Storm Impacting the Northwest U.S.; Fire Weather Conditions in Southern California; Severe Weather in the South

A Pacific storm is bringing areas of low elevation rain, moderate to heavy mountain snow, and high winds to the Northwest. Strong Santa Ana winds and very dry conditions are producing elevated to critical fire weather conditions in southern California. Isolated strong to severe thunderstorms are possible through early Wednesday morning across parts of northeast Texas into western Tennessee. Read More >

Overview

A widespread wind event affected much of the Plains on January 14th and 15th. Some locations across Wyoming, western Nebraska and eastern Colorado even recorded wind speeds around 100 mph! Kansas saw two consecutive days of northwest winds in the 55 to 65 mph range. Strong winds also resulted in widespread blowing dust over Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas which caused many highways to be shut down due to low visibility.

Map showing watches and warnings on January 14th

Photos & Video
Environment

Photos & Video


Water vapor imagery from the evening of January 15th.	Surface map from the early evening of January 14th.


Wind reports from January 14th	Wind reports from January 15th

Here's an NWS map of high wind gust reports and some reports of wind #damage over the past 36 hours ending at 6 a.m. CST Thursday.

Our storm reports page tallied over 1,700 reports of strong gusts (mainly) and wind damage since Tuesday evening. pic.twitter.com/XpSWPILwKQ
— Jonathan Erdman (@wxjerdman) January 14, 2021

Incredible dust storm affecting far southeast/east central Colorado, far southwest/west central Kansas, and portions of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. Numerous Dust Storm Warnings are in effect.The dust region is in red on this GOES-16 Satellite RGB product. #kswx #cowx #phwx pic.twitter.com/8lFeBZXvbA
— Mike Umscheid (@mikeumsc) January 15, 2021

Widespread region of blowing dust this morning across the southern high plains, prompting issuance of numerous NWS Blowing Dust Warnings. Winds gusting ~45-65 knots

Imagery is GOES-East 1-min VIS-SWD combo. Dust is yellow. #cowx #kswx #txwx pic.twitter.com/7DKPdt1ogs
— Bill Line (@bill_line) January 15, 2021

Environment