Boy, you stop watching the weather for 11 days and all heck breaks out. We're back, and a scan of the weather data at WeatherBlog Central finds a wacky winter tropical storm - Zeta - out in the Atlantic, pounding rainstorms and floods in California, drought and fires in Oklahoma and Texas and winter gone wild in northern Europe. You can't leave this planet alone for a second.

Let's start with Zeta. The storm, which tied the record for the latest formation of a tropical storm in the Atlantic, continues to spin at 65 mph. The 27th named storm of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, it's no threat to land, just a marvel for hurricane specialists. Anything more that forms will be counted against the 2006 season. The names will draw from the 2006 name list, starting with Alberto.

Here's the latest advisory. Here's the forecast track, in case anyone cares. And here's the view from space.

As for the grass fires in the southern Plains, this satellite photo from NASA's Terra Earth-orbserving spacecraft, taken yesterday, show the smoke plumes from the fires. The accompanying imagery shows the fires themselves as hot spots on a map. Click on either image to enlarge it.

Way out west, storms continue to blow in off the Pacific. Here's the latest radar image for Northern California. The damage has been huge. The rivers out there are receding, for now. Here is a link to the real-time river data for California. The black dots show river gauges now at record highs. The dark blue dots are those at 90 percent or more of their historic high levels for the date. Click on the dots for plots of the river's rise and fall over the past several days.

Finally, if you figured the Germans and Austrians could shrug off heavy snows in the Alps, think again. Here's a glimpse of the trouble they're having in that region after heavy snowfalls.