 |
| Extremely rare snow on the coast of northern California at the Carson Mansion in Eureka. Photo via Twitter by Kenneth Pinkham. |
In many other places around the United States, it was off the charts wild. It makes Vermont look like the calmest oasis in the world.
Temperatures in the nation Thursday ranged a whopping 137 degrees, from 35 degrees in Lyman, Wyoming to 102 in Falcon Lake, Texas.
Plenty of areas are seeing weather not seen in decades or ever. Let's go over the highlight reel.
CALIFORNIA/WEST COAST
In sunny southern California, it's neither sunny, nor warm. They're bracing for an epic, very oddly cold storm, the worst of which is sweeping in today and Saturday.
Up and down the California, high elevation highways are already closed, including the notorious Grapevine, which is busy stretch of Interstate 5 between Los Angeles County and the San Joaquin Valley.
The high elevation stretch of the Grapevine sometimes gets shut down in the winter by snow, especially along a small section whose elevation rises to 4,000 feet. This time, though, it's expected to be much worse up there since snow levels are expected to fall below 2,000 feet, which encompasses much more of the highway
The Grapevine section of I-5 closed at 1:30 Friday morning, and officials have no idea when it will re-open. It was snowing hard at the 3,800 foot level of Interstate 5 this morning.
Some snow, small hail and ice pellets have already pinged down in areas of southern California that haven't seen frozen precipitation in a decade or more. School children in Pasadena rushed outside to enjoy the spectacle of pea sized hail.
A little snow dusted the famous Hollywood sign in L.A. early this morning. Even more snow might accumulate around that sign Friday night or early Saturday.
The cold storm is also volatile. The National Weather Service office in Los Angeles issued its first tornado warning in three years Friday morning. It was for an area southwest of Santa Maria. As of this writing, it's unknown if a tornado actually touched down.
Several normally balmy California cities had record low high temperatures Thursday. These included 52 in Palm Springs, 54 in Newport Beach and 57 in Anaheim. Los Angeles also had a record low minimum of 41 degrees Thursday. We've had low temperatures at that level a couple times this winter in Vermont.
Incredibly, a blizzard warning is up for mountains in Los Angeles County. (These mountains are as high as 8 to 9 thousand feet).
I was mistaken the other day. This isn't the first time the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles has issued a blizzard warning for its forecast area. It's the second. But Thursday evening, the National Weather Service office in San Diego issued its first ever blizzard warning for the San Bernardino mountains northeast of the city.
The lowest elevations in southern California are seeing heavy rain. People have already been evacuated from portions of Ventura County as the rains are expected to cause flash floods, mudslides and debris flows.
Further north, snow fell on the East Bay hills near San Francisco for the first time in gawd knows how many years. Higher elevations in those hills could see even heavier snow tonight. Snow levels early today in the area were as low as 700 feet. Most areas in the Bay Area had rain, with embedded thunderstorms, hail and sleet.
Rare snow also fell at the famed Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. The castle is no more than 1,000 feet from the Pacific Ocean beach on a hill about half way between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Portland Oregon unexpectedly received 10.8 inches of snow Wednesday night, its second largest snowstorm on record. "Worst case scenario" forecasts ahead of that storm only called for two inches at most. The surprise storm hit during rush hour, and people were stranded on snow clogged roads around Portland for seven hours or more.
With clear skies and snow on the ground, Portland also reached a record low of 25 degrees Thursday morning.
Further south, KTVU reported an inch or two of snow in Woodside, California, near Alice's restaurant. That area gets snow on average perhaps once a decade.
Several record lows were set out west, including 11 below in Denver and 13 below in Boulder, Colorado. Rawlins, Wyoming dipped to 25 below, exceeding the previous record low by a full 10 degrees.
SOUTHEASTERN HEAT
While the West Coast shivered, it was summertime this week in the southeastern quarter of the United States.
While some cold records are being broken in the West, the Southeast onslaught of record heat is absolutely astounding.
 |
| Amazingly early blossoms this week in Washington DC. Photo via Twitter by Brad Herson |
I don't know where to begin with all the heat records broken, especially Wednesday and Thursday.
On Wednesday, Atlanta reached its all time high for the month of February at 81 degrees. Thursday, the low temperature in Atlanta was 69 degrees, the warmest low for any date in any February. That low temperature is about normal in Atlanta toward the end of June.
According to @extremetemps on Twitter , also known by his real name Maximiliano Herrera, this was "the harshest winter heat wave in history." He backs that up with a litany of all time new February record high temperatures:
During Thursday afternoon, most of North Carolina was in the low to mid 80s while one town in the state reached 87 degrees. Pensacola Florida reached 83 degrees for a new February high temperature.
The heat extended down into Cuba, where Santa Lucia reached 95. That exceeded both the record for the months of February and January. Havana, Cuba, was close behind with an all-time February high this week of 94 degrees.
The all-time heat records also expanded westward to Mississippi and Alabama. All time February record highs were set in these Mississippi cities. Columbia (88); Tupelo (87) Laurel (86); and in Alabama, Muscle Shoals (86) and Haleyville (82)
Nashville, Tennessee, also reached its all-time February high of 85 degrees. Previously, the earliest it had ever been 85 degrees in Nashville was on March 12, 1967.
Thursday, the temperature at Reagan National Airport in Washington DC zoomed up from 68 degrees to 81 degrees between 2 and 3 p.m Thursday.
Magnolias are already blooming in front of the White House. Green leaves popped open as far north as Philadelphia.
More ominously, peach and other crops are blooming in the Southeast, weeks prematurely. It will only take one powerful, but seasonable cold front in March to wipe out as much as $1 billion in crops.
This is a similar or even worse set up than 2017. That year, another warm February led to a winter storm in March that killed 85 percent of South Carolina's peach crop and 80 percent of Georgia's blueberry harvest. Total frost damage in March, 2017 was around $1 billion.
The region is set up for another agricultural disaster this year. Warm, pleasant weather is most definitely not a good thing.
ELSEWHERE AND OUTLOOK
Ice storms in the Midwest and southern Ontario this week cut power to as many as a million people.
The ice in Michigan caused the most widespread power outages in that state since a wild squall line of thunderstorms in August, 2021. At one point last night, more than a half million homes and businesses were without power due to the ice.
Parts of the upper Midwest are still digging out from 12 to 20 inches of windblown snow amid nasty wind chills.
A shopping mall parking garage in Wisconsin partly collapsed under the weight of snow and ice, but thankfully nobody was hurt.
Forecasters are now worried that the storm in California, as it moves east, could spawn a severe weather and tornado outbreak Sunday and Monday in the southern Plains and parts of the Southeast.
Although the nations' weather will become somewhat less extreme over the coming days, the same basic weather pattern should remain intact through at least the first week in March. That means more cold storminess in the West, and more summer like warmth in the Southeast.
For us here in Vermont, we're kind of in a sweet spot. For the next week or two, expect active, but not extreme weather. That means temperatures more or less near normal, and frequent precipitation, but nothing super heavy.
No comments:
Post a Comment