A little taste of summer

It was a windy, warm weekend across southern Quebec with it feeling almost summer like from late Friday evening into late Saturday. A little sunshine and some humid conditions on Friday helped fuel some evening thunderstorm activity from eastern Ontario into metro Montreal. A few of the storms were on the heavy side with frequent lightning and heavy rain. Around 11mm fell in Montreal, but Ottawa and some eastern Ontario locations had over 25mm (1 inch) in just a few hours. Temperatures were rather warm on Saturday in the middle 20's and just a touch cooler Sunday under bright sunshine. It was a breezy weekend, 30-50km/h and that will persist into this week. A complex weather pattern this week with high pressure early in the week, and then a series of fronts producing showers and thunderstorms from Wednesday on. The warm weather will continue with highs in the low to middle 20's and lows around 10C.

An incredible amount of snow has fallen across the Rockies today as far south as metro Denver. The photo above was taken in Albany, Wyoming where 1-2 feet of snow fell today. (The Weather Channel - credit to robk2). Interstate 80 is closed  from Rawlings to Cheyenne because of May snow!

STRONG WESTERN STORM
A strong low pressure area in the US southwest is producing heavy snow across portions of the Rockies including a few inches in Denver. Upwards of 1-2 feet of snow has fallen across northern Colorado into Wyoming. Meanwhile east of the falling snow, warm and humid air is producing severe thunderstorms with tornadoes across Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa. Major damage was reported in several small Nebraska communities including Exeter and Sutton. I spent part of the evening watching the live feed from Greg Johnson at TornadoHunter.com and the storms were rather impressive. The good news is that despite all the damage in Nebraska today, thanks to advance warning of up to 15 minutes from meteorologists, no fatalities were reported.