Wacky and Weird Weather highlights of 2018 in Words and Photos and it is still July!!!

The Weirdest Weather Events of 2018 So Far

By Jon Erdman

June 28 2018 01:45 PM EDT

weather.com

We've already seen our share of winter storms, severe weather, cold outbreaks, flooding and droughts so far in 2018. But there are some weather events every year that are downright strange, and this year is no exception.

The events we consider strange are weather phenomena happening repeatedly in one place, in a place where you wouldn't think they would occur or during an unusual time of year. Some are phenomena you may not find in a Weather 101 textbook.

Here are some of weirdest weather events we've seen so far in 2018, in chronological order.

Freezing Rain in Florida

Just after New Year's Day, Winter Storm Grayson blanketed Tallahassee, Florida, with its first measurable snow since 1989, and the first January such occurrence, there, in records dating to 1885. That's eye-catching enough.  What was even more bizarre was seeing an ice accumulation map involving the Sunshine State. Up to a quarter inch of ice accumulation was measured in Lake City, and light icing on elevated surfaces was reported as far south as Levy County.

February 80s in New England

The heat in New England Feb. 20-21 was the "most extraordinary heat event to ever affect the Northeastern quadrant of the U.S. during the month of February, since official records began in the late 1800s," according to Weather Underground weather historian Christopher Burt. All-time state February heat records were tied or broken in eight states, including 77 degrees at Wells, Maine, 80 degrees at Fitchburg, Massachusetts, 83 degrees at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and 80 degrees at Cincinnati's Lunken Airport. 

The Four-easters

Perhaps as payback for the summerlike February heat wave, four nor'easters – Winter Storms Riley, Quinn, Skylar and Toby – in three weeks brought misery to millions along the Eastern Seaboard in March 2018. Incredibly, a fifth low-pressure center was a bit too far offshore near the end of March to join the fearsome foursome from earlier in the month.

A Horseshoe Cloud

While the nor'easter parade was hammering the East Coast, a bizarre cloud was captured in video over Nevada in early March. As meteorologist Jonathan Belles explained, this rare horseshoe vortex is fleeting, lasting only minutes, when a relatively flat cloud moves over a column of rising air, which also gives the cloud some spin.

A State Record Hailstone

Alabama's notorious history of severe weather, particularly tornadoes, is well documented.  On March 19, however, it was a hailstone that captured meteorologists' attention. One softball-size hailstone near Cullman, Alabama, was found to set a new state record, more than 5 inches in diameter. 

Orange Snow

Just after spring officially arrived in late March, a plume of dust tapped by southerly winds from north Africa, lead to the sight of orange snow over parts of eastern Europe. While not unheard of, this particular orange snow event observed in parts of Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania and Moldova featured higher concentrations of dust than usual, according to the BBC. 

New U.S. Rainfall Record?

Less than eight months after Hurricane Harvey smashed a rainfall record for any U.S. tropical cyclone, a deluge in Hawaii appeared to have set another U.S. rain record. A location on the island of Kauai measured 49.69 inches of rain in just 24 hours from April 14-15. If that is verified, it would top the U.S. 24-hour rain record of 43 inches in Alvin, Texas, during Tropical Storm Claudette in July 1979.

Apriluary, Then a Record Warm May

The coldest April in 21 years for the Lower 48 states was followed by the hottest May, in NOAA records dating to 1895. Climate scientist Dr. Brian Brettschneider wrote this was the largest area of Earth to undergo a record cold-to-warm shift in consecutive months in the last 100 years.  Minneapolis-St. Paul went from its heaviest April snowstorm of record in mid-April to a Memorial Day high of 100 degrees in just six weeks.

New England Long-Track Tornado in May

A 36-mile long EF1 tornado May 4 in western and central New Hampshire was one of the longest on record in New England. As strange as an early-May tornado of any kind is in New Hampshire –  its typical peak tornado month is July – perhaps the most amazing aspect to this was how the tornado was discovered. The National Weather Service office in Gray, Maine, gathered public storm reports, then surveyed relatively remote parts of New Hampshire 10 days after the tornado to piece together its path.

Subtropical Cyclone Off Chile

The northeastern Pacific basin's hurricane season starts in mid-May. In early May 2018, however, a bizarre subtropical cyclone formed in the southeast Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Chile. This appeared to have been a first-of-its-kind storm to form over this typically colder stretch of the southeast Pacific Ocean, according to long-term records.   

Wildfire Spawns a Severe Thunderstorm

Lightning from thunderstorms can often trigger wildfires. On May 11, however, heat generated from the Mallard Fire southeast of Amarillo, Texas, generated not just a photogenic pyrocumulus cloud, but also triggered a severe thunderstorm that ended up dumping quarter-size hail in Wheeler County, Texas, just over 60 miles away.

Back-to-Back Middle East Tropical Cyclones in Unusual Locations 

In less than a week in May, a pair of tropical cyclones took unusual tracks in the Middle East. First, Tropical Cyclone Sagar tracked almost the entire length of the Gulf of Aden before landfalling in far western Somalia on May 19, the country's strongest and westernmost in records since the mid-1960s.  Six days later, Tropical Cyclone Mekunu moved ashore near Salalah, Oman, the first Category 3 landfall in southwest Oman in modern records, dumping over 24 inches of rain in four days in the city. 

Alberto is Pure Michigan

After a Memorial Day landfall in the Florida Panhandle, deep moist air and the lack of strong shearing winds kept what was once Subropical Storm Alberto's remnant circulation intact well inland, to the degree that NOAA's Weather Prediction Center didn't issue its final advisory until Alberto was just southwest of Alpena, Michigan, on May 31.  The only other tropical cyclone to have tracked within 75 miles of Alpena since the mid-20th century, according to NOAA, was Connie, as a tropical storm in August 1955.  As The Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro pointed out, this was also a highly unusual track for May.

Two Wyoming EF3 Tornadoes in Less Than a Week

In the first six days of June, a pair of EF3 tornadoes tore through areas near Gillette and Laramie, Wyoming, the first F/EF3 or stronger tornadoes in the state since 1987. Wyoming's low population density typically minimizes the chance of a tornado hitting structures or even trees to allow the National Weather Service to rate a tornado. The June 6 tornado north of Laramie scoured grass from the ground, allowing the NWS to rate it EF3. 

Snow After Summer Arrives

Imagine shoveling snow five days after the summer solstice. This happened on June 26, when a storm off the coast of Newfoundland had just enough cold air to blanket parts of the island with snow, prompting plows to be called out. It was one of the latest-in-season snowfalls on record in Gander. Kids had to to trudge through snow during their last week of school before summer vacation.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Conversations with Melchizedek – Colossal Changes coming to Political Systems

After his brief trip to the UK, NATO, and a summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, President Trump has once again left the politicians and political activists aghast at his words and actions.  In fact, if you listen to news accounts you might think he just started Armageddon, the final battle before the Apocalypse and the End Times.  Amazing to what lengths the media is prepared to go to destroy Trump.

As for the professional political crybabies on television, they are screaming demons and one should take the time to ask why.  What is it about our corrupt, archaic, political system and institutions that is so precious to the radical left and radical right they will do anything to stop Trump?

Melchizedek says we are entering a three-year period of “colossal changes coming to political systems.”  I say it is about time.  The radical liberals and conservatives, the Democrat and Republican parties, the hysterical Trump haters and the so-called news media are the puppets and pawns of a much darker force than Donald Trump.

Have we forgotten that America is the boldest and grandest experiment in the history of mankind?  We are the only major nation on earth in which 95% of our population are immigrants or descendants of immigrants.

Truly we are the only true melting pot in the world where people of any race, religion, ethnic background, political persuasion or culture are all guaranteed the same rights, protection, and equal opportunity.

By our very nature, promise and Constitution we are protected from dominance by any one philosophy, culture or movement because individual freedom and equal opportunity are the bedrock of our existence.

Since we are the only true melting pot our Republic is built on a foundation of respect for differences and compromise for accommodation for all.  The people reaffirm this right in elections every two and four years.

When special interests demand one ideology be dominant in our land, whether it be liberal or conservative, Democrat inspired or Republican, and when people attempt to usurp the power of the people by imposing a single philosophy on others it is doomed and results in polarization and eventually fails.

Today we have lost the ability to communicate.  Hatred and fear have overridden all possibility for compromise and progress.  Without compromise there can be no progress.  When that happens, and it has happened many times in our short history, the Constitution provides a mechanism for the people to save our government from special interests and unfair laws.

Once again, we face the same dilemma.  People are concerned with control and dominance, not fairness and justice.  Those advocates of control and their supporters have no place in a house built on compromise, individual rights, and guaranteed equality for all.

When our Fourth Estate, the news media, lose their sense of objectivity as it has and starts trying to promote one side of a policy over another the media no longer functions as a watchdog for the people, all the people, but as an advocate for special interests.  One wonders if maybe biased media should be required to register as a special interest lobbyist to show their true colors.

In the past presidents have always worked with Congress, majority and minority parties, toward compromise in order to solve problems.  That ended in the Obama years.  Unfortunately, he had neither the foresight nor experience to forge political alliances and preserve this presidential function.

When leaders want to impose their agenda on the people, rather than carry out the agenda of those who elected them, they are doomed to failure in a Constitutional Republic designed to prevent dominance by any one person, group or party.

Any crisis America faces will be solved when the people decide what is needed and they use the ballot to force change on the system.  Once again, we have reached the crisis stage, and once again only the people can say what America must do.

The shocking victory of Trump in the GOP primary, the only non-politician among political giants, was the first sign of a major political overhaul of our system.  His subsequence election victory over the overwhelming favorite Hillary Clinton was the people’s stunning reaffirmation that enough was enough, our political house must be disassembled and rebuilt in order to return to a Constitutional Republic as envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

                    

Unfortunately, it seems memories are short in our nation’s capital.  Both the news people and politicians seem to be suffering from hysterical amnesia.  They are no longer twisting the media spin to their benefit but are living the lies they manufacture to justify their hate-filled rants.

As the news media paraded an endless stream of intelligence officials and national security “experts” to trash Trump before the cameras yesterday, I noted the incredible hypocrisy of the anti-Trump legions.  Just a decade ago the same people were trashing Presidents Bush and Obama because of the massive and illegal actions by the very same intelligence agencies, including many of the current TV stars being interviewed from those agencies, for the greatest invasion of privacy in history and trampling over of our individual rights.

Not only was every American citizen a victim of the insidious “Big Brother” action, so were the heads of state of every major nation in the world including our closest allies.  Their private phone lines were illegally taped and monitored by US intelligence agencies.  How quickly we forget the truth.

Yesterday’s villains are today's heroes, at least in the minds of the news media and misguided followers who actually believe their brand of nonsense.  Never have I seen so many people so hysterically embrace hatred, bias, distortion and misdirection with such passion, possibly since the time of the persecution and murder of Jesus of Nazareth, and that job was botched up as well.

By now, after almost eighteen months of the Trump presidency and with all the power and resources of the intelligence agencies, the Justice Department, the news media, the Democratic and Republican parties, and their friends and benefactors who control much of our wealth, their relentless effort to throw out Trump has failed miserably.

No politician in our history has been under a more massive and coordinated attack for such a sustained period of time yet Trump continues his own relentless campaign to clean up the mess we call government.

Why, because he is not a politician.  He is an outsider who happened to succeed without the help of big bankers, big corporations, political parties and Wall Street.  Trump was not bought and paid for like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton.

Funny, all three became multi-millionaires because they were president or nominated to be president.  Trump did not need a government job and power to make millions, he earned it before he ever ran for public office.

Make no mistake, Trump is far from an endearing president but perhaps he is just what was needed to reign in the power of government, stop the corruption at all levels of government, reform laws and regulations not in the public interest, and to realign our position in the world.

No professional politician stood a chance of bringing about such badly needed reform.  There was no accountability in government nor responsibility for the actions of the government.  The financial predators and sharks controlled the money for campaigns and leveraged it to buy off enough elected officials to maintain a system that was rotten to the core, not just in America, but around the world.

Yet people, the voters, understood, at least the vast majority of people who were not part of the partisan political cesspool.  This did not happen overnight.  Way back in 1972 Ross Perot, a businessman and Independent, got 20% of the presidential vote costing George Bush his re-election and thrusting Bill Clinton to the presidency with barely 41% of the registered vote.

By the time Barack Obama was first elected in 2008 nearly 50% of all eligible voters refused to even register to vote, such was their disgust with politicians.  When Obama was re-elected in 2012 it was the first time less than 50% of eligible voters participated in an election.  In truth, only about 25% of eligible voters voted Obama president.  Still it got worse.  By the end of Obama’s presidency in 2016 for the first time in our history there were more registered Independents than either Democrats or Republicans.

One need only ask Bernie Sanders how honest the political system was when he faced Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary campaign.  Secret deals between Obama and Clinton were made to bankrupt the Democratic National Committee (DNC), then allow the Clinton campaign to secretly bail out the DNC while giving Hillary control of the actions and resources of the DNC.  She was in a tightly contested primary battle with Sanders when this took place.  Bernie never had a chance to win the primary because the DNC Super Delegates were already secretly pledged to Hillary.

By the way, in light of the current media hype about how Putin said he wanted Trump to win against Hillary, you might have noticed what the media forgot to ask.  Why did the media not ask if he wanted Hillary to win?  Putin and Hillary were mortal enemies ever since she was Obama’s Secretary of State and used her office to condemn him and place sanctions on Russia.  Trump was not even a viable candidate at the time Hillary was hacked and Trump was given no chance to win anything.

When Trump stunned the world and won the primary there was no other choice for Putin but to hope Trump won, against all odds.  Make no mistake, no one’s hands were clean during this election campaign.  Trump knew nothing of the political process and showed it.  Still, he was the last one standing and the only non-political outsider available to the people.

No one gave him a chance to win right up to election day when all the media predicted a solid Hillary victory.  No one, that is, except me when I predicted a Trump victory several weeks before the election and posted it in the Huffington Post as a Huffington Post Contributor.

My conclusion was based on a multi-decade trend of increasing distrust of all politicians from both parties born out by the polls.  In addition, I watched the increasing flight of Democrats and Republican voters switch to the Independent registration.

Trump’s victory had nothing to do with Russia or Russian collusion.  It had everything to do with voter frustration over partisan politics in Washington, D.C., the cozy relationship between professional politicians and financiers, and institutional corruption.

Today, the losers from both ends of the political spectrum, Democrats hating Trump and Republicans afraid of Trump, sense the death knell of their quest to deny Trump his presidency.  As do the losers in the media who are in danger of losing all their anonymous sources of classified government information.

Trump is no saint, but he certainly is an agent of change who was given a chance to fix what the politicians could not fix.  He was also given a chance by the American voters to show us what he can do to clean up the mess.  His opponents are fueled by blind hatred of the outsider.  They ignore the Constitution and will of the people.  In truth they are the protectors of the status quo.

To succeed they ignore their own religious beliefs and the teachings of Jesus and embrace a very dark and toxic attitude.  They will fail.  Trump will easily win re-election in 2020 and may finally get the chance to show us what he can do.

At that point we can give a great big sign of relief in knowing our Constitution is intact, it worked as expected, and once again the People have spoken.