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| Here's one depiction, anyway, of a potential Christmas Eve/Christmas storm. Actual results may vary, depending on updated forecasts and information. |
Last year, it was a nasty flood in the Ohio River Valley and an even nastier ice storm in the Toronto region, northern New York, and parts of Michigan, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
This year, big swaths of the nation and sections of Canada are in for it again. Some of the forecast details are a little squishy, but I can give you the broad brush, as it stands now.
The first trouble spot, starting today, is the Pacific Northwest. A "Pineapple Express" sort of type of storm is hitting that region.
Pineapple Express is a colloquialism for a storm that taps deep tropical moisture from near Hawaii and swings into California, causing a big horrible downpour that can cause flash flooding and nasty mud slides. That happened a couple weeks ago.
This storm is a variant of the Pineapple Express. Now, a storm has grabbed ahold of tropical moisture from way, waaayyyyy over in the South China Sea and put that moisture into an express lane and a direct route to coastal Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.
Environment Canada says the Vancouver metro region can expect about two inches of rain in a short period of time today and tonight, causing some flash flooding.
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| Will all this snow that fell on northern Vermont contribute to flooding during a warm Christmas Eve rainstorm? It's possible. |
In the coastal and western mountainous regions of Washington and Oregon, up to a foot of rain could fall in some spots over the next few days. Many areas are in for at least four or five inches of precipitation.
Substantial flooding is forecast on a number of rivers. Also, parts of that region had a hot, dry summer with plenty of wild and forest fires. Where there's no vegetation left from the fires, there's a high risk of mudslides, debris flows and flash flooding.
The rain will continue all week in the Pacific Northwest, but the most intense pieces of the storm will enter the Rocky Mountains, where a pretty good Christmas week dump of snow is setting up for the skiers.
Once it crosses out of the Rockies, the storm will regroup in the Plains States. It'll turn into a powerhouse as the storm moves north into the Great Lakes States on Christmas Eve.
This will create a wide variety of problems. Severe weather is possible near the Gulf Coast Christmas Eve ahead of the storm's cold front.
Widespread areas will get nasty winds. This is especially true in the Great Lakes, coastal New England, the Maritime Provinces of Canada and the western slopes of mountain ranges in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York.
That's especially not good in New England, which has already seen two storms that produced widespread power outages since Thanksgiving. The region won't need a third electricity cutting storm.
Northern New England and northern New York are doubly at risk from this storm. Aside from the wind, this region had a heavy, wet snowstorm last week. A light, cold rain fell into the snow three days ago.
That means there's a lot of moisture for so early in the season in the snowpack.
Very warm temperatures, an inch or two of rain and high humidities for this time of year during the upcoming storm could cause rapid snow melt and flooding in some areas of the North Country Christmas Eve and part of Christmas Day.
The storm will depart more into Canada on Christmas Day so the weather will settle down.
But an active weather pattern will continue into the New Year, so expect more storminess in much of the country as we close out 2014 and start 2015.
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