Above Average Temperatures Get Blown Away by Arctic Blast

Heavy Rainfall, Flooding, and High Winds 12/01/06

The end of November felt more like spring with temperatures for a week straight at or above 60 degrees and a 10 day stretch of no precipitation with high pressure parked over the area. Cleveland, at Hopkins Airport, had eight days where the average temperature for the day was 10 or more degrees above normal. There were even two days, November 26th and 29th that were 20 and 23 degrees above normal, respectively. Records were broken at Toledo (66) on Wednesday, the 29th and Mansfield (65) and Youngstown (65) on Sunday, the 26th. Overall, the month of November ended up 2 to 3 degrees above normal.

November Climate report for Cleveland.

That had to change sooner or later. A strong system was developing across the Rockies and was tracking east across the country, creating weather troubles across the Midwest. When the cold front began to move across northern Ohio Wednesday night and Thursday morning, low pressure developed and deepened along the front and surged warm air northward again into northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania Friday morning. Finally, the system departed the area and with it winds gusted over 60 mph and temperatures fell 20 to 25 degrees by evening. Wind damage was reported area wide with numerous trees and power lines down.

The ground was prepped with a half inch to an inch and a half of rain on Thursday making any additional rainfall a flooding hazard. On Friday, an additional inch and a half to two and a half inches fell over the Maumee, Portage, Sandusky, Blanchard, Huron, Black River basins flooding many places along those rivers.

The following three images depict the warm and cold frontal progressions across the region. Temperatures are in green in the upper left hand portion of the observation. Wind gusts, when observed, are at the head of the arrow pointing away from the wind barb. The times for the images are 11 am, 1 pm, and 4 pm, respectively.