US

Weather Underground midday recap for Wednesday, March 10, 2010.

Several weather systems produced unsettling weather activity throughout the nation on Wednesday.

In the West, a dissipating front produced pockets of light rain and high elevation snow from portions of central California through the Pacific Northwest during the morning and afternoon hours. To the east, a trough of low pressure from the Pacific continued to crank out a mix of rain and snow across the Great Basin and portions of Arizona and New Mexico. Meanwhile to the south, another storm system in northeastern New Mexico produced significant rain and snow showers and gusty winds from northern New Mexico and Colorado to the Southern and Central Plains. Elsewhere, a cold airmass remained in place over southern California and yielded to cool daytime highs.

In the Midwest, a quasi-stationary low pressure system produced unsettling weather activity from the Northern Plains through the Great Lakes. Wrap-around moisture from this system combined with cold air to produce a mix of rain, snow, and ice. A warm front associated with this system reached across Mid-Mississippi Valley through the Mid-Atlantic and aided in producing active weather in the Southeast. A swath of increasing rainfall and thunderstorms developed from eastern Mississippi to South Carolina. Some thunderstorms in eastern Mississippi and Alabama ran the risk of turning strong to severe with hail and locally damaging winds. The risk of heavy rainfall and flash flooding throughout these states increased through the afternoon as showers and thunderstorms became more widespread.

Temperatures in the Lower 48 states Wednesday have ranged from a morning low of 1 degrees at Clayton Lake, Maine to a midday high of 90 degrees at Laredo, Texas.