Dangerous Tropical Cyclone Mahasen is gathering strength over the Indian Ocean's Bay of Bengal, and is a potential major threat to Bangladesh and Myanmar. The 11 am EDT Saturday advisory from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center put Mahasen's top sustained winds at 55 mph, with a motion northwest at 19 mph into the center of the Bay of Bengal. Satellite loops show that Mahasen has a large area of intense thunderstorms with very cold cloud tops that reach high into the a...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog...">Read More</a>
The remarkable storm that brought record-breaking May snows and cold to the Midwest last week continues to spin over the Southeast U.S. The storm is unleashing flooding rains, bringing a case of "Weather Whiplash" to Georgia: flooding where extreme drought had existed just a few months ago. The storm formed when a loop in the jet stream of extreme amplitude got cut off from the main flow of the jet over the weekend, forming a "cutoff low" that is now slowly spinnin...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog...">Read More</a>
A highly unusual jet stream pattern is bringing a bizarre combination of heavy May snows, flooding, extreme fire danger, and well below average severe thunderstorm activity to the U.S. A strong "blocking" high pressure system has set up over Greenland, blocking the normal west-to-east progression of weather systems. A truly unusual situation has developed where the blocking high has forced a low pressure system near Greenland to move southwestwards to a point just o...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog...">Read More</a>
A rare and historic May snowstorm continues to pelt Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin with snowfall amounts unprecedented in the historical record for the month of May. Winter Storm Achilles has brought 15.5" of snow to Owatonna, Minnesota, about 50 miles south of Minneapolis. This is (unofficially) the largest May snowstorm in state history, surpassing the 3-day total of a 15" snowstorm at Sandy Lake Dam/Libby. The 14.7" of snow that has fallen at Baldwin, Wisconsin i...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog...">Read More</a>
March 2013 was the globe's 10th warmest March since records began in 1880, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). NASA rated it the 9th warmest March on record. The year-to-date period of January - March has been the 8th warmest such period on record. March 2013 global land temperatures were the 11th warmest on record, and global ocean temperatures were the 9th warmest on record. March 2013 was the 337th consecutive month with global temperatures ...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog...">Read More</a>
It seems like just a few months ago barges were scraping bottom on the Mississippi River, and the Army Corps of Engineers was blowing up rocks on the bottom of the river to allow shipping to continue. Wait, it was just a few months ago--less than four months ago! Water levels on the Mississippi River at St. Louis bottomed out at -4.57' on January 1 of 2013, the 9th lowest water level since record keeping began in 1861, and just 1.6' above the all-time low-water reco...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog...">Read More</a>