Hurricane Melissa is now a Category 4 storm moving northeast over Jamaica. Aretha Taylor, a part-time resident of the island riding out the storm in Ocho Rios, joins “The Takeout” to describe what conditions are like.
Hurricane Melissa downgraded to Category 4 as it moves over Jamaica – CBS News
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The National Hurricane Center has downgraded Hurricane Melissa to a Category 4 storm after it made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday afternoon as a Category 5. CBS News meteorologist Zoe Mintz has the latest.
A community trick-or-treat party at McKenna Park in unincorporated Pierce County turned into a mass incident Saturday when a large tree fell onto vendor booths, killing a man in his 30s. The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office reported five to seven people were initially trapped, with others suffering injuries ranging from minor to serious.
ROY, Wash. – Law enforcement in Pierce County have confirmed one person is dead and multiple more were injured when a tree fell on a Halloween event at McKenna Park just outside of Roy, Washington on Saturday. The local community was hosting a trick-or-treat event at the time of the incident.
What we know:
The tree split just after 1 p.m. on Oct. 25, killing a man in his 30s and trapping somewhere between five and seven more people who were in the booth area of the holiday event, according to initial reports from the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office and Central Pierce Fire and Rescue.
There were 40-80 people in attendance on Saturday afternoon, including children and adults. First responders called the scene “chaotic” and are responding to the “mass incident” under triage protocol due to distance from the rural town to area hospitals.
Map showing scene of Roy, WA Halloween event that turned deadly on Saturday afternoon.
What we don’t know:
The exact number of people injured is still working to be confirmed, along with the nature of injuries sustained by the victims. Local authorities are treating injuries from minor to serious.
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The remnant storms of Typhoon Halong tore into western Alaska with such ferocity that they pulled Steven Anaver’s home from its foundation and buoyed it across choppy water — with him inside.
“I was inches away from death,” he wrote on Facebook.
The storms’ blistering winds and record-high water levels laid waste to several small communities on Oct. 12, displacing more than 2,000 people and requiring one of the most significant airlift operations in Alaska history. At least one person died, and two others are missing.
The water started rising quickly the night of Saturday, Oct. 11, in Anaver’s village of Kwigillingok, where Alaska State Troopers said at least 18 people were rescued. Videos he shared Monday with The Associated Press conveyed the desperate scene as the waters rose inside his home and the flooding raged outside.
At around 3 a.m. on Sunday, the water level rose to Anaver’s knees in about 10 minutes. Shortly after, his home teetered, tilted and started floating.
Plastic bags, boxes of blankets, a leather boot and furniture cushions floated in videos Anaver took from inside. The walls swayed like a ship’s. Outside, the power had long since been out. Dark waters lapped the house just a few feet from the window as the home drifted away. Anaver heard loud booms, and frigid wind rushed through a hole that opened in one wall.
“This was a big challenge for my anxiety,” he said. “I kept calling my family.”
More booms shook the home as waves crashed it into other structures.
“Oh God,” he wrote in a Facebook post around 5:30 a.m.
Anaver tried to take pictures to orient where he was — the camera could see better than his eyes in the darkness — but it was futile until the moon came out later that morning. He could eventually see a house he recognized. He had floated for roughly a mile.
A small hill with a board sticking out of it had stopped Anaver’s home just feet from the river, which had dragged other houses much farther away.
After 7 a.m., when the water had receded enough, two neighbors in waders came over and helped him out.
Anaver’s community was one of two Yup’ik communities that were hit hardest. In the other, Kipnuk, troopers said they rescued at least another 16 people from the catastrophic floods.
A home is left damaged in Kipnuk, Alaska, on a stream bank after the remnants of Typhoon Halong caused widespread destruction in the coastal village in Western Alaska, Friday, Oct. 17, 2025.
Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News via AP
State troopers estimated that at least eight homes in Kipnuk and Kwigillingok were pushed from their foundations as the villages were struck by “strong winds and heavy flooding, which caused significant damage” in both areas.
Blewett Pass (US-97) is closed in both directions on Monday morning after heavy snowfall caused several disabled semi-trucks and collisions at milepost 164.
The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is working to clear the roadway, but there is no estimated time for reopening as of 7 a.m.
BLEWETT PASS, Wash. – Both directions of Blewett Pass (US-97) were closed due to weather and crashes Monday morning but have since reopened.
What we know:
At about 6:30 a.m., the Washington State Department of Transportation said heavy snowfall with several disabled semi-trucks and collisions shut down the roadway at milepost 164.
The agency reported it had been snowing since 5 a.m.
Crews said shortly after 10:00 a.m. Monday that US 97 Blewett Pass reopened with traction tires advised.
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The Source: Information in this story came from the Washington State Department of Transportation.
The remnants of Typhoon Halong brought hurricane-force winds and catastrophic flooding to coastal communities in western Alaska on Sunday, pushing entire houses off their foundations.
Rescue aircraft were dispatched to the tiny Alaskan villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, where there were reports of up to 20 people possibly unaccounted for, said Jeremy Zidek, spokesperson for the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
“We have received reports that people’s homes have floated away and that people were potentially in those homes,” Zidek told The Associated Press.
Alaska State Troopers said both Kipnuk and Kwigillingok were hit by “strong winds and heavy flooding overnight, which caused significant damage, including at least eight homes being pushed from their foundations.”
In Kwigillingok, at least 18 people were rescued, while at least 16 people were rescued in Kipnuk, Alaska State Troopers said Sunday night local time. Three people were still unaccounted for in Kwigillingok as of 6:50 p.m. local time. Troopers had also received reports of people still unaccounted for in Kipnuk, but could not confirm the exact number.
More than a dozen agencies are involved in the disaster response, CBS affiliate KXDF-TV reported, including the Alaska National Guard.
“The Alaska Organized Militia, which includes the Alaska National Guard, Alaska State Defense Force, and Alaska Naval Militia, has been requested to activate up to 60 members to assist with storm response operations across affected western Alaska communities,” the National Guard wrote Saturday.
Alaska governor: “Help is on the way”
More than 170 people stayed overnight at a community shelter in Kipnuk, where the water rose overnight 6.6 feet above the highest tide. At least eight homes were swept away, Zidek said.
Roads and boardwalks were inundated and power lines were damaged in Bethel, Napaskiak, Napakiak, and other Yukon-Kuskokwim communities. Crews worked to clear the airport runway in Bethel, which was littered with debris from high winds. The area is among one of the most isolated in the U.S., where some communities have few roads and residents use boardwalks, boats and snowmobiles to get around, Zidek said.
“Every effort will be made to help those hit by this storm. Help is on the way,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy said in a statement.
Dunleavy also said he has expanded the state’s disaster declaration to include areas impacted by the storm. He initially issued the disaster declaration Thursday in western Alaska following another powerful storm.
Coral reefs around the globe have for years suffered publicly in warming oceans, periodically making headlines when iconic underwater landscapes lose their colors and wither during repeated mass bleaching events caused by climate change. Now, reefs are the first environmental system on Earth to pass a climate “tipping point,” according to a new report by climate scientists who call the situation an “unprecedented crisis.”
Researchers at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute in England have released their second Global Tipping Points report, which examines some of the fundamental processes that support life on this planet in terms of their proximity to benchmarks that may signal permanent damage.
“Tipping points represent critical thresholds in Earth’s climate system where small changes can lead to significant, often irreversible consequences,” the authors said in their report. Steve Smith, a research fellow at the Global Systems Institute and one of the report’s co-authors, told CBS News that tipping points are “all about that point at which change becomes self-propelling, kind of a self-accelerating change.”
Bleached coral is seen at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico on Sept. 17, 2023.
LM Otero / AP
The report, published Sunday, comes three years after the institute released its first iteration in 2022 and about a month before the United Nations hosts COP30, an annual climate change conference, in Belém, Brazil, a city in the Amazon rainforest that is itself an example of a major global ecosystem on the brink of a climate emergency. Tim Lenton, the director of the Global Systems Institute and lead author of the report, said in a statement that he hopes his team’s findings make it onto the agenda.
“We are rapidly approaching multiple Earth system tipping points that could transform our world, with devastating consequences for people and nature,” his statement said. “This demands immediate, unprecedented action from leaders at COP30 and policymakers worldwide.”
The 2015 Paris Agreement set upper limits for global warming at 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius — between 2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — above average levels in preindustrial times. But leaders have repeatedly warned in the years since that countries are falling short of the emissions targets necessary to meet those temperature goals, with the U.N. declaring greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere reached all-time highs in 2023. By 2024, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported temperatures had risen to about 1.4 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average.
“A new reality”
Higher ocean temperatures have already degraded coral reefs, which are crucial for marine life and provide habitats for roughly one-fourth of all underwater species. The new report points out that reefs also support the livelihoods of about a billion people, so their deterioration is as much an economic threat as an environmental one.
Scientists have determined that the “tipping point” for coral reefs begins when global warming reaches about 1.2 degrees Celsius, with somewhere between 70 and 90% of coral dying when that number climbs to 1.5 degrees.
“We’re very confident that, unfortunately, we’re in the middle of the coral reef dieback,” Smith said, which, he explained, essentially means “the collapse of coral reefs worldwide.”
Reef death is often catalyzed by bleaching, when heat stress causes coral to purge the colorful algae that sustains it and, in turn, become pale and weak. If the stress persists and bleaching is severe or prolonged, the coral can completely break down.
In this image provide by NOAA, a fish swims near coral showing signs of bleaching off the coast of Islamorada, Florida, on July 23, 2023.
Andrew Ibarra / National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via AP
The International Coral Reef Initiative announced in April that an estimated 84% of the world’s coral reefs were under heat stress. As the new report notes, this is “the most extensive and intense” mass bleaching event ever recorded.
Small pockets of coral are expected to survive, Smith said, and preserving them while minimizing the progression of warming temperatures should be everyone’s top priority.
“We’re in a new reality whereby we can now say that we’ve passed the first major climate tipping point, which is the coral reefs,” he said. “And obviously we’ll have to, as we say, try to reduce the damage. The quicker that we can decarbonize and take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, the better.”
Ice sheets, ocean currents and the Amazon rainforest
Other environmental systems are on the verge of passing their tipping points, too, according to the report. In addition to coral reefs, it cited the potentially catastrophic effects of a warming world on the Amazon rainforest, ocean currents that influence weather patterns, and glaciers like the Greenland ice sheet, which is currently melting and shedding the equivalent of three Niagara Falls’ worth of freshwater into the North Atlantic every hour.
“It’s a race against time, really,” said Smith. “We have to transform the whole energetic basis of society within a generation, away from fossil fuels and toward this cleaner, safer future to avoid these further tipping points beyond coral reefs and the devastating consequences that they would bring.”
The report acknowledged meaningful headway has been made in the shift toward renewable energy, highlighting “positive tipping points” that have been crossed as the use of electric vehicles, solar power and wind power becomes more widespread. The rise of solar power, in particular, is one positive transition that Smith singled out as especially “remarkable” — although he emphasized that more still needs to be done, urgently, to bring the Earth back on track.
“Getting that into the heads of our senior decision-makers is going to be important,” said Smith, “because what is traditionally thought of as high impact, low likelihood events, they’re actually becoming high impact, high likelihood, if we don’t do something now.”
A nor’easter churned its way up the East Coast on Sunday, with New Jersey declaring a state of emergency and some airports posting delays and cancellations in advance of anticipated coastal flooding, and strong winds, as another storm system struck farther south with heavy rain and flooding.
Parts of the state are forecast to experience moderate to major coastal flooding, inland flash flooding, winds up to 60 mph, up to 5 inches of rain and high surf, potentially causing beach erosion. Some volunteers were putting sandbags at beaches.
It may be sunny and dry Friday, but it won’t last long.
We may be hanging onto the bit of sunshine we have Friday, because light showers start picking up Saturday ahead of the nor’easter expected on Sunday.
Communities in the tri-state are already prepping for a nor’easter that is expected to bring coastal flooding and high winds to the area.
The nor’easter is expected to impact the tri-state Sunday into Monday, with the main concern being coastal flooding and erosion
At this time, the coastal flood watch is expected to mostly impact the Jersey Shore, Long Island, New York City and parts of Connecticut Sunday and Monday because of strong onshore winds and rough surf with anticipated swells and waves reaching up to 20 feet. Inland flooding is not likely to take place, according to the latest forecast, given that the rain will be spread out over two days. However, the rainfall total is quite significant with 1-2 inches widespread, although 3-5 inches could take place in some areas.
The most significant rainfall is expected to take place Sunday through Monday.
Wind gusts of up to 60 mph are expected late Sunday into Monday — although inland gusts will be lower, but downed trees and power outages will be possible.
The expected severe weather has prompted New Jersey to make preparations to declare a state of emergency ahead of the nor’easter. The State of Emergency will begin 10 p.m. Saturday.
“Starting on Sunday, a dangerous coastal storm will begin to move past our state with extreme weather conditions for several counties, especially those on the Shore,” Acting Governor Tahesha Way said in a statement. “In preparation for this storm, I am issuing a State of Emergency for all 21 counties out of an abundance of caution, authorizing our state’s emergency services personnel to activate as necessary. I urge all New Jerseyans to exercise caution, monitor local weather forecasts and warnings, stay informed on evacuation protocols, and remain off the roads unless absolutely necessary.”
The storm will still be in our vicinity off the coast through early Tuesday. However, by later Tuesday and Wednesday, the weather calms down.
ClimateWatch: Extreme flooding in the U.S. – CBS News
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In this episode of “ClimateWatch,” CBS News national environmental correspondent David Schechter looks at the floods that have devastated communities in the United States over the past two years.
It’s well past the statistical peak of hurricane season, but we’re just now beginning to see the Atlantic basin wake up and get very active.
Two strengthening systems are drifting through the western Atlantic Ocean, and one of them will make a play for the Carolina Coast.
Hurricane Humberto is now a major hurricane and should remain so for the next several days. The good news is that there is a high level of confidence it will get caught up between high pressure in the central Atlantic and low a low pressure trough to the north. The steering currents will pull Humberto east and take it out to sea with no direct impact the East Coast.
Indirectly, it will cause rough surf along Atlantic beaches.
Of more concern is the less strong of the two systems – Potential Tropical Cyclone 9 – which is set to become Tropical Storm Imelda over the weekend.
This storm will move toward South Carolina and has the potential to slow down or stall completely near the coast. Current modeling indicates a very uncertain track once the storm gets to the coast, thanks to very weak steering currents. Should it stall there, the Carolinas could be lashed with heavy rain for days.
On its way to the US, it will drop heavy rain over eastern Cuba, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Bahamas this weekend. But it’s the Carolinas that appear most at risk.
SC governor declares state of emergency as tropical system takes aim at coast
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster declared a state of emergency Friday, ahead of a tropical system that will impact the Carolinas.
The storm, which is now called Potential Tropical Cyclone 9, was off the coast of Cuba Friday. It is expected to gain strength and turn into a tropical depression called Imelda early this weekend.
>> Watch the forecast video at the top of this webpage for the latest track on the storm.
The “cone”, issued by the National Hurricane Center, shows the storm turning into a hurricane and making landfall anywhere between Florida and the North Carolina coast.
It will impact the Carolinas either way.
It looks like it will be a rainmaker for the Charlotte area starting Monday night or Tuesday morning. The storm could bring strong winds and possible severe weather.
There is still uncertainty but as the storm moves closer to shore, our meteorologists will have a better idea of what to expect.
The governor’s order activates the South Carolina Emergency Operations Plan and directs the South Carolina Emergency Management Division to prepare and coordinate procedures with all relevant local, state, and federal agencies in advance of the landfall of a potential tropical storm or hurricane. The order also allows state and local emergency management agencies to be eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursement for storm-related expenses.
“As this storm approaches our coast, I am issuing a State of Emergency to ensure Team South Carolina is able to access and deploy the resources and personnel needed to prepare for and respond to this storm,” said McMaster Friday in a news release. “While the storm’s arrival, speed, and intensity remain hard to predict, we do know that it will bring significant wind, heavy rainfall, and flooding across the ENTIRE state of South Carolina. We have seen this before. Now is the time to start paying attention to forecasts, updates, and alerts from official sources and begin making preparations.”
VIDEO: ‘Changed a lot’: Fishing guide says Helene recovery is impacting ecosystems
Tropical Storm Humberto, the eighth named storm to emerge this hurricane season, is currently swirling over waters just north of the Caribbean. Although forecasts as of Thursday predict that Humberto won’t ever touch land, there is a possibility it could interact with another system developing nearby in the western Atlantic.
That’s an unlikely outcome, said CBS News meteorologist Nikki Nolan. But if such a collision does occur, it could produce what’s called the Fujiwhara effect, a rare phenomenon in which two different storms merge and become entangled around a newly formed, common center.
How the process plays out depends on the characteristics of the storms involved, according to the National Weather Service. The forecasting agency describes the Fujiwhara effect on its website as “an intense dance” between two tropical storms that can happen when they get close enough to each other on their respective tracks to reach a common point and either join together or spin around each other for a period of time before continuing along their individual paths.
Tropical Storm Humberto could potentially interact with another storm developing in the western Atlantic Ocean, in a phenomenon known as the Fujiwhara effect.
Nikki Nolan/CBS News
In the latter scenario, the storms involved must be comparably strong or large.
“Typically when one system is stronger than the other, the smaller and weaker system will get overrun by the larger, stronger one and completely eliminates it,” Nolan said.
Similar systems “will dance around each other” before going their separate ways, she continued, adding: “Very rarely has a larger system absorbed a smaller one and become larger or stronger, but it is scientifically possible.”
Humberto grew into a tropical storm Wednesday night while traveling over open waters in the central tropical Atlantic. Forecasters expect it to move northwest over the next few days and strengthen along the way, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. It’s one of two systems in the region that could potentially impact parts of the southeastern United States, including coastal areas from Florida to North Carolina, according to Michael Brennan, director of the hurricane center.
Officials at the center said Wednesday that they were monitoring a second storm churning near Humberto over the northeastern Caribbean, which would likely become a tropical depression later in the week and a tropical storm, named Imelda, over the weekend. That system is expected to strengthen as it tracks toward the Bahamas — driving up the chances of storm surge, wind and rainfall striking coastal parts of the southeastern U.S.
“With the two tropical troubles currently north of the Caribbean, these two may interact under the Fujiwhara effect in the days ahead,” said Nolan. However, because the developing system “appears to be much weaker than Humberto and several miles away from it,” an interaction between the two — if one even takes place at all — may not result in a tangled gravitational “dance.”
In the event Humberto and the second system do collide, it’s possible the paths they’re expected to travel will change, Nolan added, but only slightly.
The National Hurricane Center said in an advisory Thursday morning that Humberto was on its way toward becoming a hurricane within a day or so over the central Atlantic. At the time, the storm was located about 465 miles east-northeast of the northern Leeward Islands and had maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour.
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and issues involving social justice. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky region near Russia on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, prompting tsunami advisories for parts of Alaska.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky region near Russia on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
CBS News
Vladimir Solodov, the governor of Russia’s Kamchatka region, said early on Friday local time that a tsunami warning had been issued for the area off the east coast of the peninsula following the earthquake.
Solodov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said residents were being warned of the danger, but there had been no reports of damage.
The U.S. National Weather Service’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no tsunami threat to Hawaii.
There was no tsunami threat to British Columbia or Canada following the earthquake, officials said.
On July 30, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest ever recorded, struck Russia’s Far East, which prompted tsunami warnings in coastal towns in multiple countries.
A giant sinkhole that opened on a Westchester County highway early Monday, forcing road closures, was weather-related, authorities said in a statement Monday.
Chopper 4 was over the scene as a bulldozer cruised through a giant sinkhole on the Saw Mill River Parkway, at exit 13 (Farragut Avenue) in Hastings-on-Hudson. The roadway was shut down in both directions for a time, but the northbound side reopened by about 11 a.m. Efforts were being made to reopen the southbound lanes.
The state Department of Transportation, which maintains and repairs the highway, said this weekend’s rainy weather caused the collapse. The area isn’t prone to flooding, and sees about 47,000 vehicles traverse it daily
Motorists are advised to seek alternate routes.
Heavy rain and powerful storms thrashed the tri-state area over the weekend, tearing down trees and triggering a flurry of severe thunderstorm warnings, as well as tornado alerts for parts of New Jersey.
A mapping tool that aims to provide forecasters and communities with flooding information has expanded to cover 60% of the U.S. population, the National Weather Service announced Thursday. With this development, the experimental tool promises to serve twice as many Americans as it did before.
The Flood Inundation Mapping, or FIM, tool is designed to show Google Earth-like visualizations of flood waters as they are either impacting, or forecasted to impact, neighborhoods across the country, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. NOAA is the federal parent agency of the Weather Service, which is a primary source of weather forecasts during emergencies, including floods.
The interactive, online tool allows people to learn more about flood forecasts or observations that could affect them, by exploring their regions, cities or neighborhoods. NOAA said the mapping interface updates almost in real time, which will support Weather Service forecasters in issuing flood watches and warnings.
Some local forecast offices have already had access to the tool for two years, while others have had access for one year, depending on where they are. When it launched in 2023, the tool offered flooding information for about 10% of the U.S. population, and it expanded to include 30% last September, according to NOAA.
On social media Wednesday, NOAA and the Weather Service shared a simulated image generated by the tool, which showed possible flooding along the Tug Fork River in Warfield, Kentucky, in February.
NOAA
“Local emergency teams used those maps to deploy the National Guard with high-water vehicles to affected neighborhoods where they evacuated all the residents before water entered their apartments,” the agencies said.
Originally, the mapping feature was accessible to forecasting offices in parts of Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, and it later grew to include much larger parts of the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, Mississippi Valley and Pacific Northwest regions. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands were also covered.
The latest expansion means forecasters can use the map’s services in the Great Plains, interior Southeast, Southwest and West Coast. It now covers Hawaii and parts of Alaska, too, including the Cook Inlet, Kenai Peninsula, Copper River and Prince William Sound, where flooding can be especially severe.
The Flood Inundation Mapping tool now extends from the Northeast to Gulf Coast and across much of the Midwest, along the West Coast, and across Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and parts of south-central Alaska.
NOAA
“Flooding is the most frequent severe weather-related threat, and our costliest natural disaster,” said David Vallee of NOAA’s National Water Center, in a statement. “Expanding our FIM availability has been a game-changer in providing actionable, real-time information to emergency and water resource managers, and will expand the delivery of impact-based decision support services to our core partners who work to keep Americans safe and informed.”
The mapping tool will be fully activated across the U.S. next year, NOAA said, adding that it will include 110,000 river miles near the Weather Service’s river forecast centers, which handle predictions in different regions. It will also cover more than 3.6 million miles of rivers being monitored for the National Water Model, a massive simulation that uses real data to help forecasters make predictions about the flow of rivers and streams throughout the U.S.
Sharpening communications between forecasters, emergency managers and first responders during weather emergencies, like the catastrophic floods that struck Texas in July, is a subject of national concern, particularly at the peak of the current hurricane season.
CBS News has reached out to NOAA for more information.
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and issues involving social justice. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
Thunderstorms rolled through parts of the San Francisco Bay Area and California’s Central Valley early Tuesday morning, leading to thousands of lightning strikes and sparking several fires.
According to the San Francisco Bay Area bureau of the National Weather Service, nearly 4,800 total lightning strikes were reported in the region between midnight and 5:30 a.m., which includes in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. The storm brought very little rain, with most areas only seeing .1 inch or less.
“Dry” thunderstorms rolled through the Central Valley and portions of the East Bay this morning. Most areas saw less than 0.10″ inches of rain & there were a few fire starts. Here’s an image showing ~5,000 lightning strikes (cloud to ground and in-cloud) through 530am. #CAwxpic.twitter.com/uvtzRsaxez
A map provided by the weather service shows the lightning was concentrated in the inland East Bay and a wide swath of the Central Valley from Sacramento southward.
“Waking up to thunder and lightning this morning! This is the monsoonal moisture flowing north. Quite unusual to see this in the Valley this time of day / year,” said CBS Sacramento Chief Meteorologist Nic Merianos.
Waking up to thunder and lightning this morning! This is the monsoonal moisture flowing north. Quite unusual to see this in the Valley this time of day / year. pic.twitter.com/pZO30yBgoo
The weather service said lightning may be to blame for fires in southeastern Monterey County and southwest Fresno County early Tuesday morning.
Cal Fire crews are responding to several fires that have started in the Sierra Foothills on Tuesday, including the 2-2 and 2-3 fires near the community of Copperopolis, the Copper Fire burning in Amador County, the Rock Fire burning south of Folsom and the Sierra Fire burning in Placer County.
It was not immediately known if lightning sparked all of the fires.
According to the weather service, thunderstorms remain possible through the early afternoon in the interior eastern portions of Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Benito and Monterey counties.
In the Sacramento area and Central Valley, a 10-30% chance of isolated thunderstorms continues Tuesday afternoon and evening, with thunderstorms remanining possible into the overnight hours. The highest chances of thunderstorms are in the mountains.
Tim Fang is a digital producer at CBS Bay Area. A Bay Area native, Tim has been a part of the CBS Bay Area newsroom for more than two decades and joined the digital staff in 2006.
