If April Showers bring May Flowers, what do May Showers bring?

If you live in Central NC, then the answer to this question this past weekend was "Floods". Parts of NC and Virginia experienced over 5" of rain in just a 24-hour period. Crabtree Creek was flooded again (as usual) by about 3:00 in the afternoon and other areas followed soon thereafter. The rain wasn't the only issue though. Higher-than-usual wind gusts took down trees all across the state, and even a tornado caused some damage in the Durham area. I spent the weekend in Asheville, NC this weekend with my girlfriend to celebrate another friend's wedding (which was absolutely beautiful by the way), but the wind in the mountains was eerily howling in the windows and trees and occasionally the cracking and banging of a falling pine tree was heard off in the distance.

Mother's day weekend proved difficult for some Midwestern communities as a large severe weather outbreak crashed down undesired on Saturday and Sunday of last week, even as far north as Chicago.

If you notice the blue in West Virginia heading North and East, an interesting cool air outbreak has occurred here toward the beginning of the summer. We have had so many cold fronts move through as a result of the location of the Sub-Tropical Jet Stream, that the Canadian cold air has pushed back unusually far South. Below is the Map of the Jet stream for the same time. Temperatures have dropped into the upper 30s and low 40s at night in the Appalachian Mountains and highs most likely will not climb back into the 80s in Asheville and upper 70s in Boone until Later this week.

With rain seemingly only falling in the Eastern Midwest and the Atlantic Coast, Red flag warnings are running rampant through NM,
AZ, and parts of TX, OK, KS, and CO. Also, there is a small system currently moving across Montana and North and South Dakota which is strong enough for a severe thunderstorm warning there in the middle of the system with watches and warning potential in the surrounding area. This storm is currently moving ESE.

It looks as though for Raleigh this week we should see partly to mostly cloudy skies as the week wears on with temperatures increasing to the upper 80s by Thursday.

Summer for me is in full swing now and now that I have a routine, I should be posting fairly regularly. I start my online English class tomorrow at NC State and I am looking forward to enhancing my meteorological knowledge over the summer by doing some personal reading and working on MATLAB in order to become somewhat proficient at a programming language.

If you have any questions concerning weather for your area, shoot me an email or comment on a post! I am completely open to straightening out confusion and explaining meteorological phenomena in order to help your knowledge and understanding!