8 Weird Things We've Seen In The Weather This Week, Including Huge Hail, Long-Lived Dora And A Tropical 'Ghost'

 Jonathan Erdman

Published: August 11, 2023

T​he past week's weather has had been weird in multiple ways, from huge hail and strong tornadoes in strange places to long-lived tropical cyclones or remnants to more eye-popping record heat.

(​MAUI FIRES: Latest News | The Weather Behind The Catastrophe | How To Help)

1. D​ora went exploring. Dora would become only the second storm in reliable records dating to 1971 to be at hurricane strength in all three Pacific basins: Eastern, Central and Western Pacific. Only John in 1994 also accomplished that trifecta. And once Dora moves across the International Date Line, it will be called Typhoon Dora.

(​MORE: Complete Analysis Of Dora)

2. Another Pacific storm's "ghost" soaked California. As Dora was exploring, the remnant moisture and spin above the ground of former Tropical Storm Eugene brought showers to Southern California Wednesday through Friday. One location in Ventura County picked up over an inch of rain. While remnants of tropical storms and hurricanes sometimes track into the Southwest U.S., summer is the heart of California's dry season.

3. The largest severe thunderstorm outbreak so far this year was in August. When you think of massive severe weather outbreaks in the U.S., April, May or June might first come to mind. But Monday's outbreak produced over 750 reports of severe weather, primarily in the East in the form of damaging thunderstorm winds. Though Monday's outbreak spawned far fewer tornadoes, its total number of severe weather reports was more than the prolific March 31 tornado outbreak (704 total reports).

Preliminary filtered reports of severe weather (tornadoes, large hail, damaging or high thunderstorm winds) in the U.S. over 24 hours ending 8 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023. The number of reports are shown at left.

4. It spawned a strong tornado for upstate New York. One of the tornadoes the outbreak did spawn was rated EF3 in upstate New York's Tug Hill Plateau. Not only was that the Empire State's first EF3 tornado in nine years, it was also by far the strongest since at least 1950 in Lewis County. In an area known more for prolific lake-effect snow, the tornado heavily damaged parts of the Snow Ridge Ski Resort.

5. Uncommonly huge hail pelted the Commonwealth. That outbreak also spawned supercell thunderstorms with giant hail. One hailstone found about 60 miles south-southwest of Washington, D.C., measured 4.75 inches in diameter. That was Virginia's largest hail in 55 years, just shy of the unofficial state record of 5 inches. That was just one of over a dozen reports of huge hail in Maryland and Virginia, a highly unusual occurrence for early August in the mid-Atlantic states.

Photos of large hail up to 4.75 inches in diameter recovered near Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, on Aug. 7, 2023.

6. But another hailstone may have set a state record. The following evening, a massive hailstone found by stormchaser Dan Fitts outside the town of Kirk, Colorado, was 5.25 inches long. If confirmed by a team of meteorologists, that would top Colorado's previous state record hailstone from 2019. That prior record hail also happened in August and just 20 miles south of where this hailstone was found.

7. The record heat was far from ordinary. As all this was going on, parts of the South continued to sear in day after day of record heat. Perhaps the most eye-popping were the "low" temperatures. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which tied and then blew by its all-time record hottest low each day. Del Rio, Texas, had never seen 110-degree-plus heat in August, until they did that three times in five days. We have much more on this in the link below.

(​MORE: Complete Recap Of Recent South Record Heat)

8. The Slovenian record flood to Scandinavia storm connection. From Aug. 3-4, catastrophic flooding hammered parts of Slovenia and southern Austria in what was estimated to be the costliest natural disaster on record in modern-day Slovenia, according to Aon's weekly report. Turns out some of the energy and spin from that storm helped spawn Storm Hans, which triggered massive flooding in parts of Norway and damaged more than 400 buildings in Latvia.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. Follow him on X/Twitter, Facebook and Threads.

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.