A Gusty Sign Of Winter

A big dead falling branch smushed some of
my hostas as winds gusted to 45 mph
around my home in St. Albans, Vermont.  

You don't need a stronger sign that winter is coming than what happened in Rapid City, South Dakota today.

They had their earliest snowfall on record.  And many areas of the Black Hills of South Dakota had several inches of snow. Pretty incredible.

Locally, where I live in Vermont,  we had signs today of the approaching cold season, too, but it was more subtle than the West's cold snowball to the face.

Here in Vermont, it wasn't even cold, with temperatures in the upper 60s and 70s.  So what was the the sign of winter?

In two words: Strong winds. The wind howled from the south ahead of a cold front, gusting to 45 mph at the National Weather Service office in Burlington. Similar wind speeds were noted elsewhere in Vermont and New York.  And the gusty winds lasted all day.

There were scattered power outages, and lots of (mostly small) branches and a few trees were blown down.  My yard is littered with lots of twigs and branches, and I've only begun to clean it up.

Strong winds left a trail of twigs and branches
across my lawn in St. Albans, Vermont.  

That we had such a strong wind was because a storm system to our northwest was pretty strong.

In the autumn and early winter, increasingly powerful low pressure systems often move northeastward across the middle of the country, and on up into the Great Lakes.

Or, a nor'easter gets going along the coast, and we get the winds from that, along with rain and snow.

This is a contrast to summer, when storms are weak, and so are cold fronts.

They generate gusty, sometimes severe thunderstorms every once in awhile, but it's extremely rare to get a day-long bout of gusty winds in mid-summer. But very gusty dayts are common in New England from now on through the winter.

So yes, winter is coming.

By the way, that cold front that came through will keep temperatures in the Northeast fairly chilly for the next few days. On the bright side, we're doing better than Rapid City, South Dakota: No snow is in the forecast just yet.