Monthly Archives: December 2011

The U.S. has been experiencing a lack of weather for the past couple of weeks. Of course, that’s not scientifically true — there’s always weather: good weather, fair weather, bad weather, severe weather, changing weather, subjective weather. By “lack of weather” I mean that, for most of the country, high pressure has been in control with a noticeable lack of — well, bad weather.

The current storm track situation — the past couple of weeks, this week and, to a large degree, next week — is making skiers across the country quite frustrated. It’s making those running ski resorts quite frustrated, too. Why? Both fall and early winter have been under the influence of La Niña and a positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Sometimes you think it’s your imagination (“Is it my imagination, or have there been a lot of plane crashes recently?”), but that’s not the case this time. The crashes are all too real, and all too recent — and, it would seem, the crashes are weather-related.

It’s a clash of air masses on the gridiron of the U.S. today as a major snowstorm impacts the Rockies and severe weather threatens the Deep South. A quick-moving storm system will continue to bring snowfall to the central and southern Rocky Mountain states today and tomorrow.  Snowfall will come to an end from north [...]

In the last few days leading up to Christmas I’m sure Santa’s hard at work. He’s making a list, and checking it twice; gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. Is Santa Claus coming to your town? Well I sure hope he’s coming to mine, but someone better tell him I’ll be in Alabama and [...]

Interesting concept, yes? Maybe, way up north at Santa’s workshop, Santa needs a sure-fire method of knowing when it’s time to deliver the toys. You know, in case his watch runs down or the electricity fails or the elves hide the calendar. He certainly can’t use falling leaves or the tides. Would the winter solstice, [...]

One year from today, on 21 December, 2012, humanity may or may not cease to exist depending on your interpretation of the Mayan calendar.  Actually, since almost none of us have ever seen the calendar itself and considering that we wouldn’t understand what it says if we did see it, what’s more accurately happened is [...]

Residents of a low-rise office building on Houston’s southeast side got a frightening surprise from a nasty jolt on Friday morning and many thought it was an earthquake or that maybe a sinkhole was about to swallow them up.  Turns out it was neither.  A retaining bolt on one of the building’s main support columns [...]

It’s that time of year when everyone’s dreaming of a white Christmas but for those living across the Southern Rockies and Central/Southern Plains it looks like their wish will come true a bit earlier this year. A strong storm system lifting from the Desert Southwest into the Southern Plains today will bring moderate to heavy [...]

This morning we posted the weather forecast for Christmas Day and now we’ll follow up with an overall look at the contiguous U.S. through about the beginning of February. (Again, kudos to ImpactWeather StormWatch team manager Fred Schmude for producing this forecast.)  After that?  Current data suggests an increase in the amount of much colder [...]