It will be hard to go more than 4 days without rain in Georgia in this weather pattern. Temps will continue to bounce up and down in this active pattern the rest of this month with the trend back down to more typical January readings. As I mentioned many times on the radio Monday and Tuesday signs like the AO and stratospheric warming continue to point to Old Man Winter reawakening during February into March.

California blasted by powerhouse El Nino-enhanced storms; twisters, thundery downpours, 90+ mph gusts and huge mountain snows result

Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms swept ashore within the latest in a string of powerful Pacific storms Wednesday. Additional storms are expected to continue slamming into the West Coast the remainder of the week. California is at the epicenter of the meteorological assault. Three twisters were reported in the Los Angeles area Tuesday, including one which touched down at Huntington Beach, tossing boats 20 to 30 feet into the air and flipping a limo and SUV. Lifeguards at nearby Newport Beach clocked 93 mph thunderstorm gusts. Winds reached 100 m.p.h. and rains approached 5 feet in the region's mountains and foothills. A 64 mph gust swept San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Bridge while 75 mph gusts occurred just north of the central California metropolis. Snowfall near Lake Tahoe approached three feet. Sprawling Pacific storms which lambaste California and the West Coast are common features of El Nino cold seasons. This season's storms have been late in arriving. It's not uncommon for El Nino storm barrages to get underway in December.

The stronger than usual "SUB-TROPICAL" (southern) jet streams fostered by El Ninos lead to many of the events' most common winter weather abnormalities across the Lower 48 states, among them wetter than normal weather across the desert Southwest and active severe weather outbreaks across the Deep South. Both were in evidence Wednesday. Waves of downpour-generating thunderstorms produced 16 reports of tornadoes across sections of Texas and Louisiana.  
  
The meteorological assault on California continued Wednesday. Electricity to 27,000 Sacramento area customers was out as a rare barrage of winter thunderstorms produced power line-downing wind gusts as high as 60 mph. Winds hit 59 mph at San Francisco and 61 mph at Elk Grove, just southeast of Sacramento. Even stronger winds have been clocked in recent days.    Velocities  as high as 104 mph whipped the crest of the state's Sierra range at Ward Mountain.

An automated Snotel sensor at Chagoopa Plateau reported snowfall since the parade of storms began late this past weekend had reach 73.6 inches---more than 6 feet---Wednesday. Snow and ice forced the closure of I-5 at the 4,100 ft. level of Tejon Pass east of Los Angeles. And two Southwest Airlines jets were struck by rare lightning Wednesday at the arrival gate of Burbank's Bob Hope Airport Wednesday.

Monterey California typically see three thunderstorms in an entire year---but six have swept the city in just the past three days.

A phenomenal jet stream, boasting peak winds of 246 mph and strengthened by a huge north-to-south temperature spread between -60-degree Siberian temperatures to the north and El Nino-warmed air and water extending from western South America westward nearly the length of the equatorial Pacific, is powering the storm eruption. 200+ mph winds extended late Tuesday more the 4,000 miles from the Baja California coast to the ocean waters east of Japan.

As the storms head east they will bring more problems to the Desert Southwest and one foot snow storms to parts of the Rockies northern Plains and upper Midwest and severe weather and flooding to parts of the Ohio River Valley and the South and Southeast USA.