January 8–10, 2024 North American Storm Complex
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January 8–10, 2024 North American Storm Complex
A large and robust storm system, unofficially named ''Winter Storm Finn'' by The Weather Channel, brought widespread impacts to much of the contiguous United States early in January 2024. In the northern United States, heavy snow, hail, and gusty winds affected areas from the Great Plains to New England. In the southern United States, a widespread tornado outbreak along the Gulf Coast caused two fatalities and numerous injuries. Meteorological synopsis On January 2, 2024, meteorologists from the Storm Prediction Center began tracking a large upper-level trough forecast to move across the United States, with multiple embedded shortwave perturbations. By January 4, evidence of strong surface cyclogenesis pointed towards an intensifying and negatively tilted trough in the south, with a strong surface-low response to the north. These elements were conducive to strong thunderstorms across the country, with intensifying winter storm potential across the north and discrete superce ...
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Wolf Creek Pass
Wolf Creek Pass is a high mountain pass on the Continental Divide, in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. It is the route through which U.S. Highway 160 passes from the San Luis Valley into southwest Colorado on its way to New Mexico and Arizona. The pass is notable as inspiration of a C. W. McCall song. The pass is significantly steep on either side (6.8% maximum grade) and can be dangerous in winter. There are two runaway truck ramps on the westbound side for truckers that lose control of their brakes. Expansion Wolf Creek Pass, once a two-lane road winding through the San Juan Mountains between South Fork, Colorado, and Pagosa Springs, has been expanded into a multi-lane highway, greatly increasing the traffic capacity of the pass and making it more navigable in bad weather. It is the easiest access to southwest Colorado from the rest of the state, as all remaining overland routes require lengthy detours through New Mexico or over Lizard Head Pass, near Telluride, ...
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Shortwave (meteorology)
A shortwave or shortwave trough is an embedded kink in the trough / ridge pattern. Its length scale is much smaller than that of and is embedded within longwaves, which are responsible for the largest scale (synoptic scale) weather systems. Shortwaves may be contained within or found ahead of longwaves and range from the mesoscale to the synoptic scale. Shortwaves are most frequently caused by either a cold pool or an upper level front. Shortwaves are commonly referred to as a vorticity maximum. Corresponding weather and effects Shortwaves are often associated with warm air advection (WAA) or cold air advection (CAA), which influence temperature. Due to the way they move the air around them and the way air moves away from them, shortwaves produce positive curvature vorticity and positive shear vorticity, respectively. Ahead of a shortwave there is large-scale lift due to divergence from positive vorticity advection (PVA). This lift often causes precipitation. In a capp ...
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Mesoscale Meteorology
Mesoscale meteorology is the study of weather systems and processes at horizontal scales of approximately to several hundred kilometres. It is smaller than synoptic scale meteorology, synoptic-scale systems (1,000 km or larger) but larger than Microscale meteorology, microscale (less than 1 km). At the small end, it includes storm-scale phenomena (the size of an individual thunderstorm). Examples of mesoscale weather systems are sea breezes, squall lines, and mesoscale convective complexes. Vertical velocity often equals or exceeds horizontal velocities in mesoscale meteorological systems due to nonhydrostatic processes such as buoyant acceleration of a rising thermal or acceleration through a narrow mountain pass. Classification The History of weather forecasting, earliest networks of weather observations in the late 1800s and early 1900s could detect the movement and evolution of larger, synoptic scale, synoptic-scale systems like high pressure area, high and low-pressure area ...
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Indiana
Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the south and southeast, and the Wabash River and Illinois to the west. Nicknamed "the Hoosier State", Indiana is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 38th-largest by area and the List of U.S. states and territories by population, 17th-most populous of the List of states and territories of the United States, 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the Union as the 19th state on December 11, 1816. Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous resistance to American settlement was broken with defeat of the Tecumseh's confederacy in 1813. The new settlers were primarily Americans of British people, British ancestry from the East Coast of the United States, eastern seaboard and the Upland South ...
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Deep South
The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term is used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on Plantation complexes in the Southern United States, plantations and Slavery in the United States, slavery, generally Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, and South Carolina. East Texas, North Florida, the Arkansas Delta, South Arkansas, West Tennessee, and the southern part of North Carolina are sometimes included as well. Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the region experienced significant economic hardship and became a focal point of racial tension during and after the Reconstruction era. Before 1945, the Deep South was often referred to as the "Cotton States" since cotton was the primary cash crop for economic production. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South. The Deep ...
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Sangre De Cristo Mountains
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains (Spanish language, Spanish for "Blood of Christ") are the southernmost mountain range, subrange of the Rocky Mountains. They are located in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico in the United States. The mountains run from Poncha Pass in South-Central Colorado, trending southeast and south, ending at Glorieta Pass, southeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The mountains contain a number of fourteeners, fourteen thousand foot peaks in the Colorado portion, as well as several peaks in New Mexico which are over thirteen thousand feet. The name of the mountains may refer to the occasional reddish hues observed during sunrise and sunset, and when alpenglow occurs, especially when the mountains are covered with snow. Although the particular origin of the name is unclear, it has been in use since the early 19th century. Before that time the terms "La Sierra Nevada", "La Sierra Madre", "La Sierra", and "The Snowies" (used by English speakers) were used. Accordi ...
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Great Plains
The Great Plains is a broad expanse of plain, flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include the mixed grass prairie, the tallgrass prairie between the Great Lakes and Appalachian Plateau, and the Taiga Plains Ecozone, Taiga Plains and Boreal Plains Ecozone, Boreal Plains ecozones in Northern Canada. "Great Plains", or Western Plains, is also the ecoregion of the Great Plains or the western portion of the Great Plains, some of which in the farthest west is known as the High Plains. The Great Plains lie across both the Central United States and Western Canada, encompassing: *Most or all of the U.S. states of Kansas, Nebraska, and North Dakota, North and South Dakota; *Eastern parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming; *Parts of the U.S. states of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas; *Sometimes western parts of Iowa, Minnesot ...
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Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in great-circle distance, straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Canada, to New Mexico in the Southwestern United States. Depending on differing definitions between Canada and the U.S., its northern terminus is located either in northern British Columbia's Terminal Range south of the Liard River and east of Rocky Mountain Trench, the Trench, or in the northeastern foothills of the Brooks Range/British Mountains that face the Beaufort Sea coasts between the Canning River (Alaska), Canning River and the Firth River across the Alaska-Yukon border. Its southernmost point is near the Albuquerque metropolitan area, Albuquerque area adjacent to the Rio Grande rift and north of the Sandia–Manzano Mountains, Sandia–Manzano Mountain Range. Being the easternmost portion of the North American Cordillera, the Rockie ...
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Mid-latitude Cyclone
Extratropical cyclones, sometimes called mid-latitude cyclones or wave cyclones, are low-pressure areas which, along with the anticyclones of high-pressure areas, drive the weather over much of the Earth. Extratropical cyclones are capable of producing anything from cloudiness and mild showers to severe hail, thunderstorms, blizzards, and tornadoes. These types of cyclones are defined as large scale (synoptic) low pressure weather systems that occur in the middle latitudes of the Earth. In contrast with tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones produce rapid changes in temperature and dew point along broad lines, called weather fronts, about the center of the cyclone. Terminology The term "cyclone" applies to numerous types of low pressure areas, one of which is the extratropical cyclone. The descriptor ''extratropical'' signifies that this type of cyclone generally occurs outside the tropics and in the middle latitudes of Earth between 30° and 60° latitude. They are terme ...
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British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, forests, lakes, mountains, inland deserts and grassy plains. British Columbia borders the province of Alberta to the east; the territories of Yukon and Northwest Territories to the north; the U.S. states of Washington (state), Washington, Idaho and Montana to the south, and Alaska to the northwest. With an estimated population of over 5.7million as of 2025, it is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, third-most populous province. The capital of British Columbia is Victoria, British Columbia, Victoria, while the province's largest city is Vancouver. Vancouver and its suburbs together make up List of census metropolitan areas and agglomerations in Canada, the third-largest metropolit ...
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Gulf Of Alaska
The Gulf of Alaska ( Tlingit: ''Yéil T'ooch’'') is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the east, where Glacier Bay and the Inside Passage are found. The Gulf shoreline is a combination of forest, mountain and a number of tidewater glaciers. Alaska's largest glaciers, the Malaspina Glacier and Bering Glacier, spill out onto the coastal line along the Gulf of Alaska. The coast is heavily indented with Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound, the two largest connected bodies of water. It includes Yakutat Bay and Cross Sound. Lituya Bay (a fjord north of Cross Sound, and south of Mount Fairweather) is the site of the largest recorded tsunami in history. It serves as a sheltered anchorage for fishing boats. The Gulf of Alaska is considered a Class I, productive ecosystem with more than 300 grams of carbon per square meter ...
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Southeastern United States
The Southeastern United States, also known as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical List of regions in the United States, region of the United States located in the eastern portion of the Southern United States and the southern portion of the East Coast of the United States, Eastern United States. The region includes a core of states that reaches north to Maryland and West Virginia, bordering the Ohio River and Mason–Dixon line, and stretches west to Arkansas and Louisiana. There is no official Federal government of the United States, U.S. government definition for the region, and it is defined variably among agencies and organizations. History The history of the present-day Southeastern United States dates to the dawn of civilization in approximately 11,000 BC or 13,000 BC. The earliest artifacts from the region were from the Clovis culture. Prior to the arrival of Colonial history of the United States, European colonialists, Native Americans in ...
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