Houston Winter Storm

A winter storm hit Houston with sleet and freezing rain last night and this morning (Jan 23-24). Galveston received freezing rain. I-10 was closed at the Texas-Louisiana border.

Winter Update

This storm produced 7" of snow at Washington DC (National Zoo), 11.5" at Central Park, New York, 15.8" in New Jersey (Manalapan), and 18.3" in Massachusetts (Norwell):

4,400 flights were cancelled across the Northeast.

Houston is now under a winter storm watch; NAM shows rain changing to sleet tomorrow night, and GFS shows sleet and freezing rain.

A large part of the Central US is under wind chill advisories, and much of Florida is under a freeze warning as another piece of arctic air is on the way:

If the latest ECMWF holds, Florida may be even colder next week:

Washington Tornado Radar HD

A radar review of the Washington, IL tornado outbreak from November 17th, 2013:

Another North Atlantic Storm

Yesterday, a storm approaching the British Isles dropped to 958 mb:

An eye is visible at the top of the second water vapor image (from 18z):

Arctic Outbreak Update

The storm which hit the Midwest and Northeast with heavy snow and extreme cold on January 4-7 became a 938 mb storm just off the coast of Labrador yesterday (Januarty 8th):

This storm hit Benton Harbor, MI with 27" of snow (much of it lake effect) and Chicago O'Hare with an air temperature of -16 and a windchill of -42. On January 7th, Atlanta had a record low of 6, and New Orleans had a low of 24.

Brutal Winter of 2014

From December 31st - January 3rd, a storm produced 10.9" of snow at Chicago O'Hare, 16.7" at Libertyville, IL, and 23.8" at Boxford, MA. That storm dropped to 933 mb in the North Atlantic yesterday (January 4):

Another storm hit Chicago O'Hare with 9" more today:

The extreme cold seen coming in behind the storm has prompted wind chill warnings from the Northern Plains to the Southeast:

I have never seen such a large area covered by wind chill warnings before. Wind chills as low as -61 have been reported at Navajo, MT. Models have been consistently predicting wind chill values of at least -40 for the Chicago area for tomorrow morning. Hard freeze warnings are in effect for the Gulf Coast, and winter storm warnings are shown in pink.

It has been a cold winter so far. Mean temperature and temperature anomaly for December: