Ohh, Hail , Detroit area. In February

My house is being pelted by hail, pea sized for now,; but not a February thing at all normally.
it is sill actually over 60 degrees, also not a normal SE Michigan thing in FEB

Thunder is relentless now. hope power holds out.

Cleveland here. We had same. 60 right now. 30 later. 70 Monday.

Got the same a bit before the OP. Was much the same. Pea sized hail. A heavy but short bout of rain. A few really good thunder claps. Tornado siren went off (I do not think there were any tornadoes by me).

Maybe it was much worse somewhere else but this was normal stuff for Chicago.

Except, it was in February. That’s weird.

It was almost 70F 12 hours ago and it is now 37F and getting colder. So, also weird.

The usual Spring see-saw between warmer and colder is due to how curvy the jet stream is. Which is driven by the interplay between the polar airmass up north and the more tropical / subtropical airmass down south.

When that border is mostly smooth and mostly oriented east/west temps are consistent and weather is boring and seasonal. When that border is all stirred up, diving south to e.g. Arizona, then north to the Dakotas, then south again to east Texas then north to Ontario then south to Georgia, etc., then it’s a whole different weather scenario. As that whole wave pattern flows eastward each spot on the ground slides abruptly between unseasonable warmth and unseasonable chill as the airmass border passes overhead. Usually accompanied by thunderstorms that can be thundersnow on the cold side and / or tornadic on the warm side.

And yeah, global warming is expected to materially increase the number and severity of such north-south wavy patterns, which has the effect of them starting earlier into what was traditionally late winter.

Yee-haw as we all try to ride this increasingly bucking bronco. Such fun! :grin:

Metro Detroit area here as well. We were kind of lucky- the line of storms on my Doppler app had a bit of a gap or lull where it passed over us. We got rain and a few loud thunder boomers, but no hail that I noticed. It passed over pretty quickly.

Yesterday’s high of 72 was the highest ever February temperature in Detroit.

Also, Michigan had a tornado yesterday, doubling the all-time Michigan February tornado total.

mmm

Kansas City area, had a high around 80 yesterday, then the temperature started dropping after high winds from the north picked up in the afternoon. It was 26 with snow on my car when I went to bed last night.