Stormy Weather: Brace for More of the Same

Stormy, cold weather is, of course, standard during the winter, but December was exceptionally stormy across the United States, and the wild weather ride is likely to continue in January and February.

The South has been hit especially hard to date. Snow, generally light, fell where it's normally a rarity: western and southeastern Texas, as well as in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Of greater importance, the Deep South was pounded with flooding rain, dangerous thunderstorms and even dozens of winter tornadoes.

One of these southern storms turned northward along the East Coast during the third week of December. That created a record-breaking and paralyzing snowstorm (often referred to as the Blizzard of 2009, even though it technically wasn't a blizzard in most locations) from western North Carolina through the Middle Atlantic region. Then, a second massive storm, a full-fledged blizzard (Christmas Blizzard of 2009), pounded the Plains on Dec. 24 and 25.

The stormy December weather was caused by two main weather factors: widespread cold air and an abundance of El Nino-driven southern storms. Both of these are expected to continue in January and February.

The cold air is being predicted by the government's coupled forecast system, a long-range forecasting model that accurately predicted the December cold. It's forecasting colder-than-normal weather in the entire eastern half of the country and all of the Deep South in January. Look for less extensive cold air along the Eastern Seaboard and in the Deep South in February.

Meanwhile, the current El Nino will continue to influence the weather for the rest of the winter. An El Nino occurs when sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are warmer than normal. This one has been strong enough to add fuel to the southern branch of the jet stream, resulting in more numerous and more intense storms in the southern part of the country. It should continue at its present strength into spring, according to the Climate Prediction Center.

This means there will be additional storms while cold air is abundant -- a potentially headline-grabbing combination. The details, of course, can't be determined this far in advance, but the cold and storms could merge for major national snowstorms or even Deep South snow. Or the cold could retreat in advance of storms in the Deep South, resulting in heavy rain and dangerous thunderstorms, along with the specter of more flooding, while the north remains locked in widespread cold with little snow. Or it could result in some of everything, as we've already seen.

But no matter what the scenario, the weather is almost certain to be dramatic, just as it was in December.

Paul Oakenfold on Brittany's Great Musical Potential

Until Brittany Murphy lent her voice to the penguin Gloria in the 2006 animated hitHappy Feet, the public had gotten only a taste of the chanteuse within the actress on a No. 1 dance club track called "Faster Kill Pussycat," written and produced by Grammy-nominated British trance artist Paul Oakenfold.

"Brittany trained as a singer before she did as an actress," Oakenfold tells PEOPLE. "She was a great actress but she had great vocal potential."

At first, Murphy wasn't so sure she wanted to be attached to Oakenfold's song. She told PEOPLE in 2006, "I've been singing my whole life and [recording] a lot of anonymous vocals. And this was another anonymous vocal, 20 minutes behind the booth in the recording studio two years ago. Then Paul had asked me if I'd put my name on it. The song is so incredible, I said 'Yes,' and we made a video."

But Oakenfold intended Murphy to be the centerpiece of his music video all along. "Her presence on the video is very powerful," he says. "She is very commanding visually and that's what we wanted. We wanted that energy and she did a great job."

As for putting her name on the song, Oakenfold recalls, "I said to her, 'Why hide behind something? You have a really great vocal. People are going to be shocked and pleasantly happy with what they're going to hear. You are not one of these actresses who are trying to sing and not doing a good job of it.'"

And he should know.

"I demoed three other girls on that song," Oakenfold says, "and some of the girls were pretty big singers – and Brittany blew them away."

In recent years, Murphy had been in the process of recording her own album. "She would have done well," Oakenfold says. "She wanted to try this with me, this smoky blues sound with electronic rhythms. She wanted to sound more traditional originally but I told her we should go more edgy. She was really excited by that and it's just a shame it never got as far as people thought it could. It's just a shame that the world is not going to hear more songs of Brittany Murphy."