Full Unedited Video of Greensburg Tornado

Tomorrow is the ten year anniversary of the F5 Greensburg tornado. On the night of May 4, 2007 a tornado grew to a width of 1.7 miles and destroyed most of Greensburg, KS, where 11 people were killed. It was the first F5 in 8 years.
 

Texas Snow and Tornadoes

On April 29th, six tornadoes hit eastern Texas, including an EF4, an EF3, an EF2, and three EF0s. Four fatalities were confirmed.

The April 29th 12Z (7 AM CDT) sounding for Fort Worth showed that there was already 2,500 CAPE:

As dew points rose into the mid 70s in the afternoon east of Dallas, CAPE values exceeded 5,000 by 21Z (4PM CDT) according to NAM:

There was strong low level wind - greater than 40 knots at the 1 km level - and a clockwise turning wind field with height, producing sufficient shear and helicity for tornadoes.

On April 29 and 30, heavy snow fell across the High Plains as far south as the Texas Panhandle. Amarillo received 3" and Dalhart had 9". There were over 50,000 power outages in the Texas Panhandle caused by high winds. At Amarillo, winds gusted to 54 mph and visibility dropped to 1/2 mile.

Garden City, KS had blizzard conditions on the 30th and 11" of snow, causing three structures to collapse. 14" fell in the southwest corner of Kansas at Elkhart. One farmer near Sublette estimated that he had lost 80% of his crop. At Wallace in northwest Kansas, 28" of snow fell, with drifts of 8-10 feet. 33" fell at Lander, WY and 39" fell at San Isabel, CO.

Flooding has killed 7 in Arkansas and 3 in Missouri. In southern Missouri, the town of Houston received 11.15" of rain.

Minimum Maintenance Road

Yesterday when we were storm chasing in southeastern Nebraska, we came across a "minimum maintenance road". We decided to take a different route.

Chicago's Winter

It's been a weird winter for Chicago. December had 17.7" of snow - all of which fell before the 18th. The 19th had low temperature of -13. But the day after Christmas had a high 54. Only 0.6" of snow fell in January. February had just a trace. The normal for January and February combined is 19.9". In mid-February, there were six days in a row with a high temp in the 66 - 70 range. Now on March 14th, Chicago just received 7.5" of snow. December had 9.5" above normal snowfall, January was 10.2" below normal, February was 9.1" below normal, and March will be 2.2" above normal even if there isn't any more snow for the rest of the month.