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stargazer wrote:Speaking of warmth (though friends from southern climes may beg to differ), this week is unseasonably warm, with 5 days over 50F/10C expected.

It's all relative. We have also been unseasonably warm for quite some time. Several highs of upper 60Fs to mid 70Fs (about 20C). We're normally 20F-30F cooler than this. In fact, my Facebook memories popped up a story from a few years back of the snow being too deep for my dog Fiona to enjoy, and that's saying something.
These high temps are supposed to last through Thursday, and then it's going to drop off to something closer to normal for this time of year, but then I think it's going to warm back up again. This is actually bad for the local crops and fruit bearing trees. I do enjoy having the house opened up though.

After 5 straight days of record highs (yesterday was an incredible 61F/16C; I wanted to have a campfire but all the local parks are still closed for the winter), I'm in the sweet spot for this weekend's blizzard, which will be the biggest 2-day storm in years if forecasts hold.

Snow may exceed 18 inches/460mm by Saturday morning, and winds may exceed 50mph/80kph. Out here on the prairie there isn't a lot to stop the wind so it's nearly certain that Interstate 90 will close across Minnesota into South Dakota (it runs east-west so those north winds blow snow right across it).

Gotta love it.

Our cold arrived here yesterday. I'll be curious to see how the plants take it. After several days of extremely nice, spring-like weather, it dropped to 19F overnight last night. That'll shut down a lot of the early flowering trees that we've seen around. But thankfully I haven't seen very many fruit trees budding out, so hopefully we'll be ok.
After today our temps are supposed to climb back up again, but only into the mid-50Fs, not the 70Fs and almost 80Fs that we had last week.

Meteorological spring began here with some more snow, but not much to speak of compare to the pile we got last week.

The national news last night had a weather segment that noted that Seattle has received more snow this winter than Minneapolis, which I find rather hard to believe. Minneapolis is way behind, but it has missed the last two big storms that hit southern Minnesota (dropping over 30 inches), but it has still received around 30 inches this season.

The days are rapidly increasing in length now and we return to daylight saving time next weekend (March 12).

So how much snow HAS Seattle received this winter? I think we got about 1/4" here.

It is now unseasonably warm and dry here again. But with the addition of wind, we have fire warnings going on.

I live in Western New York State, and we had temps in the 60's (F) this past week... and last night it got into the teens and dumped a couple inches of snow! It's supposed to get back up to the 60's again next week. Thankfully my phone told me that the drive to work would take longer than usual, so I gave myself extra time. Good thing I did!

Your weather sounds like ours, Sonny...if you don't like it, wait 5 minutes.

fantasia, further research indicated that the Seattle/Minneapolis snow comparison was a little exaggerated. Counting only January and February, Seattle did receive a bit more, but only because Minneapolis received a mere 0.3 inches all February - extremely unusual. If you add December as well then Minneapolis is way out in front.

We had some weather excitement yesterday. An approaching front brought in high winds (exceeding 50mph/80kph), driving temperatures to a record-shattering 69F/21C for the day. All that snow melted. Then the front brought more wind, nickel-sized hail, and possible tornadoes (which, if confirmed, would be the earliest on record for the state). The closest tornado to me was less than 10 miles away, hitting the small town of Clarks Grove in southern Minnesota; the other was north of the Twin Cities. Lots of damage but no reports of serious injury at this time. Highs the rest of this week will be much more seasonal, around 35F/2C.

Those tornadoes were confirmed to be EF-1.

But winter isn't over yet. Temperatures in northern Minnesota are around 0F/-17C and will only get colder overnight. Lows here in the southern part of the state will be in single digits F/-15C with wind chills below 0F. An Alberta Clipper is on its way and may provide up to 6 inches/150mm this weekend.

Wednesday we had terribly strong winds in our city... up to 80 miles per hour!!!!! They knocked over trees and ripped off siding and shingles and broke power line poles. The hotel where I work was out of power from 2PM Wednesday to after 11PM Friday night! Over 100,000 power customers had no electricity, and that number is still around 80,000. The phone has been ringing off the hook with people looking for a place to stay!

Even here in the extremely windy midwest, we rarely see 80mph. Maybe once every five years?
All those beautiful trees you have up there.
I hope you all get your electricity back soon. Do you have power at your house Sonny?

We've had unbelievably dry weather and pretty awful fires. We originally had 90% chance of rain today, and then 60%, and then 30%, and now... I guess there's still 40% chance of rain and snow this afternoon. Moved back about twelve hours so we'll see. We soooo need the moisture.

I've seen some coverage of the Kansas fires and evacuations. Hopefully you'll get some precip soon.

Last Sunday, the Twin Cities saw about 4 inches (100mm) of snow. It made a mess of the highways; a half-hour trip across town took several hours due to all the accidents. It was the snowiest day in 3 months in this extremely snow-starved winter (now that's embarrassing! )

Southern Minnesota, on the other hand, saw up to 10 inches (255mm) from the same storm, and there's been no shortage of snow in this part of the state, with many locations already exceeding the average total snowfall for the winter with more than 2 months left in the possible snow season.

After a long, dry winter that wasn't really winter, we've finally had some storms rolling through. We've had quite a bit of rain and even some minor flooding this past week. I'm quite grateful for the rain, we need it! Several more days with predicted storms coming up this week.

Fantasia, I'm glad that your dry spell seems to be easing. The rain seems to be well-timed, and I hope it is adequate for your needs. We have had a rather dry and overly hot summer in both January and February but March, at the turning of the seasons, was one of the wettest on record. It is only now that it is beginning to feel like autumn.

Stargazer, I love the irony in your avatar. Our very own Sunshine State, Queensland, seems to be underwater. Australia's eastern coastline from Bowen to Rockhampton on the Tropic of Capricorn, from the impact of Cyclone Debbie has been affected by heavy flooding. Brisbane and the Gold Coast, as well as south of the Queensland/New South Wales border are little better off in the wake of other, associated weather systems. A king tide hasn't helped. The damage bill is astronomically high for housing and the damage to crops has been heartbreaking. And there have been quite a few fatalities as well as injuries.

How did you fare in your hurricane season last year?

I don't recall the States having much of a hurricane season at all. Certainly nothing major, but I also don't live on the coast, so I'm almost never affected. Sometimes a hurricane that comes into the Gulf of Mexico makes it up to where we are, but if it does, we just get a day or two of heavy rain.

Speaking of rain, we had an odd storm system roll through Kansas yesterday. In the southwest, it was snowing. In the southeast, they had severe storms. Here, we had lightning, thunder, and rain, but the thunder sounded muffled, kind of like a thunder-snow. It was pretty cool here, in the mid 40Fs, so I was wondering if maybe it was snowing up in the atmosphere and it was technically thunder-snow. Very odd.

I'll echo fantasia's thoughts on the Atlantic hurricane season. Here, near the center of North America, the only hurricane effects might be heavy rain from storms moving over the continent (wagga, Florida is the Sunshine State here, though my avatar pokes fun at the fact that if it's clear here in winter, the temperatures are usually well below zero).

But not this upcoming weekend, when temps should be above average, possibly pushing 70F/21C with a chance of thunderstorms.

Most of New Zealand has been suffering from heavy rain, some flooding, etc etc, from the tail end of Cyclone Debbie which had hit the east coast of Australia a few days ago. It's been wet, one whole small town of 2000 people was evacuated when the river stopbank failed, and the weather here in Auckland has gone from warm and humid to cooler and a mix of sun/rain.
I had been slowly adjusting to the warmth up here compared to my home city in the south where we were already having quite cold days sometimes.