From the “Brendan is seriously slacking on his weather-nerd duties” file… I knew the recent California/Arizona storm was a big deal, but I had no idea it was this big of a deal:
The most powerful low pressure system in 140 years of record keeping swept through the Southwest U.S. [Thursday], bringing deadly flooding, tornadoes, hail, hurricane force winds, and blizzard conditions. We expect to get powerful winter storms affecting the Southwest U.S. during strong El Niño events, but [Thursday’s] storm was truly epic in its size and intensity. The storm set all-time low pressure records over roughly 10 – 15% of the U.S.–over southern Oregon, and most of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. Old records were broken by a wide margin in many locations, most notably in Los Angeles, where the old record of 29.25″ set January 17, 1988, was shattered by .18″ (6 mb). Bakersfield broke its record by .30″ (10 mb). The record-setting low spawned an extremely intense cold front that rumbled thought the Southwest, and winds ahead of the cold front reached sustained speeds of hurricane force–74 mph–[Thursday] night at Apache Junction, 40 miles east of Phoenix. Wind gusts as high as 94 mph were recorded in Ajo, Arizona.