I am a bit "under the weather" today, of course all meteorologists find themselves under the weather at all times but rather what I'm trying to say is that I am a bit sick with a cold/flu type thing. As such, I've worked today to bring you these "weather briefs," or lost blog entries that I meant to post, but never did.

FOG PILEUP PROBLEMS IN OREGON THIS MORNING

Fog was blamed for a 14-car pile-up near Klamath Falls, Oregon this morning. One person was killed.

TULE FOG CAUSES 100-CAR PILEUP SATURDAY:

A thick fog known as "Tule Fog" is suspected to be part of the cause of a 100-vehicle pile-up near Fresno, California on Saturday, killing two people.

NOEL'S DEADLY CARIBBEAN RAINS

NASA has uploaded an image showing the deadly rainfall amounts from Hurricane Noel in the Caribbean -- up to 21 inches - killing 115 people, the 2nd deadliest storm of the 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season.

SEVERE CALIFORNIA THUNDERSTORMS 10/29:

There was a line of severe thunderstorms that moved through central California on October 29th that I meant to document. Ironically this event was near the location of the 100-car pileup previously mentioned. Ken Clark blogged about these storms here (PREMIUM | PRO) and here (PREMIUM | PRO). What I have to offer is three downloadable* radar animations pulled from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus...

...showing the almost-supercell-like thunderstorms in both reflectivity and storm-total rainfall. Check out the outflow boundary propagating southeastward from the left side of the screen, and note the edge of the mountain range steady from NW to SE. The NWS issued a statement saying that, incredibly, an "automated gage at the Mendota Airport reported 1.42 inches of rain between 450 PM PDT and 500 PM." (thanks to Chris Burt [JessePedia], Author of "Extreme Weather" for that note). Now THAT'S what I call "heavy rain." According to the Visalia Times Delta, the NWS was "caught off guard by the severity of the storm."

ANOTHER SNOW CONTEST, THIS TIME, CHICAGO!

MyFoxChicago is having a contest to determine when the first inch of snow will fall in Chicago, not unlike the one Elliot had here a while back for Philadelphia. Below is a graph of the distribution of votes in Elliot's contest, from October through March. The most common thought was early December, and there were almost no votes on Christmas and New Years, versus the days around them, hinting at a human stigma to guessing holidays. I'm not sure whether Elliot wants the large version of the graph released or not, but if he does, I'll link it in here.

ATMOSPHERIC OPTICS EXPANDS (UPWARDS!)

Les Cowley, author of Atmospheric Optics, a site to which I frequently refer, has expanded the website to include phenomena above the Earth... he says: "Nearly all the old site topics were about effects in the first few miles of our atmosphere. The new update deals with those generated by the increasingly tenuous air above that. Topics are the atmosphere's structure, its waves, ozone and blue eclipses, temperature minima, our highest clouds, rocket trails, the airglow, magnets & glowing gases and how they produce the aurora. The final item, the zodiacal light, is not even in our atmosphere!"

PHOTOS OF NEW BRIGHT COMET HOLMES

Sorry, off-topic on Astronomy here, but only because we have a lot of photos of this comet on the AccuWeather.com Weather Photo Gallery. NASA says that Comet 17P/Holmes grew bigger last week - a million times bigger! They say "This is equivalent to the planet Saturn suddenly becoming as bright as the Full Moon."