Published: December 22,2016
Like every year, 2016 had its winter storms, tropical cyclones, heat waves, cold outbreaks, severe weather outbreaks, flooding and droughts.
However, there are some weather events every year that are just plain weird.
These strange events could be one of the weather phenomena above happening repeatedly in one place, in a place where you wouldn't think they would occur, or during an unusual time of year.
(MORE 2016 LISTS: Top Weather Stories | Top Photos)
It could also be a rarely-seen phenomenon that you may not find in a "Weather 101" textbook.
So, enjoy this rundown of the weirdest weather events of 2016, in no particular order.
(MORE: 2015's Weirdest Weather Events | Strangest Weather I've Seen in My Lifetime)
State Record Hail is Star-Shaped
Star-shaped hailstones near Corning, California, on January 23, 2016.(Jeff Boyce / negativetilt.com)
But this bizarre star-shaped hailstone in the Sacramento Valley on Jan. 23 tied a state record, measuring 3 inches in diameter from the ends of the star.
According to KRCR-TV reporter Cristina Davies, one Corning neighborhood saw hail accumulations up to the bumpers of cars, known as a hail glacier, briefly turning the Sacramento Valley town into a winter wonderland typically reserved for the Sierra to the east.
(RECAP: California's Record-Tying Hailstone)
Eyes in the Sky Are 'Cloudy'
(Jack Harmon)
Instead, the atmosphere was staring at him. Small cloud wisps took on the appearance of a pair of eyes in Turner, Montana, just south of the Canadian border, on Nov. 13.
In early September, another photographer captured a "cloudy eye" over Kazakhstan.
Tornado, Power Flashes in Oregon
On Oct. 14, an EF2 tornado tore through Manzanita, Oregon, only the fifth F/EF2 tornado on record in the state since 1950.The National Weather Service in Portland issued 10 tornado warnings that day alone, one fewer than the total they had issued in the previous 19 years combined.
If that wasn't strange enough, Tyler Rawls captured video of the tornado with several power flashes, the blink of light you see when a tornado or high winds damage power lines or other electrical equipment.
Capturing tornado video in the Pacific Northwest is fleeting enough, much less the power flashes.
January Hurricanes
Left: Pali on January 11, 2016 just before reaching hurricane status. Right: Hurricane Alex on January 14, 2016.
(NASA)
First, Hurricane Pali became the earliest hurricane on record in the central Pacific basin on Jan. 11, peaking as a Category 2 one day later. Pali was also just the third January storm dating to 1949 in the central Pacific.
About the same time, Subtropical Storm Alex formed in the northeast Atlantic Ocean on Jan. 13. Alex then fully acquired tropical characteristics and became a hurricane on Jan. 14, making it just the second hurricane on record to form during the month of January in the Atlantic.
(MORE: Pali Recap | Alex Recap)
Southeast Chokes on Smoke
A brown pall of smoke hangs over the northwest side of the Atlanta, Georgia, metro area on November 14, 2016. (Jonathan Erdman)
For a time on Nov. 15, the air quality index in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Columbia, South Carolina, topped that of infamously-polluted Beijing. The smoke was even lofted as far south as Miami.
Even those not sensitive to poor air quality were urged to avoid outdoor exertion.
Nighttime Rainbow Illuminated by Lightning
A
nighttime rainbow is visible during a late-night thunderstorm in
Shepherd, Montana, on July 9, 2016, highlighted by the faint gray
arrows.(Jullie Powell Photography)
Colloquially called "moonbows" or lunar rainbows, these nighttime rainbows are the dimmer cousin of more common daylight rainbows, made possible from the refraction of raindrops by moonlight, rather than sunlight.
These moonbows are so rare because moonlight is not usually bright, and the alignment of conditions needed for them don't happen often.
According to Atmospheric Optics, a bright, near-full moon must be less than 42 degrees above the horizon, illuminating rain on the opposite side of a dark sky.
Top Down in December
A
convertible with the top down is seen driving along a snowy Interstate
480 south of Cleveland, Ohio, Thursday morning, Dec. 15, 2016.(Twitter/Joe Burdick)
One driver near Cleveland was photographed driving his or her convertible with the top down on a day with temperatures in the mid-teens and heavy lake-effect snow falling in the metro area.
Little is known about this brave local motorist, but the lake-effect snowstorm that clobbered the city the morning of Dec. 15 clearly did not bother him or her much at all.
Strong Pennsylvania Tornado – in February
People clean up in the aftermath of a storm Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016, in Gap, Pennsylvania.(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
A severe thunderstorm watch was issued by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center as far north as Massachusetts and southern Vermont late Feb. 24 into early Feb. 25. The last time such a watch had been issued in February in the area was back in 1997.
Even more uncommon were the severe thunderstorm warnings issued by the NWS in Maine early Feb. 25.
(RECAP: Odd Late February Tornado Outbreak)
'Nameless' Louisiana August Flood
Some rainfall totals from the mid-August 2016 flood event.Watson, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, picked up over 31 inches of rain during the event, more than the average yearly precipitation in Omaha and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
NOAA Weather Prediction Center meteorologist David Roth said that the Louisiana peak total was more than any tropical cyclone rainfall amount in the state since an early August 1940 hurricane.
More than 50,000 homes, 20,000 businesses, and 100,000 vehicles were damaged or destroyed in the floods, costing around $10 billion, according to NOAA/NCEI estimates.
(MORE: Full Event Recap | Before/After Imagery)
70s in North Dakota in February
Bismarck, North Dakota, not only set a monthly record high of 73 degrees on Feb. 27, but the capital city also broke the February record high for anywhere in the Peace Garden State.
For reference, this was warmer than the average Feb. 27 high in Houston (68 degrees) and Jacksonville, Florida (70 degrees), and just a few degrees shy of Orlando's average high that day (76 degrees).
We'll come back to this part of the country later.
Arabian Sea Dust Vortex
On
December 12, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image of
dust over the Arabian Sea.(Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA/GSFC)
According to NASA's Earth Observatory, this dust vortex of air from the nearby desert was warm and dry enough to squash the formation of clouds anywhere except on its edges.
Snow in Guadalajara, Mexico
Snow cover viewed from satellite in Mexico's mountains on March 9, 2016.(NASA)
"Such a large, strong upper low appears to be an unprecedented event in modern weather observations for Mexico," said Bob Henson in a Weather Underground blog.
As the above satellite image illustrates, snow fell throughout Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains. However, some high-valley locations even saw snowfall from this storm system.
Mexico's second-most populated city, Guadalajara, even saw a coating of snow in some areas. Guadalajara is at a latitude lower than Miami and even Havana, Cuba. However, its elevation of about 5,200 feet in combination with the cold nature of the low-pressure system allowed snow to fall there. This is reportedly the first snow in Guadalajara since December 1997, another strong El Niño year.
(MORE: Extreme March Pattern | Photos of Mexico Snow)
Destructive Wildfire Precedes Tornado Outbreak
As a multi-day severe weather outbreak featuring at least 44 tornadoes in the Deep South kicked off the week after Thanksgiving, the same weather pattern helped turn mountain wildfires into a destructive inferno.Winds gusting as high as 87 mph drove an existing wildfire in the Smoky Mountains into parts of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on Nov. 28 and 29 before drought-relieving rain could arrive.
Dual-polarization radar even picked up the smoke plumes pulled northward as rain in Middle Tennessee was, unfortunately, hours too late.
Nearly 1,700 structures were damaged or destroyed by the fire, which Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam called the state's largest in 100 years.
While tornadoes spared the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area, I can't recall another instance in which a destructive wildfire immediately preceded a severe weather outbreak.
Lightning Chars Two Golf Course Greens
A lightning-singed 15th green at Weeks Park Golf Club in Wichita Falls, Texas, on May 17, 2016. (Anna Garcia/Twitter)
In May, an early-morning lightning strike scorched a green in Wichita Falls, Texas. Less than two months later, a practice green took the same punishment from a lightning strike in Des Moines, Iowa.
Rick Tegtmeier, Director of Grounds at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club, said on his Twitter account that the strike even melted the cup, giving an indication of the brief but intense heat that the bolt generated.
Football Helmets Succumb to the Cold
In one of the coldest games in Soldier Field history, two helmets couldn't take the punishment.First, a hit by Green Bay Packers linebacker Joe Thomas knocked the "C" logo off Chicago Bears running back Ka'Deem Carey's helmet.
Another Packers linebacker, Jake Ryan, damaged his helmet in the same game.
The kickoff temperature was a mere 11 degrees with a wind chill of minus 4.
A 'Bird's Eye' View of Matthew
Shown in red on this radar image from October 7 are birds near the eye of Hurricane Matthew off the east coast of Florida.Dual-polarization radar from the NWS in Melbourne, Florida, detected birds seeking refuge from Matthew's fury near its eye.
This isn't as bizarre as it sounds.
Chris Dolce, weather.com meteorologist, also noted this prior to Hurricane Hermine's landfall almost exactly one month prior to Matthew.
Flood Fatigue
Kyle
Lester paddles past a submerged SUV as he looks for residents to help
in the Timber Lakes Timber Ridge subdivision near Houston in April 2016.(Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Prior to the "nameless" Louisiana August flood already mentioned above, three separate events each in March, April and May sent rivers swelling.
An early-mid March event toppled some Sabine River records dating to the late 19th or early 20th centuries and dumped over 26 inches of rain in parts of Louisiana.
The most widespread Houston metro flood since Allison in 2001 swamped over 1,000 homes and businesses on Tax Day.
If that wasn’t enough, another week-long siege of heavy rain pounded parts of Texas, including the Houston metro, in late May, triggering flooding along Spring Creek, Peach Creek, the Trinity River and Brazos River, among others.
A Damaging Lake Snowband
The most prolific, long-lived Great Lakes snowbands are capable of dropping feet of snow, sometimes in less than a day.However, a Lake Ontario snowband was accompanied by wind gusts up to 84 mph at the Oswego, New York, lighthouse.
Just east of that location, two roofs were blown off in Scriba, New York.
The NWS in Buffalo speculated that a snow-wrapped waterspout may have come ashore and caused the damage in Scriba. They also mentioned, though, that it's hard to confirm that given the blizzard conditions going on at the time.
Sunset Waterspout
Waterspouts are not unusual in the Florida Keys. In fact, it's one of the planet's hot spots.In late September, The Weather Channel Facebook fan Randy Powell shared this sunset waterspout photo from Marathon, Florida. I had never seen a beautiful orange sunset with a waterspout before this photo dropped on our page.
Storm chaser and Keys resident Mike Theiss even pointed out a faint second funnel near the cloud base to the right of the main waterspout in that photo.
85 Degrees at the Arctic
On July 13, Deadhorse, Alaska, a community of mainly oil workers about 500 miles north of Fairbanks, soared to a high of 85 degrees, an all-time high in 48 years of records.
At 70 degrees north latitude, Deadhorse was hotter than both Philadelphia (84 degrees) and Boise, Idaho (83 degrees), on July 13. Average mid-July highs in Deadhorse are only in the low to mid-50s.
The following day, Kuparuk, Alaska, topped Deadhorse, reaching 86 degrees.
Alaska-based climatologist Dr. Brian Brettschneider said those temperatures were the hottest on record at any location within 50 miles of Alaska's Arctic coast.
Even weirder, Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, reported its first thunderstorm in three years, according to Brettschneider.
A November World Series Game in Cleveland ... in the 70s
A fan waves a rally towel during Game Six of the 2016 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field on November 1, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio.(Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Many of the fans in Cleveland for Games 6 and 7 were in t-shirts.
The first-pitch temperature of 71 degrees on Nov. 1 for Game 6 was the record warmest November Major League Baseball game played in a northern city, though November baseball has only occurred this century.
That's roughly the average Nov. 1 high in Dallas, or the average in Cleveland for the heart of the pennant race, Sept. 23.
Record Snowstorm Follows Record Least Snowy Season
Huge piles of snow from Winter Storm Argos surround a home in Altmar, New York, on November 21, 2016.(Shane Muckey/Facebook)
That one snowstorm almost matched the entire 2015-2016 winter season's snowfall in Binghamton – 32 inches – their least snowy season on record.
Not weird enough? This snowy pasting in the interior Northeast immediately followed record warm highs in the 70s the previous day.
Mountain Wave/Jellyfish Clouds
NWS meteorologist Kerry Jones captured some bizarre-looking clouds east of the Sandia Mountains of northern New Mexico in early October.The smooth tops of these clouds were likely caused by the upward branch of mountain waves when air is forced over the higher terrain.
The wispy tendrils resembling the tentacles of a jellyfish are virga, a meteorological term that refers to precipitation that evaporates in drier air before it reaches the ground.
Lake-Breeze Landspout Snaps Chicago Tornado-Free Streak
A landspout tornado is seen from Chicago's Midway Airport on August 9, 2016.(Melanie Harnacke via NWS-Romeoville, Illinois)
On Aug. 10, a brief tornado touched down along about a two-block area on the city's southwestern side.
No damage was reported, but the sight was something to behold for Chicagoland commuters, and could even be seen from the Willis Tower.
Known as a landspout, this weak tornado doesn't require a parent thunderstorm, just a towering cumulus cloud growing over the lake-breeze front, stretching the spin along the front vertically into what looks like a huge, strong dust devil.
This was the first tornado of any kind in the city limits of Chicago since an F0 downed trees and limbs on the Loyola University campus on Sept. 22, 2006, according to the NWS.
North Pole Thaws While Siberia Shivers
Some
sample temperatures, with cold (Russia, Kazakhstan) and warm (North
Pole) departures from average contours, on November 15, 2016.Air temperatures sampled by at least five different buoys near the North Pole between 86 and 89 degrees north latitude reached from 0 to 1.2 degrees Celsius (32 to 34.16 degrees Fahrenheit) on Nov. 15, according to data from the International Arctic Buoy Programme.
To show how bizarre this is, Zack Labe, a PhD student and climate researcher at the University of California, Irvine, tweeted a graph at the time showing that mean temperatures over the Arctic from mid-October through mid-November had not fallen, as you would expect, but had actually risen.
The combination of record low Arctic sea ice coverage, plus a weather pattern in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans flooding warm air northward, led to this spike in polar temperatures.
Meanwhile, the greatest extent of early-season Siberian snow cover since 1998 helped refrigerate a brutally cold air mass, not just in typically cold eastern Russia but also in neighboring Kazakhstan.
If that wasn't enough, another weird North Pole warm spike happened again just three days before Christmas.
Haboobs From the Air
A haboob was photographed from an airplane over Phoenix, Arizona, on August 21, 2016. (Ryan Vermillion via Tyler Herrick)
While dust storms known as haboobs happen every summer in the Desert Southwest, two very lucky folks captured these amazing sights from an airplane in 2016.
In late August, Tyler Herrick, a flight attendant, shared the photo above taken by the pilot of his plane thousands of feet above a haboob over the Phoenix metro area.
One month earlier, Kristen Padilla shared photos from her mother's flight near Midland, Texas, during another dust storm on July 14.
Yes, the aisle seat may be more convenient, but you may be missing something spectacular when you turn down a window seat.
Bermuda Launches Weather Balloon Into Hurricane Eye ... Again
What are the odds a 21-square-mile archipelago in the vast Atlantic Ocean experiences a hurricane eye?Much higher than you would think, especially lately.
Hurricane Nicole's eye brushed Bermuda on Oct. 13, the closest the center of a Category 3 or stronger hurricane had tracked to Bermuda in almost 90 years – even closer than the center of destructive Hurricane Fabian in 2003.
In a true weather geek moment, the Bermuda Weather Service launched a weather balloon in the eye. They described the "suspended salt spray," with a "smell of ripped vegetation hanging in the heavy, hot air."
Perhaps most bizarre is this was the second time they've done this in the past two years. They also launched a balloon in the eye of Category 2 Hurricane Gonzalo in 2014, also in mid-October.
Tornado in Siberia
A tornado roared along the Ob River surface near Yugorsky Highway in Surgut, Russia, in early July 2016.(Sputnik via AP)
In early July, however, a pair of tornadoes touched down in western Siberia, with minor damage reported near the city of Surgut, east of the Ural Mountains.
(RECAP: How Could Siberian Tornadoes Happen?)
Tornadoes are more common in western Russia than they are in Siberia, but this may be due, in part, to fewer people living in Siberia to report them. Russia gets four to five reported tornadoes per year, on average, according to a recently published study on European tornadoes.
Of course, Siberia is more infamous for some of the coldest air on the planet in winter. As I wrote this piece, a daily low temperature of minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit was reported in Surgut.
Mid-October 100s, and Not in the Desert Southwest
Triple-digit temperatures are typical for months in the Desert Southwest and occur in the heart of summer in the Plains states. However, on Oct. 17, almost one full month after the autumnal equinox, Dodge City, Kansas, soared to a high of 101 degrees.This crushed their previous record latest-in-season 100-degree-plus high by over three weeks, tied the hottest temperature they recorded at any time during the summer months, and was hotter than any August day in that city.
This amazing high was also 10 degrees hotter than both Death Valley, California, and Phoenix on that particular day.
Ocean Eddy From the Cockpit
View of sea ice caught in an ocean eddy from the cockpit of a flight near the coast of Labrador, Canada, on July 3, 2016. (Jeff Davis via Kyle Roberts/Twitter)
Upon further investigation, this wasn't any kind of storm at all; known as an eddy, the swirl is actually part of the ocean.
Ocean eddies are usually difficult to see – quite often, they appear as dull swirls.
In this case, chunks of ice were transported southward by the cold Labrador Current and captured by the ocean eddy.
The result was a large, bright-white swirl that was easily identifiable from an airplane or a satellite image.
(MORE: Ocean Eddy Seen From a Flight)
All Hail Broke Loose in Texas
Nearly all of the windows in this Wylie, Texas, home were knocked out by the April 11, 2016 hailstorm. (WylieBear1/Twitter)
Parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex were pelted on St. Patrick's Day, March 23, then again on April 11. Hail as big as softballs driven by strong winds pelted the suburb of Wylie on April 11.
A day later, the first of two April damaging hail events unfolded in the San Antonio metro. Homes and vehicles suffered extensive damage after being pelted by hailstones as large as grapefruits.
Tennis ball- and baseball-sized hail pounded western parts of San Antonio on April 25 and impacted some of the same locations hit on April 12.
NOAA's preliminary damage estimate from the April 10-12 Texas hailstorms alone was $3.5 billion, likely to rank as one of the nation's costliest hail events.
(FULL RECAP: The Destructive Hailstorms of Spring 2016)
Months Without Rain in the Southeast
In
this Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2016, file photo, Lake Purdy, which has receded
several feet due to drought, leaves dry, cracked ground where lake water
should be, in Birmingham, Alabama. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)
Several locations in Alabama and Georgia smashed record dry streaks, going two months or more without any measurable rain, including Cartersville, Georgia (70 days), and Birmingham, Alabama (61 days).
Oneonta, Alabama, went almost three full months without even .01 inch of rain from late August through the week before Thanksgiving.
Strangely, even areas soaked or flooded by heavy rain from Hurricane Matthew followed up by going rainless for over a month.
No wonder an exceptional drought followed.
(FULL RECAP: Record Southeast Dry Streaks)
Snow in Mississippi With High Pressure Nearby
This photo taken on Dec. 20 doesn't seem all that weird. It's December, and there's snow falling. Big deal, right?Well, that photo was taken in central Mississippi. More interesting, right? Deep South snow is pretty rare.
But there was no winter storm nearby. In fact, that morning, high pressure was camped out over the region.
So what caused this weird snow? According to the NWS office near Jackson, Mississippi, it was lake-effect snow. Cold air passing over the warm water of Barnett Reservoir capitalized on the instability to build snow showers downwind of the lake near Madison, Mississippi.
It was another case that proved lake-effect snow isn't just for the Great Lakes.
Thanksgiving Hurricane Landfall in Central America
Enhanced infrared satellite image of Hurricane Otto making landfall in southeast Nicaragua on November 24, 2016. Otto's hurricane landfall was the latest in any calendar year on record in the Atlantic Basin, according to Colorado State University tropical scientist Dr. Phil Klotzbach.
Among the many other notable records Otto shattered, it also made landfall over 10 months after the season's first named storm, the aforementioned Hurricane Alex, and made a rare crossing from the Caribbean Sea to the eastern Pacific Ocean as an intact tropical cyclone.
(FULL RECAP: Hurricane Otto | 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season)
A 'Surprise' August Tornado Outbreak
NOAA's
Storm Prediction Center Day 1 early morning severe weather outlook for
August 24, 2016, compared to reports of tornadoes (red dots) that day.
The yellow area ("slight risk") signified the highest probability of
severe thunderstorms forecast that day. The green area suggested a more
"marginal risk" of severe weather.Very few, if any, tornado outbreaks go unforecasted today, given advancements in numerical forecast models and forecaster skill. But what happened in late August was missed by almost every meteorologist.
In just under seven hours, two dozen tornadoes touched down across a concentrated swath from central and northeast Indiana to northwest Ohio, according to NOAA's Storm Data.
This included a pair of EF3 tornadoes near Kokomo and Woodburn, Indiana.
Dr. Jeffrey Frame from the University of Illinois wrote a comprehensive piece explaining why it was a difficult forecast.
Put simply, discrete, rotating thunderstorms flared up that afternoon associated with a small-scale disturbance in the atmosphere that itself was generated by thunderstorms the previous evening in the central Plains.
A subtle feature, leading to a locally destructive outbreak.
Dakotas Whiplash
At
left, November 2016 temperature rankings by state are shown, with the
red-shaded states, including North Dakota, setting their record warmest
November dating to 1895. At right, a snow drift blocks exit from the
front door of a home in Glenburn, North Dakota, on December 7, 2016.(NOAA/NCEI and Lauren Ashley Otradovec)
North Dakota had its warmest November in 137 years. The state's capital, Bismarck, had three straight days with highs in the 70s the weekend before Election Day. Flowers were blooming on Nov. 8 in South Dakota's state capital, Pierre.
Then came a harsh reality check.
In late November, Winter Storm Blanche dumped almost 19 inches of snow in Bismarck. Just over a week later, a blizzard snarled travel in the Dakotas. Even side streets of Bismarck were difficult to navigate due to the massive snow drifts.
Then, a bitter cold plunge of Arctic air sent temperatures into the minus 30s in the Dakotas, including, yes, Bismarck.
In just over a month's time, temperatures fell over 100 degrees in the North Dakota capital city, from the early November 70s to the low of minus 31 on Dec. 17. And in four weeks, they picked up 31 inches of snow.
Global Temperature Record For Third Straight Year
2016
compared to the warmest seven years on record. The black circle for
December shows how even if its temperature matches the 21st century
average, 2016 would still be the warmest year on record.By far, though, the most bizarre and disturbing aspect to 2016 was the Earth likely setting yet another global temperature record.
Not only was 2016 the third year in a row the planet set a record warm year, but each of the past two years clobbered the previous record.
The so-called "horse-race graph" above illustrates how staggeringly warm early 2016 was compared to the seven other previous warmest years in NOAA's database dating to 1880.
Earlier in 2016, the globe had set a record warm mean temperature 16 straight months ending in August, the longest such stretch of months a new record high temperature was set for each respective month in NOAA's 137-year record.
(WATCH: Earth is Not Cooling, Climate Change is Real)
Not surprisingly, sea ice coverage plummeted near both the North and South poles in the fall, both tracking well below the previous record fall lows in satellite data estimates dating to 1979.
(MORE: Arctic Report Card Delivers Earth an 'F')
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