How freakish weather just came alive in the West

Over Labor Day weekend, the National Weather Service posted footage of a parade of tumbleweed's vigorously blowing through Idaho.  In much of the Western U.S., the weather has been extreme and fiery over the last few days. A major culprit is a massive zone of cold air that swept down from Canada and clashed with a zone of warm, high pressure parked over the West. "When you bring those two systems together — anomalously strong for this time of year — the atmosphere goes into freakout mode," said Dave Lawrence, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The meeting of these two potent and contrasting weather systems throws the atmosphere out of wack and churns up winds. Powerful gusts stoked severe dust storms in Washington — so blinding they forced highway closures. The dry winds fanned giant, rapidly moving wildfires in parched regions of the Pacific Northwest, one of which decimated 80 percent of the buildings in the eastern Washington town of Malden. In Utah, dangerous winds toppled semi-trucks and ripped big trees from the ground. "It's extreme weather," said Lawrence. Read more...More about Extreme Weather, Climate Change, Fires, Science, and Climate Environment