Central PA Snow, Sleet, Hail, Snow Devil Video

We had some pretty wild weather this week here in Central Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map of State College].

First, on Friday we had excellent conditions for "Snow Devils." Also known as Snow Vortexes, these swirls of snow form when wind swirls (which are always present, you just can't see them without dust, snow, or leaves) pick up snow off the ground and loft it for up to 30 feet in the air. Fluffy snow at low temperatures is best because it blows around more easily. Check this one out, taped by Local storm chaser Ron "R-Factor" Shawley in Vinco, PA (the video below is run at 1/2 normal speed for your viewing pleasure):

Snow devils are not as hard to see as you might think, but they are hard to catch on videotape. Try going to a nearby open field - hills and tree lines help (distanced far enough apart that they don't cut off the wind). You will probably see them, but you probably won't have your camera pointed in the right place at the right time because their formation is random.

And the second bizarre story of the week: On Wednesday, we had freezing rain, snow, sleet, and (I'm pretty sure) hail. Dying thunderstorms were making their way into southwest PA that afternoon, and at one point I was videotaping different-sized sleet falling. But since sleet is usually very consistent (and small, sub-bb sized), I believe we were getting sleet and hail at the same time. There was also some strange, elongated hail (or sleet?) that I have never seen before - it seemed that two balls of ice had become connected on the way down. Here is an annotated zoom of this photo that I took (literally hanging out the door of AccuWeather HQ):

Supporting radar evidence is shown below for both. For the hail, here are the dying thunderstorms that I mentioned (there was actually more lightning in eastern Ohio after I took that screen shot, in fact we did have one strike in Southwest PA!)

For the sleet, obviously upper-air conditions were conducive to sleet formation, as our Enhanced Radar tagged the area under "ice", which it does when it guesses (radar can't actually tell precip type) that freezing rain or sleet might be falling.