Record January warmth and moisture fueling April-like severe weather

[phantom power]

An April-like severe weather outbreak accompanied by record warmth and atmospheric moisture continues today over the Southeast U.S., where a powerful cold front is creating severe thunderstorms, damaging winds, and tornadoes over the Southeast. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center logged four preliminary reports of tornadoes along with 264 reports of damaging winds on Tuesday, and another 71 reports of damaging winds between 7 am and 12 pm EST so far this Wednesday. A powerful tornado hit Adairsville, Georgia at 11:19 am EST this morning, and there are reports of major structural damage in the downtown district, with cars overturned (see eyewitness video here, with swear words.) The spring-like surge of warm air accompanying the severe weather outbreak has broken numerous daily high temperature records. The most notable heat record set Tuesday was the 91°F high in Corpus Christi, Texas, which tied their record for all-time warmest January temperature, set on January 30, 1971. The 62°F measured at Rockford, Illinois on Tuesday was just 1° shy of that city's all-time January temperature record. Tornado watches are posted for a wide swath of the Southeast today, from Alabama to Virginia, and numerous tornado warnings have been issued this morning. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has placed most of the Southeast in their "Slight Risk" region for severe weather on Wednesday, a step down from the "Moderate Risk" potential issued on Tuesday for the Midwest.

Accompanying the exceptional January warmth yesterday were record levels of January moisture, as a flow of unusually moist air rode northwards from the Gulf of Mexico, where water temperatures were about 0.5°F above average. Meteorologists use a term called "precipitable water" to discuss how much water vapor is in the atmosphere. Precipitable water is defined as how much rain would fall on the ground if one took a vertical slice of the atmosphere above a given location and condensed all the water vapor into rain. Precipitable water levels tend to be highest in the summer, since warm air holds more waver vapor, and can exceed two inches in the Midwest U.S. In winter, though, it is rare to see precipitable water values higher than one inch. However, Tuesday night, precipitable water was well over an inch well into Canada, and two upper air stations--Detroit, MI and Lincoln IL--set all-time records for January moisture. From the 00Z Wednesday January 30 upper air balloon soundings taken at the 73 radiosonde stations in the contiguous U.S., we observed these precipitable water values for January:

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2339

[XemaSab]

1. I was just ruminating that the weather has been really pretty here most of the month

68 and sunny today.

[Nihil]

2. Xemasab is a ruminant?

Ah ... did I say that out loud? ...

[XemaSab]

3. .

[Nihil]

4. .