A snowstorm, severe weather and a tropical storm landfall all occurred in the U.S. during Mother's Day weekend 2015.Five years ago this weekend, a strange juxtaposition of weather events spanning the meteorological spectrum affected the United States in a way unlike any other recent Mother's Day weekend.
There's plenty of weird weather on the table this Mother's Day weekend, from record cold in the East to unusually late lake-effect snow, high and low pressure records and record warmth in the West.
But it won't hold a candle to the oddity of Mother's Day weekend 2015.
First, a swarm of severe thunderstorms spawned tornadoes from eastern Colorado and Texas to Arkansas, Iowa and South Dakota on May 9 and 10. Three of those tornadoes claimed a combined five lives in eastern Texas and southwestern Arkansas.
This round of severe thunderstorms was both destructive and deadly, but it's par for the course for the nation's heartland in May.
A porch collapsed under the weight of heavy snow in Chadron, Nebraska, from the Mother's Day weekend snowstorm of May 9-10, 2015.While severe thunderstorms were rumbling over the Plains, a snowstorm was hammering the Rockies and High Plains.
Named Winter Storm Venus by The Weather Channel, this Mother's Day weekend storm was the heaviest recorded snowstorm so late in the spring in Rapid City, South Dakota, where 13.6 inches of snow was measured. Up to 2 feet of snow was reported in the Nebraska Panhandle.
It was certainly an impressive snowstorm. But May snowstorms aren't as rare as the phrase sounds in the Rockies and High Plains. And the combination of severe thunderstorms and a snowstorm is quite common each spring, fall, and sometimes in winter, as well.
'Ana' For Mother's Day
What tipped an otherwise active Mother's Day 2015 weekend toward the bizarre was a tropical storm landfall.
After it first developed as a tropical depression off South Florida on May 6, Tropical Storm Ana became the record-earliest tropical – or subtropical – storm to make landfall on the U.S. Atlantic Seaboard when its center moved ashore on Mother's Day morning near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Track history of Tropical Storm Ana from May 6-12, 2015.Ana produced some flooding rainfall in the coastal Carolinas, as well as some minor beach erosion and wind damage, but overall had fairly low impact.
Because Ana formed in early May, weeks before the "official" start of the Atlantic hurricane season, we had the surreal occurrence of a winter storm and tropical storm landfall on the same day in May in the U.S.
Winter Storm Venus, Tropical Storm Ana, and severe thunderstorms in the Plains states are shown in this satellite image from the Suomi NPP satellite on May 10, 2015.Ana also kicked off a five-year streak in which the Atlantic hurricane season's first named storm developed before June 1.
Weird Mother's Day Déjà Vu
Amazingly, this happened once before on Mother's Day.
Just two years after President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating it a national holiday, a snowstorm and a tropical storm were simultaneously on the U.S. weather map on Mother's Day, May 14, 1916, as noted by Brian Brettschneider, an Alaska-based climatologist.
Déjà vu 5/14/1916: Landfalling TS in FL. Prob. severe wx in Plains. Lead, SD had 8" snow on date and 41" storm total.
According to NOAA's Best Track Database, a tropical storm made landfall on Mother's Day morning 1916 near Cape Sable, Florida, then tracked up the Florida Peninsula, providing some much-needed rainfall.
As that was happening, heavy snow was pounding parts of the Plains – including, as in 2015, western South Dakota, as Brettschneider noted in his tweet above.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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