar estimates. At one point, there were three potentially tornadic circulations evident on Doppler radar along the storm’s south edge, a pattern eerily reminiscent of the deadly storm on May 30, 2013, that killed several storm chasers near El Reno, Oklahoma. Soon after midnight, the circulations congealed into a powerful comma-shaped bow echo that swept across the prairie with high winds (see Figure 1). Nineteen preliminary tornado reports were logged by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center in Texas on Sunday.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2967

[knocker]

Low Pressure Between Southeast Florida and Bahamas has Potential to Develop

 

Heavy thunderstorms and strong winds are increasing over the waters between Southeast Florida and the Bahama Islands, where a non-tropical region of surface low pressure is developing. Radar out of Miami shows no organization to the shower activity, with rainfall amounts mostly less than an inch over Southeast Florida as of Tuesday morning. The first week of May is usually too early for the Atlantic to see its first named storm, but this area of low pressure could become Subtropical Depression One late this week, according to two of our top computer models for forecasting genesis of tropical cyclones, the GFS and European models. These models predict that the extratropical storm will form a well-defined center on Wednesday, then drift slowly northwards towards North Carolina during the week, gradually acquiring tropical characteristics. Ocean temperatures are near 26°C (79°F), which is about 1.7°C (3°F) above average for this time of year, and just at the limit of where a tropical storm can form. If the storm manages to find a sweet spot over the core of the warm Gulf Stream current, it has the potential to develop into a subtropical or tropical depression late in the week, as indicated by Phase space diagrams from Florida State University from Tuesday morning's 06Z run of the GFS model. Steering currents are weak over the waters off the Southeast U.S. coast, and the models are split on whether or not the disturbance will eventually make landfall on the Southeast U.S. coast late this week. I give the system a 40% chance of bringing heavy rains to the coast and high surf causing rip currents and coastal erosion late this week. In their 10 am EDT Tuesday Tropical Weather Outlook, NHC gave the disturbance 2-day and 5-day odds of development of 20% and 40%, respectively. The Hurricane Hunters are on call to investigate the disturbance on Wednesday afternoon, if necessary.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2973

[knocker]

Flooding, Tornado Threats Continue after Torrential Rains in Central Oklahoma

 

The Plains erupted on Wednesday with a batch of slow-moving tornadic supercells that morphed into prodigious rainmakers. More than four dozen tornado reports had been received by NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center by early Thursday. Pockets of wind/tornado damage were reported near Bridge Creek, OK, and across parts of the south metro area of Oklahoma City/Norman (see Figure 1). Two critical injuries and 10 other injuries were reported at a mobile home park and RV park in southeast Oklahoma City. The town of Rosedale, NE, also saw several homes damaged by a tornado. The more serious threat by late evening became flash flooding, especially across the Oklahoma City area, where a strip of heavy rainfall landed very close to a prior deluge the night before. The resulting 2-day totals (see Figure 2) exceeded 8†in spots. Oklahoma City’s total of 7.10†on Wednesday (including 6.03†in just three hours) was a record for any day in May and the third-highest all-time calendar-day total. Widespread flooding was reported across south parts of the metro area, and here in Norman, where I'm based this week, this was one of the heaviest downpours I've seen in a long time. CoCoRaHS 24-hour rainfall reports as of 8:00 am CDT also show a large swath of torrential rain over southeast Nebraska, with several reports of between 8" and 11". Significant flooding occurred in the Lincoln, NE, area, with reports of water rescues under way on Thursday morning.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2976

[knocker]

Looks like some temp records today around the Lakes

Chart weatherbell

 

[knocker]

Volatile Setup for Severe Weather in Southern Plains on Friday, Saturday

 

The ingredients are in place for a major multi-day outbreak of severe weather from Friday into the weekend, including the possibility of strong, long-track tornadoes. Early on Friday, NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center placed part of southwest Oklahoma under a moderate risk of severe weather for Friday, with a moderate-risk area covering a broader swath from western KS to southwest OK on Saturday. I would not be surprised to see a localized upgrade to high risk somewhere in this swath on Saturday.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2979

[knocker]

Dry Heat

 

As Lake Mead hits record lows and water shortages loom, Arizona prepares for the worst.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/05/arizona_water_shortages_loom_the_state_prepares_for_rationing_as_lake_mead.html?wpsrc=fol_tw

[knocker]

Ana a Tropical Storm; Complicated Severe Threat for U.S. Plains

 

Tropical storm conditions are expected beginning Saturday evening along much of the South Carolina and North Carolina coasts as slow-moving Tropical Storm Ana plods to the northwest at 3 mph. Ana gained enough heavy thunderstorms near its center on Saturday morning to be classified as a tropical storm, but long-range radar out of Wilmington, North Carolina and satellite loops on Saturday afternoon showed that these thunderstorms were of only modest intensity and areal coverage, and were only slowly increasing. Strong upper level winds out of the north were creating an increasing amount of wind shear over Ana on Saturday morning, and the shear had reached a high 20 knots by 8 am EDT. This shear was driving dry air into the northern side of Ana, and keeping heavy thunderstorm activity limited on that side. Ocean temperatures were near 25°C (77°F), which is just at the limit of where a tropical storm can sustain itself. The Frying Pan Shoals Buoy 41013, located off the coast of North Carolina about 40 miles northeast of the center of Ana, recorded sustained winds of 38 mph, gusting to 40 mph, at 9:50 am EDT. Wunderblogger Steve Gregory pointed out to me this morning that significant wave heights in Ana have not been very impressive over the past few days, less than ten feet, suggesting that the advertised peak winds of Ana of 60 mph were either too high or were affecting a very small portion of the ocean.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2981

[knocker]

Florida Has its Warmest April on Record

 

Florida residents, if you thought April 2015 seemed ridiculously hot, you were right--April 2015 was Florida's hottest April on record, said NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) on Tuesday. The contiguous U.S. experienced its 17th warmest April since 1895, with the most notable heat in the Southeast U.S., where Georgia and South Carolina also experienced top-ten warmest Aprils on record. No portions of the country were notably cooler than average. The year-to-date period January - April ranked as the 20th warmest year-to-date on record. It was a relatively wet month, ranking in the wettest one-third of the historical record, and portions of the Central U.S. experienced notable relief from drought conditions. The U.S. Climate Extremes Index (USCEI) for the year-to-date was 40 percent above average and the 15th highest value since 1900. The warm West and cold Northeast temperature pattern during January-April contributed to the much above average USCEI, with the components that measure both warm and cold daytime and nighttime temperatures being much above average. The USCEI is an index that tracks extremes (falling in the upper or lower 10 percent of the record) in temperature, precipitation and drought across the contiguous United States

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2985

[knocker]

Rain, Rain and More Rain for the Southern Plains

[knocker]

Summer Weather Watch: Keep an Eye on These Five Possibilities

 

It’s Memorial Day weekend, the traditional start of the U.S. summer season, and millions are wondering what kind of weather the next three months will bring. Seasonal predictions have their limits any time of year, and that’s especially true in summer, when upper-level winds are weaker and local influences play a larger role. Moreover, the largest single influence on year-to-year climate variability--the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)--is often at low ebb in the northern summer. Not so this year. An unseasonable El Niño event is now approaching moderate strength and is projected to continue intensifying through the summer, perhaps reaching record or near-record strength for the time of year by August. Instead of the typical lack of a summertime push from El Niño or La Niña, we’re thus left with a much different kind of prediction challenge: a summer setup so unusual that we have few analogs to go by. With that caveat, I’ll stick my neck out and offer a Top Five List (with apologies to David Letterman) of things I’ll be watching for as the lazy, crazy, and occasionally hazy days of summer unfold.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2996

[knocker]

Yukon's record breaking temperatures enter second week

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-s-record-breaking-temperatures-enter-second-week-1.3085654

[knocker]

Epic Rains, Disastrous Floods Plague Texas, Oklahoma

 

Water cascaded through the streets, creeks, and bayous of downtown Austin and Houston on Monday as an upper-level storm inched its way across the southern Great Plains. Slow-moving thunderstorms dumped 6†to 8†across the western Houston metro area between 8:00 and 11:00 p.m., and heavy rains continued well past midnight across much of the south and west metro area, bringing some totals as high as 10+â€. Though the Houston flooding came well short of that in 2001’s catastrophic Tropical Storm Allison, countless roads and interstate highways were submerged, and hundreds of homes reportedly took water. This was the latest salvo in a remarkable three-day stretch of torrential rain and destructive flooding across much of Oklahoma and Texas and parts of neighboring states. As of Tuesday morning, the floods had taken at least 8 lives, with at least 12 people missing, and damaged or destroyed many hundreds of buildings.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2997

[cheese]

Oklahoma City has had 480mm of rain so far this month - with one day having 174mm. Utter insanity - and to think there were drought conditions there recently.

[knocker]

The Amazing Rains of May: Photos and Stats

 

Now that May has mercifully drawn to a close, and the south-central states are drying out and cleaning up, we can take full measure of what an incredibly, destructively soggy month it was, especially for Texas and Oklahoma. Both states obliterated their rainfall records for any calendar month going back to 1895. While the rains quickly doused a multiyear drought (see Figure 3 below), the flooding killed at least 31 people, with 6 others missing as of Monday night, and inflicted at least $1 billion in damage, according to estimates from the insurance broker Aon Benfield. Below are a few memorable images from the past month—but first, some numbers:

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3004

[keithlucky]

The Amazing Rains of May: Photos and Stats

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3004

 

Veteran met man says these in Huston are not unprecedented https://medium.com/@spann/the-age-of-disinformation-98d55837d7d9

[keithlucky]

d

Edited June 2, 2015 by keithlucky

[knocker]

Veteran met man says these in Huston are not unprecedented https://medium.com/@spann/the-age-of-disinformation-98d55837d7d9

 

Just so there is no confusion the article wasn't about the floods being unprecedented but the rainfall. Are you categorically stating the blog is incorrect in stating this or have you gone into a spasm because climate change might, and I stress might, be implicated?

 

 

Now that May has mercifully drawn to a close, and the south-central states are drying out and cleaning up, we can take full measure of what an incredibly, destructively soggy month it was, especially for Texas and Oklahoma. Both states obliterated their rainfall records for any calendar month going back to 1895.

[WillinGlossop]

Back from week of 30c plus in new york and big thundery breakdown over sunday/monday.... Some flooding in hoboken nj.... But was great going up one world trade centre friday opening... Central park was buzzing most days.... Theyve now got our weather....cool, showery n breezy

[knocker]

May was the wettest month in U.S. history, new data shows

 

April showers, as the saying goes, bring May flowers. Apparently, though, in Earth's new climate regime there is a corallary to this, which goes something like, "May downpours bring deadly floods and all-time rainfall records." At least that was the case this year.

 

According to data released Monday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, May was the wettest month on record in the contiguous U.S. NOAA says the average May precipitation total for the lower 48 states was 4.36 inches, which was 1.45 inches above average.

 

This was the wettest May on record, and the wettest month of any month since instrument record-keeping began in 1895. So much rain fell that if converted into gallons it would amount to more than 200 trillion gallons of water, according to the AP.

 

http://mashable.com/2015/06/08/may-wettest-month-us-history/

[knocker]

A Close-Up Look at Last Week’s Perplexing Colorado Twisters

 

 

Early June is the most common time for tornadoes in Colorado, and last week served up a dramatic example. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center logged 13 preliminary tornado reports in Colorado on June 4 - 6. The tornado-generating thunderstorms were spawned by weak upper-level impulses from the southwest, combined with generous low-level moisture feeding into the state from the Gulf of Mexico. Two widely photographed twisters that seemed to bend the rules of tornado formation, both on June 4, caught the attention of national press and the blogosphere.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3016

[knocker]

91L a Heavy Rain Threat for Texas/Louisiana; Hurricane Carlos a Threat to Mexico

 

An area of low pressure over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula formed Saturday morning, and has the potential to become a tropical depression over the Gulf of Mexico on Monday. The disturbance, designated Invest 91L by NHC on Saturday morning, was bringing a large area of intense thunderstorms to the Western Caribbean on Saturday afternoon, as seen on satellite images. Strong easterly winds of 29 mph, gusting to 43 mph, were observed at the Yucatan Basin buoy on Saturday morning. The heavy thunderstorm activity will push across Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and into the southern Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, then move north to northwest towards Texas and Louisiana on Monday. The 12Z Saturday run of the SHIPS model predicted that wind shear would be marginal for development, a moderately high 15 - 25 knots, Sunday and Monday. Ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are warm enough to support a tropical storm, 27.5°C (81.5°F), and the atmosphere is very moist. In their 8 am EDT Saturday Tropical Weather Outlook, NHC gave 2-day and 5-day odds of development of 20% and 30%, respectively. The disturbance will push northwestwards over Texas by Tuesday, but it is uncertain how much rain Texas and Louisiana might get from the storm. The European model favors a more westward track into South Texas with lower rainfall totals of about 1 - 2" over Texas on Monday and Tuesday, while the GFS model shows more development of 91L and a track more towards the east, with the upper Texas coast and Louisiana coast getting about 3 - 5" of rain. Given the amount of heavy thunderstorm activity 91L has already built over the Western Caribbean, I support the wetter forecast of the GFS model for Texas and Louisiana. The Hurricane Hunters are on call to fly into 91L on Monday morning.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3017

[knocker]

Invest 91L May Develop Before Moving into Texas – Flooding Primary Threat

  

[knocker]

Dangerous Flood Potential in Texas, Oklahoma from Invest 91L

 

Residents of the Southern Plains need to keep a wary eye on tropical disturbance Invest 91L as it moves into the northwest Gulf of Mexico. The storm is already bringing winds near tropical storm force over the northern Gulf of Mexico; the South Marsh 268 oil rig located about 50 miles south of the Central Louisiana coast measured sustained winds of 40 mph, gusting to 47 mph, at 8:35 am CDT Monday morning. The Hurricane Hunters, flying at an elevation of 1000 feet, found flight level winds of up to 55 mph and surface winds in excess of tropical storm force (39+ mph) on the northeast side of 91L's center near 9:15 am EDT. Although 91L has tropical storm-force winds, the plane has not yet found a well-defined surface circulation, and the system did not qualify to be named Tropical Storm Bill by the National Hurricane Center on Monday morning. Satellite images showed that 91L's heavy thunderstorms have increased in intensity, and were beginning to consolidate near the low-level center of circulation, which was becoming much more defined. Wind shear on Monday morning was high, 15 - 25 knots, but rising air from 91L's thunderstorms should gradually erode the upper-level low situated above 91L, replacing it with an upper-level high that will help ventilate the developing cyclone. Sea-surface temperatures are increasingly warm ahead of 91L, with unusually high readings for mid-June of 28 – 30°C (82° – 86°F) located near the middle and upper Texas coast. These warm SSTs and the improved upper-level outflow should give 91L a brief window of potential intensification before landfall on Tuesday morning. In their 8 am EDT Monday Tropical Weather Outlook, NHC gave 2-day and 5-day odds of development of 80%. Landfall of 91L should occur Tuesday morning along the Texas coast, according to the 00Z runs of the GFS and ECMWF models.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3018