Every Fall, the clash of the first surges of cold air from Canada with lingering warm air from the southern U.S. leads to rapidly intensifying storms accompanied by high winds and churning seas over the Great Lakes, with deadly consequences for ships unfortunate enough to be caught over the open water. These hurricane-strength gales have become known as “November Witches”.
They look ominous, but cold-air funnel clouds are usually harmless.
Typically before a tornado forms, it is preceded by a funnel cloud sticking out from the bottom of a supercellular (rotating) thunderstorm. While not all funnel clouds will produce a tornado, it does indicate the presence of tight rotation at the bottom of the storm, and that a tornado is possible at any moment should that rotating column of air reach the surface.
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History has taught most of us level-headed meteorologists that the prospects for success in forecasting any given weather event to break (much less shatter) a record are so poor that we usually avoid doing so on principle alone. But even the most excitable among us were staggered by the cycle of intensification experienced by Hurricane Patricia from Thursday into Friday, 22-23rd October, as it turned from just another middling, minimal hurricane skirting by the sparsely-populated coast of southwestern Mexico to a 200-mph monster.
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The first snow reports of the season across the Midwest and Northeast were reported over the weekend of October 17th, 2015. Snow was generally trace amounts but a few areas in western New York, northwest Pennsylvania, and Michigan saw an inch or more. In general, this first glimpse of winter came early compared to the averages but no records were broken in terms of the earliest measurable snow. The table shows the average date for the first measurable snowfall and the record for the earliest measured snowfall for a few major cities across the United States.