Whatever, the weather... I'm there.

Boy, have I been slacking from the Sky Watch wonderfulness!!! I guess with Christmas and New Year's, I am excused, but I have missed it and all my SWF friends, so that means, it's time to swing back into action... Please visit Klaus, Sandy, Ivar, Wren, Louise and Fishing Guy's SKY WATCH BLOG to participate in Sky Watch Fridays, which is WELL WORTH YOUR WHILE!! Thanks to Dot, the mother of this fabulous blogging event, and to the "retired" Tom (miss you), who brought it to full bloom. I, personally, love visiting the skies all over the world!!! You should definitely come fly with us! Today, I chose to post a picture of this morning's sky to go along with my weather discussion today. The United States has a lot going on weatherwise, so I figured I would give a little insight. This picture of the water tower (yet another of my infamous water tower) with the stream of cirrus clouds rolling by...

Cirrus
(abbrev. CI) High-level clouds (16,000 feet or higher), composed of ice crystals and appearing in the form of white, delicate filaments or white or mostly white patches or narrow bands. Cirrus clouds typically have a fibrous or hairlike appearance, and often are semi-transparent. Thunderstorm anvils are a form of cirrus cloud, but most cirrus clouds are not associated with thunderstorms.
~source

I love cirrus clouds because, it's in them that you will see sun dogs, which just thrill me to pieces. These cirrus clouds, however, didn't reveal parheleons (sun dogs), but they are the consequence of the cold front that tore it's way through the southeast (less impressively down in my neck of the woods, where it quickly moved across as merely a baby squall line) mostly impacting north Alabama and central and northern Georgia, then eastern North Carolina yesterday. OK, so this crazy, super fast moving cold front pushes into the south, with its strong cyclonic flow generating a windy squally mess, even dropping in a couple of tornado reports. "Cold" on the heels (what? I can't say hot on the heels, it wasn't hot at all...) of this quick burst of rain down here, yet drought quenching drencher up in the areas that really needed it, the wind arrived in a burst of cold air that quickly laid to rest the 80 degree temps we've all been enjoying down this way. It was another one of those super fast systems though that sort of went bam bam bam with its sequence of weather.







Now, that system has moved up north, dropping snow on the folks in New England and around that area... while moving over the not-yet-frozen lakes, it's causing some lake effect snow (better them than me)... In Colorado, the dry air and some HIGH winds (gusts over 100mph!!!) fueled some destructive wildfires, while over in Washington state, many of the rivers there are in major flood stage, threatening to impose themselves on nearby homes. CRAZY, CRAZY WEATHER!

Now, if all that hasn't been bizarre enough... an arctic clipper system will be moving into the northeast over the weekend, which will carry with it some of the COLDEST temps of the season (I know, I keep saying that, but each time it gets worse... eek!), dropping some of those northern states (watch out my dear Wisconsin and UP friends) down to temperatures that MAX out at 0 degrees (that's not a typo, folks) by Monday and Tuesday. I'm sorry, but I can't even think about a temperature of 0 degrees, but I certainly can't imagine that as the high for the day. YUCK! As that pushes in though, cold temps will feed into the south, pushing us down into freezing (low temps), but enough to counteract all the blooming we've got going down here, so we might be dealing with some peach crop destruction... sad. The peach trees thought it was time... can't blame them with this spring-like weather we've been experiencing... so much for that though. Well, that's the US weather story, in a nutshell.

Have a great day!
~Dewdrop