Hello and welcome back to the extreme weather blog! We have not seen wild weather locally this week. Most of this week here in Houston has been hot, humid and muggy, but we’re in for a big cool down this weekend. Personally, I’m very excited about finally making soups, stews and, of course, chili!

Last week on the wild weather blog we talked about a Tropical Storm Nalgae, flooding in Australia and Hurricane Lisa in Belize. This week, our wild weather around the world is all from the United States. We’ve had the most extreme weather this week, from severe storms in the plains, to a rare landfalling November hurricane.

Tornado outbreak :

A large cold front moved through Houston last Friday night, but as it passed through the plains, it caused a major severe weather outbreak. At least 28 tornadoes were reported across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Two were rated as an EF-4, and two were EF-3. One of the EF-4 tornadoes crossed over the border from Oklahoma to Texas, making it a bi-state tornado, and also the strongest tornado in Oklahoma in over 2,000 days.

Here’s a video of a tornado near Sulphur Springs, Texas. This tornado was rated an EF-2 with peak wind speeds up to 120 mph. This severe weather outbreak also triggered several severe thunderstorms, and in total the event has sadly claimed at least three lives and injured over two dozen others.

Hurricane Nicole:

This week has been a week of preparation for folks in Florida as they prepared for hurricane-force winds, heavy rainfall and dangerous storm surge. Hurricane Nicole officially made landfall at 2 a.m. Eastern time Thursday on the east coast of Florida, just south of Vero Beach. At the time, maximum sustained winds were at 75 mph, classifying it as a Category 1 storm. This was a very large system, with tropical storm force winds extending over 450 miles from the eye. This was a particularly sad situation as our friends in Florida were still freshly recovering from Hurricane Ian, which hit the state roughly 40 days ago. This means even more devastation for an area that really needs to catch a break.

Hurricane season lasts through the end of November, however. Nicole’s landfall on Nov. 10 marks the second-latest landfall in the United States.

Something good:

In the spirit of always ending on a positive note, I thought I’d end with this awesome time-lapse showing the total lunar eclipse on Tuesday morning! Watch as the moon disappears into darkness as it passes behind the earth moving into our shadow. Once the moon is completely in the earth’s shadow, called the umbra, it glows a bright red color, which is how it get’s the name “blood moon.” This is a really cool event as it requires perfect timing with the moon phases and the alignment of the sun, earth and moon (in that very particular order). If you missed the moon Tuesday morning, your next chance is in 2025!

Stay safe always,

Caroline