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Back-to-Back Pacific Storms to Impact the West Coast; Heavy Snow in the Central Appalachians

Back-to-back powerful Pacific storm systems to impact the Pacific Northwest and northern California through the end of this week with heavy rain, flooding, strong winds, and higher elevation mountain snow. A strong, long-duration atmospheric river will accompany the Pacific storms, bringing excessive rainfall and flash flooding to southwest Oregon and northwest California through the week. Read More >

Overview

A weak upper level disturbance moved along the northern side of an upper level ridge centered across the Desert Southwest generating thunderstorms over the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico. These storms slowly moved east into the Panhandles and encountered an environment with weak to moderate wind shear but extreme instability and high moisture which allowed these storms to thrive and increase in severity and organization as they tracked east. The main impact from the storms was damaging winds as they crossed out of New Mexico and Colorado into the Panhandles, but some hail was also reported. The most significant damage occurred with a storm that strongly bowed as it moved southeast across Cimarron County Oklahoma. This storm produced wind speeds likely around 90 mph in some locations based on damage and were measured at just shy of 80 mph near Boise City, OK at a mesonet site. The storm produced widespread wind damage from Kenton to Boise city and southeast to Griggs, OK. Widespread damage to trees and powerlines occurred and isolated significant roof damage occurred as well, including the Boise City High School auditorium, which lost part of it's roof completely. Fifty-five power poles were reported damaged across Cimarron County with around 1600 customers without power during the peak outage after the storms. Power was out until well into the afternoon hours on Sunday for some locations. This storm continued to grow upscale and eventually merged across the northwestern Texas Panhandle with another broken line of storms that had crossed the New Mexico border near I-40, also producing severe wind gusts as they entered the Texas Panhandle. This storm complex tracked east-southeast and continued to produce severe wind gusts and heavy rainfall, especially across the northern and central Texas Panhandle. The storm complex finally weakened early Sunday morning as instability decreased.

 

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