I am currently blogging from Miamisburg, Ohio! Aside from it being a bit chilly, skies are partly sunny and the hotel where I am staying has a basketball goal set up out front! Yesterday part of the NC State Pep Band and Cheerleading squad flew up to Dayton, Ohio with the NC State Men's Basketball team for a play-in game against Xavier for the No. 12 seed in the Big Dance! This is the third year in a row for the third year Coach Mark Gottfried to make the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament and State fans and students are pleasantly surprised at how one of the youngest teams in the Nation far exceeded expectations this year. Not only is the Men's team dancing, but the NC State Women's Basketball Team under first year head coach Wes Moore was given the No. 5 seed in the West and will be traveling to Los Angeles later this week to face the 12 seeded BYU basketball team. Congratulations to both teams!!
The next winter system to move through is the Midwest Clipper. Yesterday Meteorologists were watching a low pressure system moving over the Rocky Mountains. This clipper-like system is currently moving through the northern Midwest and places in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota could see up to one foot of snow. The system (not yet able to define it a clipper because it doesn't have all the characteristics of a clipper) will be moving eastward and southward over the next few days mainly affecting the the Great Lakes area and the northern portion of the eastern seaboard.
Well, the precipitation has moved out but the dangers are not over yet in Raleigh. Closings are prominent across central NC as schools are delayed or closed and road conditions are not favorable for driving. There have been many wrecks this morning so far but fortunately the sun is on the horizon...for a few days. The first day of Spring is this Thursday, March 20 and it will feel like Spring for the first 3 days of the new season. Thursday will have a high in the mid 60s, Friday in the upper 60s, and Saturday in the low 70s! Unfortunately this nice weather won't last for long as temperatures will cool off again when the Clipper system moves through the the Northeast.
Another dangerously interesting fact is that the Great Lakes earlier this year were over 92% covered with Ice. Today, after a couple of above-average days in Chicago and other major cities surrounding the Great Lakes, coverage is around 50%. Hydroelectric power, which powers numerous homes surrounding Niagara Falls, nearly had a power-freeze earlier this year with the St. Lawrence river being covered in ice and the large chunks of ice getting down into the power plant dams on both the U.S. and the Canadian sides of the falls.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/03/great-lakes-frozen/
Finally, there are Red Flag warnings across the western Midwest as a wildfire continues to burn.
On a different note, today is the 89th anniversary of the most devastating tornado ever to move through the United States. the Tri-State tornado of 1925. This tornado plowed a straight path through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana killing 695 unsuspecting people and flattening 15,000 homes. At this point in time the U.S. Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service) didn't even have the word "Tornado" in their vocabulary because when used in the military back in 1887, the term "Tornado" meant a weather phenomenon that was impossible to predict that could wreak havoc on an unsuspecting town or city, and it caused the people to panic, so it was banned from the vocabulary of meteorologists. Here is a link with further description on the Tri-State Tornado:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/natural-disasters/4219866
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