March was a heck of a month. May has a long history as one of the most tornado rich months of the year, but this month served as a reminder that tornado season starts as early as March. Deadly Twisters from Mississippi in the south to Illinois in the north were the major headline, but relentless blizzards and continued cold and flooding in the northern and western US were also factors in a wild month. Victoria-Weather tamed that beast, though, and we claimed the top forecasting month for March.
What was presently evaluated to be an EF-4 tornado swept through western Mississippi on Friday evening, striking Rolling Fork and Silver City. The cell continued and another tornado struck near Winona at an EF-3 rating. In total, these tornadoes were responsible for the deaths of at least 20, most of whom were from Rolling Fork.
The Jackson, Mississippi NWS office is among the best in the country, in my pinion, and they were well ahead of this storm. There was a tornado emergency issued for Rolling Fork and Silver City before the storm struck, with ample advanced warning. Rolling Fork lies well removed from other large population centers, in an impoverished part of Mississippi, and the ability for the message to be disseminated, and the swiftness of emergency response may be factors in the elevated death toll.
Undoubtedly, the structural integrity of many of the building in Rolling Fork, Silver City and Winona were factors, and the strength of the tornadoes themselves absolutely cannot be discounted. This storm, like so many before it, however, underscore the systemic issues that can increase the lethality of a system, and emphasize how important it is to have a plan for severe weather before it is on your doorstep.
With that in mind, there is certainly more rough weather on the horizon as we get deeper into springtime. The SPC is already monitoring Friday the 31st for a significant severe weather outbreak. They highlight a large tract of the country straddling the Mississippi, and I would, at this early stage, be particularly interested to see how the situation evolves around the Bootheel of Missouri.
The storm is going to be reflective of so many that have struck this winter. A deep diving trough will initiate rapid cyclonic development in the southern Plains, lifting north towards the western Great Lakes. Vorticity within the feature will lead to a tornado threat within the northern part of the storm, though strong wind and some hail are going to be an issue as well.
If you are in line for this severe weather, it’s time to have a plan. Even if this storm might leave you unaccosted, with severe weather season coming for the country, it’s a good idea for all of us to start considering what we will do in the event of a life threatening situation.
Well, that didn’t take long. The new outlets we cycle in are not generally that successful. I’m not sure Weathernation has ever won. Clime, however, won in only their second month on the job. After an auspicious start to the year, they have steadily improved and were able to take the second title of the year, and so far, have the highest individual forecast total of all of our outlets.
There is a healthy respect for hurricanes, which is continually reinforced by some vicious storms over the past few years. National Hurricane Center forecasts lead to drastic action, and with the verification of the storms coming ashore and doing incomprehensible damage, even the most skeptical citizens are driven to take precautions when a hurricane looms.
Severe weather has garnered a fair bit of respect as well, and we are starting to see the dawning of this year’s severe season. We usually start with some storms in the lower Mississippi Valley. An outbreak in the state of Mississippi in January or February is practically a rite of passage at this point, and we’ve had a couple of those already. This week, we’ve also seen strong storms in the traditional tornado alley of Oklahoma and Kansas.
Severe weather gains the respect, and the response and preparation of people directly impacted by severe season. Of course, tornadoes are very isolated incidents, and they don’t touch every part of the area impacted by the more general thunderstorm. Even in the example of the recent stormy weather, Norman, Oklahoma was struck by a tornado. Norman is famously the home to the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the Storm Prediction Center, and the twister passed about half a mile from their shared facility, and damage was felt in local neighborhoods. Otherwise, however, the Oklahoma City metro was left unperturbed.
By tornadoes, it should be noted. The storm that swept through the region was contributed by a very strong cold front, which caused dust storms through western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. Still, even with the strong storms, it’s usually the tornadoes that capture the imagination of the conscientious weather watcher.
Snow storms are something of a blend between the two features of a hurricane and severe storms. It comes from broad, well anticipated systems, but the impacts are felt differently from mile to mile. Instead of respected and anticipated, snow storm forecasting is almost always derided immediately, and sometimes amid the storm, especially in locations that see their share of severe winter weather.
Even as snow was ongoing in the Twin Cities, a lot of stalwarts complained that the snow was not as advertised. In truth, nobody was reading the fine print on the advertisements, because things were proceeding exactly as planned. There was about half a foot of snow that fell on Tuesday night, and then another 10-15 inches fell overnight Wednesday to Thursday. Originally, there were more dire forecasts, but outlets were pretty well in line on the total snow, a foot to 18″ in the metro (it was up to 20 in Apple Valley in the south suburbs), and the break in the middle was noted by every forecast people took the time to read.
Let me tell you, 18″ of snow, even just a foot of snow, is plenty of snow. It tied up the morning commute, and justifiably closed schools across the region. This storm was bruising winter weather maker, shutting down roads in South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota, and ushering in subzero temperatures on the back of 40mph winds, even if it wasn’t as big a storm as some people might have wanted.
This pattern has also been strong enough to bring about the first significant snowfall of the season to the I-95 corridor. Of course, the snow there was fairly light, otherwise it probably would have led local newscasts. What was more significant was that it was the first real snow, and March starts tomorrow. The warm weather will persist in the southeast, but a cooler pattern is forecast to continue as we roll into March.
Nowhere will it be unseasnably colder than on the West Coast, where southern California, notably the highlands around Los Angeles, received substantial snowfall at the end of February, accumulating in spots to over a foot. The force of the features coming onshore, unchecked by topography allowed the system to bring full force of wind ot the region as well, with blizzard warnings blanketing much of the Golden State.
The graphic at the top of the screen shows the snowfall coverage across the country, with an emphasis on the snow that has battered the United States to end the shortest month of the year. The As we enter March, of course, the emphasis will continue to focus on severe storms. They again are traversing the southern Plains tonight, with tornado warnings in the Dallas area. With cold in the west and warmth in the southeast only becoming magnified in the spring, expect more wild weather to continue.
There is a huge, multiphase storm moving across the country. Essentially, only areas from the Mid Atlantic to Florida are going to be spared. There will be blizzard conditions in the north, severe storms through the middle of the country, and even snow squalls in the 4 Corners. It is brutal, and it’s continuing to go down hill. I am telling you this so you can look to the National Weather Service, who had the best start to the forecasting year, and are your January forecasters of the month.
Areas of low pressure rotate counter-clockwise, dragging air around them in such a pattern. When all things are equal, in the Northern Hemisphere, warm air rises from the south on the eastern flank of a low, and cold air sinks south on the western flank. There are some undulations, notably with topography and the presence of large bodies of water that modify this scenario in some locations, but more or less, that is how it works.
The most nefarious of our weather comes as the cold air tries to intersect with that warm air, all while the atmosphere is trying to rotate. There are updrafts caused by the cold digging in, latent buoyancy of the warmer air, and the twistiness of the wind pattern. This can mean rain, thunderstorms or even heavy snow. This is why the northern Plains can get wicked blizzards, and the Southern Plains and increasingly the lower Mississippi Valley are prone to strong thunderstorms and tornadoes.
We’ve already seen a busy start to February, with severe weather afflicting the Lower Mississippi Valley, and copious snows falling from Kansas to Iowa, though the southern Great Lakes. Temperatures, as you might imagine, have been fairly warm in the eastern US, with an unusual chill out west. Before these past few days, the cold was aided in part by Pacific systems coming ashore, bringing clouds and rain. Now, it’s simply a colder air mass.
Knowing that it is the clash in air mass that fuels stronger weather, and particularly when the clash is between western cold and southeastern warmth, the long term out look suggests action to come.
Whether in response to persistent lee troughing in the High Plains, or a result of a static jet pattern, this temperature trend for the end of the month and beginning of March indicates some busy times, both for tornado chasers centered in the middle of the country, and snow plows in the Upper Mississippi Valley.
In the Upper Midwest, the story of the winter has been the snow. Several rounds of accumulating snow have buffeted the Twin Cities, but temperatures have always rebounded, because the responsible storms are bringing moisture from the Gulf, rather than cold air from the north. That is changing with a series of Clippers that moved through last weekend.
Temperatures in Minnesota ahead of the cool down were in the 30s and seasonably pleasant, but they are going downhill, and the low temperatures will reach all the way to Chicago and the western Great Lakes by Tuesday morning. This was the forecast for Tuesday morning in the Upper Midwest.
That cold has stuck around, and while it was chilly Tuesday, a reinforcing shot of the cold air came this morning, and it was as cold as -35 in International Falls, Minnesota. Unlike the initial rounds, this cold air is pressing further east, and while the Twin Cities and Minnesota are warming this weekend, it’s going to be dangerously cold in New England.
And unlike the cold in the Upper Midwest, there is a deep area of low pressure northeast of the Canadian Maritimes, bringing a brisk northeast wind, not only reinforcing the cold air, but introducing significant wind chill. Boston could see a wind chill of -30 in the early hours.
Great news, though. While this cold, the coldest shot of the winter in a lot of places, and in parts of New England the coldest in a decade, is brutal, it’s reign is at an end. Next week is forecast to be much warmer than normal for many locations in the chill this week.
It is the beginning of the year, and already we have had our first notable severe weather outbreak. With the strong storms pounding the west, it was only a matter of time before the cold air wrought havoc when making contact with the more sultry air east of the Rockies.
Tornadoes left a path of damage in Alabama and Georgia over the weekend, including a tornado that led to the deaths of at least 6 west of Montgomery. The strong areas of low pressure have drawn unstable air as north as Iowa, where the first January tornado was reported there since 1986. Now, a strong storm is expected to leave a foot of snow in the northern High Plains.
It will be the tornado that struck Selma, Alabama that will be remembered the most out of this town, striking a town so closely associated with the Civil Rights Movement on the weekend that celebrates one its greatest champions, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The tornado went through the heart of the city, just north of the down town area and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, damaging homes, churches and businesses throughout the city. StormChasingVideo provides a look at the city and nearby Autauga in the aftermath of the tornado.
As long as cold air resides in the west, feeding into much warmer air east of the Rockies, there will be a threat that storm systems could amplify quickly and dangerously. The snow storm in the Dakotas and Nebraska today will ultimately lead to an additional threat for severe weather in the Mississippi Valley later the is week. The long term outlook, for a cold wet west indicates an active winter in the south as well.
Strictly speaking, this is our first forecast of 2023! Finally! We’re going to cover a road trip through the Southeast, which will cover merely one day, but it will be a full 8+hour day that entails 522 miles. We will pace ourselves at about 63mph, slowed by some back roads and certainly by Atlanta.
Tallahassee, Florida
It’s pretty quiet in the southeastern US right now, and that might lead intended travelers to think they have a good shot at getting quickly out of town and on the road. Not so fast. Surface low pressure in the Panhandle region will shift into the Lower Mississippi Valley overnight and really absorb a lot of the moisture. What is a non story tonight will quickly become active, bringing rain to Morristown by lunch time. The threat for wet weather will start on the drive, likely northwest of Atlanta, and between Marietta and Calhoun, the brunt of the cold front will arrive, with thunderstorms and wind likely. North of the boundary, it will be cooler, but still windy and a little rainy. This can get dicey in the undulations of eastern Tennessee, so be careful northeast from Chattanooga on slick roads. After a long, stormy day… Morristown!
There are phrases that have been around the meteorological lexicon for years, and then get adopted into the media, and become part of what many find to be a sensationalized parlance. The polar vortex stands out to me, as does the bomb cyclone. These are real, definable things that suddenly take on a more ominous tone because they are uttered on the news regularly.
Right now, we are hearing about the “Atmospheric River”. Allow me to show you what that result of the atmospheric river is on satellite. It’s unusual, I think, to look at satellite over the north Pacific, because it isn’t somewhere we usually look at, and the perspective is a tad wonky, but here it is.
And that, boxed in red, is an area of low pressure, showing off the typical comma shaped cold front with a little warm front evidenced as angling towards San Francisco Bay. It’s not particularly unusual, but the discussion surrounding this feature is probably amplified by the persistent drought, which has rendered rainmakers rare over the last several years, and ongoing concerns over climate change flaring anxiety over every weather phenomenon.
The jet, in response to oceanic circulations, tends to rise and form a ridge at the California Coast, leading to the semi permanent Gulf of Alaska low (which feeds moisture into British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest with regularity) and a semi permanent area of surface high pressure west of the Baja Peninsula. In the winter, the jet is more apt to dig a little bit further south, because the cold California coastal waters don’t cause the atmosphere to differ as extensively as happens in the summer, and that coastal ridge can break down.
So the jet sinks south, and a regular old area of low pressure moves into California. It is coming off the ocean, so it will be laden with moisture, and it is interacting with the terrain, so it will dump a lot of precipitation, especially in the Sierras. This will do a lot of work in refilling dried reservoirs as the snow melts in the spring, and is how California usually maintains a sustainable quality of life. The southern source of the jet has led, in the past, to some “atmospheric rivers” to be dubbed “the Pineapple Express”.
All they are, really, is a more southerly jet that brings consequential weather to the West Coast. he phenomenon isn’t strange, but the location is, made a little bit more unusual by the recent climatology.
