Severe Holiday Weather Slams the United States for Christmas

There's some severe weather hitting the United States this holiday season. On Dec. 23, a storm system brought tornadoes to Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana.

NASA's RapidScat captured data on winds while NOAA's GOES satellite tracked the movement of the system. More specifically, RapidScat spotted high winds in the Gulf of Mexico while Mississippi was experiencing tornadoes late on Dec. 23. One image RapidScat captured showed that winds were as fast as 67.1 mph off of the southeastern coast of Texas. As the system moved each, RapidScat revealed that there were surface winds of the same strength near south central Louisiana east of Mobile Bay, Alabama.

NASA also created an animation of visible and infrared satellite data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite that showed the development and movement of the weather system that spanwed the tornadoes affecting the Gulf Coast of the U.S.

So exactly how bad was the weather? Holiday travel on Dec. 24 included widespread rain for the eastern U.S., snow and wind for the Great Lakes and more snow for the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains. It's possible that severe weather will continue across portions of the southeast with damaging winds being the primary threat.

Want to see the severe weather for yourself? Check out the video for yourself below, courtesy of NASA and YouTube.

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