Snowfall Records Smashed Across The Gulf Coast

Several weather events in 2025 were weird, from hurricane season to winter storms, floods and tornadoes.

Some of these were unusual for where or when they occurred. Others were just plain bizarre.

Here is our ranked list of the strangest things we saw in 2025, ranked in terms of overall oddity.

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Since it was typically challenging to narrow this list to just 10 events, we have a short list of honorable mentions at the bottom.

(PREVIOUS YEARS: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018)

10. A Hailstorm Lasted How Long?

Hailstorms are a fact of life in the Plains. But they usually move through relatively quickly.

On Sept. 16, though, a supercell thunderstorm parked over southwest Nebraska, dumping hail larger than baseballs in and near McCook, Nebraska, for about three hours.

(MORE: The Year In Photos: How Weather Connected And Challenged Us In 2025)

As you might imagine, that huge hail in multiple rounds took a damaging toll on vehicles, windows, roofs and homes in the town.

If that wasn't enough, the stalled storm's heavy rainfall lead to rushing water over a foot deep in lower-lying areas of McCook, flooding a city park and clinching the city's wettest September day since the 1890s.

(Further beef up your forecast with our detailed, hour-by-hour breakdown for the next 8 days – only available on our Premium Pro experience.)

9. Snow Delivered By Copter To A Ski Resort

If snow doesn't fall from the sky for a while, most ski areas would have to depend on firing up their snow guns to at least generate some man-made snow during the season.

But in early December, a video was shot of an airlift of artificial snow to a summit at Monte Bondone in Trentino, Italy, during one such snowless period.

That didn't sit well with environmental groups, which claimed the fossil fuels burned by the helicopter contribute to climate change which is shrinking snowpack in the U.S. and elsewhere around the globe.

This wasn't the first time such a snow airlift was done at a ski resort. One French ski area resorted to this in February 2020 after slopes were left bare.

8. Home Rebuilt Before Damage Survey

On the evening of April 2, an EF1 tornado tore through parts of southern Michigan. What was so unusual is what happened after the storm.

When a National Weather Service survey crew arrived less than 48 hours later, they found several damaged homes and buildings were already repaired, including a mobile home, a two-story home and a pole barn.

This added a layer of complexity not often seen in these post-storm damage surveys. NWS damage surveys are usually conducted as soon as possible after a storm, before cleanup operations kick into higher gear.

In this case, the repairs made it difficult for the survey team to estimate the tornado's winds over parts of its path.

(MORE: How NWS Damage Surveys Estimate A Tornado's Strength)

7. A Flood Three Years In A Row...On The Same Day

On July 10, destructive flash flooding tore through parts of northeast Vermont, including the town of Sutton.

The previous July 10, flash flooding from the remnants of what was Hurricane Beryl struck northern Vermont.

And on July 10, 2023, flooding in northern Vermont claimed 10 lives and caused an estimated $2.3 billion damage, according to Climate Central and NOAA records.

Three July 10ths, three separate destructive floods in northern Vermont.

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6. Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand Cyclones, Flooding

Southeast Asia has a monsoon with periods of soaking rainfall. But what happened in November and early December 2025 was far beyond typical.

In mid-late November, southern Thailand was inundated by catastrophic flooding following record-breaking rainfall. According to NOAA, Hat Yai, on the Malay Peninsula, picked up almost 25 inches of rain in three days, a rainfall estimated only to have a 0.3% chance of happening in any year, there. Almost a million homes and 3 million people were impacted, with at least 162 killed.

Then it became weird.

In late November, heavy rain boosted by the first tropical cyclone of record to have formed over the Strait of Malacca — Cyclone Senyar — triggered deadly and devastating flooding in in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and southern Thailand. Large areas of Aceh, West Sumatra and North Sumatra provinces isolated with homes destroyed, bridges washed out and landslides. More than 600 were killed in Indonesia.

As that was happening, across the Indian Ocean, Cyclone Ditwah formed near Sri Lanka, then took a painfully slow crawl near the island nation, wringing out torrential rain. Catastrophic flooding and landslides claimed at least 618 lives, and severely affected almost 2 million in the country. According to a World Bank Group estimate, total damage in Sri Lanka was estimated at $4.1 billion US, about 4% of the country's gross domestic product.

5. A Sudden Announcement Of An EF5 Tornado

Just over a week after Hurricane Melissa's record strong landfall in Jamaica, on a seemingly random Monday morning in early October, the National Weather Service in Grand Forks, North Dakota, released a public statement with the headline, "Enderlin Tornado #1 Upgraded to EF5".

That was a mic drop moment for meteorologists. This June 20 twister was the nation's first to attain an EF5 rating since the May 2013 Moore, Oklahoma, tornado, though a recent study found differences between the current EF and previous F-scales have reduced the number of 5-rated tornadoes.

It took almost four months to come to that conclusion because the NWS, as is their policy, brought in a team of engineers and scientists to study the damage.

The team found the tornado’s lofting of a train car nearly 500 feet, as well as the tipping of train cars fully loaded with grain, was consistent with wind speeds of an EF5 tornado.

(MORE: North Dakota Tornado Nation's First EF5 In 12 Years)

4. Chicago Dust Storm During Midwest Tornado Outbreak

During a deadly siege of over 160 tornadoes from the South to the Midwest in mid-May, arguably the weirdest aspect wasn't directly from severe thunderstorms.

A cloud of dirt and dust whipped up by outflow winds from thunderstorms over central Illinois swept into Chicagoland, northwest Indiana and even parts of Lower Michigan. This reduced visibility to zero in some outlying areas, forcing some roads to close.

According to the National Weather Service, it was believed to be the first dust storm to affect Chicago since May 31, 1985, which was also the day of a prolific tornado outbreak in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Ontario, Canada. The NWS also said it was the strongest Chicago dust storm since the Dust Bowl (May 10, 1934). You can see a high-resolution satellite loop of the dust storm from the University of Wisconsin, here.

3. Weird Hurricane Season

It seems rare these days that hurricane season offers a little good news.

But in 2025, no hurricanes made a U.S. landfall, the first time that happened in 10 years. While the remnants of Barry helped trigger the deadly Fourth of July flash flood in Texas and Chantal brought some heavy rain to parts of North Carolina and Virginia, the track map below showed how vacant the Gulf and Caribbean Sea were.

On what statistics have found to be the typical peak day of Atlantic storm activity, the National Hurricane Center wasn't tracking any either active storms or areas for development on Sept. 10, 2025, the only known such "blank NHC outlook map" on any Sept. 10 since 2003.

Then came Melissa in late October, and its record-tying most intense Atlantic Basin hurricane landfall by both pressure and winds (185 mph) in Jamaica.

Despite the relatively bland storm tally (13), 2025 generated three Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes — Erin, Humberto and Melissa — the first time so many formed in one season since the historic 2005 season.

Even with Melissa's track, it was quite stunning to see both the lack of storms in the Caribbean Sea, and the number of hurricanes that each curled away from the U.S. mainland.

(MORE: Full 2025 Hurricane Season Recap)

2. Restaurant Swept Hundreds Of Miles Away

We were tempted to rank this number one.

On Oct. 10, flood waters from heavy rain ripped the El Atracadero floating restaurant from its moorings in Tuxpan, Mexico, and pushed it into the Bay of Campeche.

It was then sent adrift for days like a ship floating on the current until it appeared almost 300 miles away five days later near the beaches of Coatzacoalcos. Footage of the structure still relatively intact was captured by a fisherman on Oct. 15 as it appeared to be beached just offshore.

Mexico's Navy secured the structure after it was discovered.

And did we mention El Atracadero was a seafood restaurant?

1. Record Smashing Gulf Coast Snowstorm

January snowstorms in the Northeast, Midwest, West, even parts of the South are typical, not unusual.

But a late January snowstorm — named Winter Storm Enzo by The Weather Channel — rewrote the history books along the Gulf Coast.

Enzo dumped 6 to 12 inches of snow from southeast Texas to southern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle into southern Georgia, with additional accumulations into the coastal Carolinas.

People sledded in Houston. A blizzard warning was issued for southwest Louisiana and extreme southeast Texas, one of many locations where snow piled up on the beach.

New Orleans picked up 8 inches, its heaviest snowfall in modern day records (since 1948) and the city's biggest total in over 100 years. Among the incredible sights were skiers on Bourbon Street and ice hockey on Canal Street.

The weight of the snow caused the Mobile, Alabama, Civic Center roof to collapse ahead of its scheduled demolition. Almost 10 inches of snow in Milton, Florida, appeared to have shattered a state snow record from 1954.

If that wasn't enough, Enzo's remnant energy later ended up instigating one of Ireland's most destructive wind storms on record, Storm Éowyn.

(MORE: Full Winter Storm Enzo Recap)

Weird Honorable Mentions

If our list was 20, the following oddities would have also made that list.

- This Nebraska "ghostnado" with a rainbow was arguably the tornado video of the year.

- Canada had a weird stretch of weather including a record May snowstorm in a Labrador town, followed just a few weeks later by all-time May record heat for the Northwest Territories, when Hay River soared to 93.7 degrees.

- A snow plow driver in Iowa found a pickup and another vehicle completely buried in a snowbank following a March blizzard.

- One part of southern Mississippi was struck by two different tornadoes in 41 minutes.

- A water main break + arctic cold outbreak = vehicles frozen in place.

- Winds blew a giant inflatable giraffe in front of a motorist in China and broke a cruise ship from its moorings in Alaska.

- This tropical storm developed a smoking habit.

- America's hottest temperature on Aug. 26 was 105 degrees. That was cooler than Canada.

- There was a December tornado warning in Hawaii, on an island you probably haven't heard of.

- Finally, a supercell delayed a college football game.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.