A big blast of cold air is is continuing to dive nto the High Plains , setting up a fairly chilly end to the week between the Rockies and the Mississippi. We got that that kicked off with this:

The Amarillo WFO would later report 3″ of accumulation, which is a considerable total for west Texas at any time of year, but particularly in October. The snow fell on the back end of an area of low pressure that also swept a very active line of storms as far south as Brownsville, which lead to significantly cooler temperatures in the Lone Star State.

The sharp upper level trough that is serving as a host to this system will also inform as to where the feature will progress. It’s sliding back north in the Mississippi Delta right now, abnd will continue to the Great Lakes. The jet is going to regenerate in place, and at least for the next week, temperatures will be chilly in the Plains and Mississippi Delta, save for a brief warm up tomorrow afternoon.

This standing trough will mean a chilly end to the month east of the Rockies, and a Halloween that requires all the princesses and Iron Men to be bundled up, but it has other insidious consequences. The stalled trough has also led to a strong area of high pressure over the Great Basin, which has fueled the dangerous Santa Ana winds that are fanning the flames around Los Angeles this month.

All that because of snow in Texas. Yeesh.

Check out this video, perhaps one of the scariest tornado captures I’ve seen.

A worst case scenario is a large tornado in a populated area, and it is compounded when it moves through at night. This super cell moved through the north Dallas suburbs in a coming together of some of the worst possible circumstances.

It could have been significantly worse though. The storm touched down just 15 miles away from AT&T Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys were playing the Philadelphia Eagles in front of 75,000 people. In fact, despite the strength of the tornado (I’m guessing it will be at least an EF-3), and it’s long track, there were no reports of fatalities, and only 3 serious injuries.

The NWS hasn’t plotted the track anywhere yet, pending storm surveys, but in real time, the Google Maps traffic report was a good proxy for estimating the storm track:

The storm impacted many commercial areas, wrecking, in what I have seen so far, a Home Depot, a Land Cruiser dealership, and the home of the Dallas Stars’ Tyler Seguin.

The damage reports will continue to roll in, and they will likely continue to provide stark imagery. Keep an eye on the NWS Fort Worth office Twitter feed for updates on the storm surveys. As the picture of damage becomes clearer, we will likely appreciate more how lucky we were that it wasn’t worse.

What would eventually become Tropical Storm Nestor formed late in the week, and dissipated shortly thereafter. It made landfall with a maximum sustained wind speed of 50mph. There was a storm in New England that had stronger winds than that.

Still, Nestor did provide his fair share of problems. When the center of Nestor arrived, it had been preceded by an off center, heavy batch of rain. Nestor is still a little off kilter. Note that his center in this radar image is actually around Tallahasee.

That’s a lot of rain, but certainly by looking at it, you wouldn’t say that it looks like a tropical storm, would you?

The primary impact the storm had, aside from the typical rain that comes with tropical storms, was a bout of tornadoes east of Tampa Bay. You can see where they ended up on the SPC storm reports.

There haven’t been the severe reports today out of the storm, and now that Nestor is on shore, he will continue to fall apart and get shoved back off shore.

Nestor has been pretty unremarkable storm, particularly when taken in contrast to some of the tough storms in recent years and months, but one needs only to look at the video below to understand that tropical features should always be given some respect.

another autumn, another raging inferno in California. The drought ravaged state is once again in the crosshairs — Hold on, what’s that? California isn’t classified as being in a drought any longer?

The Saddle Ridge Fire is burning on the northern edge of the San Fernando Valley, safely ensconced in the “None” range of the drought monitory, as of October 10th. I assure you, a drought didn’t develop in the last few days, either. California had a very wet spring, which has allayed the drought in the area, including the San Fernando Valley.

Wildfires are a natural part of the rebirth of the southern California wilderness. It’s a very dry climate, and even if they are receiving the typical amount of precipitation, and this time of year usually features a few fires, aided by hot, brisk winds out of the Mojave, the so called Santa Ana’s. The Saddle Ridge Fre is dangerous, but it is not atypical.

This is making headlines simply because of the location. With populations growing, particularly on the west coast, these regular occurrences suddenly take on an even more menacing turn, as they start near populated areas with greater frequency, and ravage those same areas that may have been many miles away just a decade or two ago.

California is home to a host of potential disasters, and as the population continues to grow and sprawl, they become more and more likely to become catastrophes.