New England/Canada Blizzard Ending Just In Time For New Storm

Really. I just can't keep up with this.

As of late afternoon Sunday, another epic blizzard was winding down in New England and was still hammering the Maritime provinces of Canada.  

Cartoonis Gary Varvel is with the Indianapolis Star, but
he surely captured the mood of New Englanders
with this cartoon today. 

At the same time, another extremely nasty winter storm is taking shape in the south centerl United States and will cause a LOT of havoc over the next few days.

The only bright side to that is the new storm looks at this point to be aiming for just a glancing blow in New England. At least that's what it looks like now.

I'll get into the new storm in a second here, but we should do a few updates on the New England/Canada storm.

The statistics are amazing. Boston has had 95.7 inches of snow this winter, it's third snowiest on record, and there's plenty of time for more snow to break the all time record.

According to Eric Fisher, a meteorologist with CBS Boston,  it appears as if Boston has had more snow in the past three weeks than all but two or three entire seasons in the past 124 winters around Massachusetts.

Boston has also had more snow in the past three weeks than Chicago has ever had in an entire winter.

With this storm, the pace of building collapses have increased in eastern Massachusetts. I guess this one was the straw that broke the camel's back.

From @liatsvoice on Twitter, a Boston neighborhood
late Sunday afternoon.  

Among the damage reports received at the National Weather Service office in Taunton, Massachusetts  were a 24 unit apartment building with a partial roof collapse in Newburyport; a 20 by 100 foot section of a brick warehouse in Hingham that gave way; a partial roof collapse of a four family home in Quincy, and a horse barn in Stoughton.

In each case, people and animals were evacuated and there have been no major injuries. So far, anyway.

Eastern Maine got pounded again, too. Eastport, Maine and nearby towns had received around two feet of new snow as of 4 p.m. Sunday.

Up in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, Canada, things weren't going so great either.

In Prince Edward Island, Environment Canada warned about storm surge flooding and battering sea ice being pushed inland by the storm's winds and waves.

Environment Canada also warned of up to two feet of new snow in New Brunswick.

Via Twitter from Sheila Trainor, blizzard conditions Sunday
in the ironically named Summerside,
Prince Edward Island, Canada. Add caption

CBC News reports some major highways are closed, numerous flights are cancelled and power failures are occuring in the winter storm zone in southeastern Canada.

The cold is another HUGE factor in the Northeast. This current blast, if you combine the low temperatures with the strong winds, is the worst of the winter.

Wind chills were forecast to be anywhere between 30 and 50 below tonight in northern New York and across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

The cold has been persistent. In addition to breaking records for the most snow in a month in eastern New England, cities and towns in the entire region will most likely have one of their coldest Februaries on record, if not THE coldest February.

Take Burlington, Vermont, for example. Please.

Up there, in the northwestern part of New England, the snow hasn't been too bad. As of yesterday, the midpoint of the month, there had been 17.9 inches of snow in Burlington's February. That's already above the normal of about 16.5 inches for the entire month, but it's not super extreme.

The cold is, though. The mean temperature in Burlington so far this month is 7.4 degrees or more than 12 degrees colder than normal.

With the frigid forecast for the rest of the month, chances are very high that Burlington will have one of its top three coldest Februaries on record. (We thought we might catch a break since last March was the coldest on record, but I guess not.)

Today was the 21st day in a row that stayed below freezing in Burlington. This winter won't have the longest stretch of continuous subfreezing weather, or at least I hope not. Burlington would have to stay below freezing until around St. Patrick's Day, and that would be bad. But Vermont will definitely be in the Top 10 list of longest subfreezing streaks.

No change in the overall pattern is expected until at least March 5 or so, possibly later.

THE NEXT STORM

Winter storm warnings are now in place for a vast area of the middle Mississippi River valley, most of the Ohio River Valley and parts of the southeastern United States. This is really an unusually large area of the country to face a winter storm warning all from one storm.

The storm system responsible for this winter storm isn't super strong, like the nor'easter now departing New England. But it has a lot of moisture to work with. And a lot of cold air to the north of the storm.

That combination means a widespread area of heavy winter precipitation. This one is continuing a trend I've seen this winter in which even places that haven't had a super terrible winter, like New England, are getting snowstorms that are near record deep.

This happened from Chicago to Detroit in one storm earlier this month. It looks like parts of Kentucky and surrounding areas could have one of their deepest snowstorms on record.

The storm is getting going now and will continue to spread east through Monday and Tuesday.

There could be up to 15 inches of snow in parts of Kentucky by the time this is finished. Widespread totals of 5 to 12 inches are forecast from Missouri to North Carolina.

Freezing rain and sleet are a big concern in the southern portion of the vast winter storm warning area.

Some areas from near Little Rock, Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee could get up to a half inch of ice, which would bring down trees and power lines.

Quite a lot of possibly damaging ice could hit parts of the Carolinas and far northern Georgia as the storm moves east into the area Monday night.

The Washington DC area, which so far this winter has largely managed to avoid big snowstorms this winter, could get more than five inches out of this one.

As I said, the thinking, or at least the hope, is this storm will end up scooting out to sea far enough south and east of New England so that the region avoids another immense dump.

The overall weather pattern remains the same, however, so very cold temperatures and frequent chances of snows are going to continue through the end of the month.

If you want a glimmer of hope, some of the long range computer models suggest a relaxation of the extreme weather pattern starting somewhere between about March 3 to March 8.

That's highly uncertain, and we've had moments before when it seemed like this weather pattern was going to break, only to have our hopes dashed.