Tropical Storm Harold makes landfall in South Texas, causing power outages in Corpus Christi
Thousands of homes and businesses in the small South Texas city of Corpus Christi are without power after the state’s first tropical storm of the hurricane season made landfall, bringing strong winds and welcome rain following months of dry weather.
US east cleans up after deadly storms as New England braces for flooding
Crews across the eastern U.S. are working to clear downed trees and power lines and restore electricity following severe storms that killed at least two people, cut power hundreds of thousands, and forced thousands of flight delays and cancellations.
Phoenix has ended 31-day streak of highs at or above 110 degrees as rains ease a Southwest heat wave
A record 31-day streak in Phoenix of daily highs of at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit has ended as the dangerous heat wave that suffocated the Southwest throughout July starts abating with cooling monsoon rains.
Tornado touches down near Chicago's O'Hare airport, disrupting hundreds of flights
A National Weather Service team will survey damage in northeast Illinois, where fierce winds from suspected tornadoes ripped roofs from buildings, downed trees and sent residents scrambling for safety as sirens sounded.
Heads up: it’s Severe Weather Awareness week!
This first week of March is Severe Weather Awareness week. If you think about it, most weeks bring some kind of severe weather our way because not all threatening weather is lightning and storms. In fact, today’s topic is HEAT and you can see the others here:
How strong were the winds?
Determining just how strong a tornado’s winds were, like the ones that came through last week, is not as easy as it might seem. First, the winds aren’t measured like the winds you hear about on the weather report every day---those are from a wind gage in real time from area observations. Tornado winds are estimated, based on the damage they caused. This task was first tackled in 1971 by Dr. Ted Fujita whose scale of F-0 to F-5 tornadoes looked like this:
An end in sight? Not yet, but close
After weeks of winter storms, the atmospheric rivers that have been inundating California look to finally dry up a bit. However, today is another dangerously wet day with 2-4″ of rain and as much as 2′ of snow in the mountains forecasted. You can see plenty of flood and winter warning areas on this map below.
Beautiful skies, but too dry!
Gorgeous morning skies like the one above continue and, with the exception of a slight warming trend, the forecast keeps us under pleasant conditions at least until the end of next week! Even then, the better rain chance would come closer to mid-month with a big cold front diving down. However, that forecast as you see below is really beyond the scope of reliability. Here’s the American model:
Texas drought strengthens its grip, triggering wildfires, water restrictions and crop disasters
Hundreds of wildfires have broken out this spring. More than a dozen areas are under voluntary or mandatory water use restrictions, and more than 200 Texas counties have been designated as crop disaster areas.