Yesterday's snowfall makes this the snowiest winter* on record in Detroit, Michigan, which has seen 94.8" of snow so far this season. This breaks the record of 93.6" set all the way back in the winter of 1880-81. The Motor City typically sees around 42" of snow each year.

A major heavy rainfall event across the northern Gulf Coast on Monday night dumped over seven inches of rain in just a couple of hours in the town of Fairhope, Alabama, located on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay.

A weatherman for CTV in Vancouver, B.C. spent an uncomfortable amount of time on live television trying to get his microphone to work, only to give up right when he unknowingly fixed it. It gets even worse when an engineer — who looks like they dragged him out of ninth grade English for this job — walks on camera to give him a new mic.

After an outbreak of severe thunderstorms yesterday across the Central Plains made for some beautiful sights from Texas to Iowa, storm chasers took to Twitter to post their best shots.

I am not a fan of what became of The Weather Channel after NBC bought it. The station quickly started a downward spiral of suck that was a slap in the face to both viewers and science. But I have to give them credit when it's due: when they stick to the weather, The Weather Channel is surprisingly good.

The cold front is pretty easy to spot in Oklahoma this afternoon — it was 92°F in Tipton while temperatures dropped into the 50s a few counties away. A line of severe thunderstorms is announcing the arrival of the cooler air, bringing temps as cold as the low 20s by tomorrow night.

A developing low pressure system over southern Kansas is serving as the catalyst for a severe weather outbreak across the central Plains states today, including the risk for very large hail up to the size of tennis balls, damaging winds of 70 MPH, and possibly a few tornadoes.

The Weather Channel is sending out a free gift as a thank you to the proletariat for rising up against DirecTV to put the sometimes-about-the-weather network back on its channel lineup. I dearly hope it's a signed picture of Al Roker in a gingerbread costume.

Tropical Cyclone Ita made landfall a few hundred miles north of Cairns on the northeastern coast of Australia around 10PM local time (8AM today in New York). Ita made landfall as a category 4 cyclone — down from a maximum strength of 155 MPH yesterday.

El Niño is on its way...probably. The Climate Prediction Center released its latest forecast yesterday and gives the ocean warm-up a "greater than 50%" chance of occurring. Slate's Eric Holthaus did a great job the other day explaining why the potential El Niño "could be a monster."

Heavy rain across much of the country and the potential for a tornado outbreak in parts of the south will make for a crappy start to next week, followed shortly thereafter by a blast of cold air that could be the final gasp of the winter that won't die.

Environment Canada, the equivalent to the National Weather Service for our neighbors to the north, issued a special weather statement for much of southern British Columbia on Thursday afternoon to let everyone know that it's going to be sunny this weekend.

The recent warm weather melted enough snow that it left less than 10% of the United States covered by a blanket of evil white sky death for the first time since November 20. The trend is welcome news for snow haters, but it likely won't last much longer.

When you go to weather.com these days, you get almost everything but the weather. Twitterer @tehawesome translated the website's headlines to more accurately reflect what they really mean. It's pretty spot-on.

A strong ridge of high pressure is starting to bake the southwestern United States right on schedule for this time of year — with several areas expected to reach the triple digits today — but winter isn't done with the rest of the country yet.

This afternoon's surprise announcement that The Weather Channel will return to DirecTV after a nasty public dispute over programming and finances came as a shock to almost everyone who's kept up with the situation over the last couple of months.

Variety reports that The Weather Channel unexpectedly announced today that it is returning to the DirecTV channel lineup tomorrow after agreeing to reduce its reality programming by half on weekdays, and its CEO David Kenny apologized for the ugly public flap.

Some people are so amazingly stupid it's a wonder how they're able to function.

The media can't survive without a scare term to make you tune in. This winter saw the not-at-all-new-but-scary-sounding polar vortex. Sandy wasn't really a "superstorm" but hey, let's just call it one anyway. And every summer for the last few years, we've seen the derecho. It sounds new and terrifying, but what is it?

Lightning strikes during a thunderstorm over the north rim of the Grand Canyon. [Photo via U.S. Dept. of Interior on Twitter]