 |
| I bet a lot of people in the Northeast are thinking this right now. (From DepressedAlien.com) |
Just a couple other thoughts on the extreme weather we've been getting this week.
It's pretty sad to think that here in Vermont, it's at least 30 degrees warmer than it was a dawn today and the temperature is only in the low teens.
That's 20 degrees below normal for this time of day and this time of year. Which means, if we wanted to get to normal today, the temperature would have had to rise by 50 degrees this morning.
If we were dreaming and wanted record high temperatures today, which run in the upper 50s, this time of year, the temperature would have had to rise by about 80 degrees from this morning's lows.
Sigh.
There's a few updates scattered below about the cold weather damage in New England today. A rising number of towns and cities in Vermont are dealing with frozen water mains. I don't think I've seen this since at least the late 1970s.
The frost has gotten so deep into the ground that water mains are freezing. In most winters, the ground might shift a little bit from the frost and cause a water main break. But this is different. The frost is just penetrating way, way down there.
At least we're dealing with things in the North Country better than down south. A good swath of the south from Texas to the Carolinas are going to get two to as much as seven inches of snow tomorrow.
The governor of Alabama has already declared a state of emergency because of the expected snow. Birmingham, Alabama might get something like four inches of snow out of this.
That doesn't sound like much, but it would be the most Birmingham has gotten out of one storm since the Superstorm of March, 1993.
Atlanta, Georgia is expecting about three inches of snow tomorrow. Again, for us northerners, that's tiny. But for them. Rut Roh, Rorge.
PREVIOUS DISCUSSION
It's going to be quite a mud season when and if the spring thaw arrives. It's already quite a frost heave and pot hole season on the roads and it's only going to get worse before it gets better.
I like to say that where I live in Vermont, no good weather goes unpunished.
What I mean is, if you catch a break and get a nice day in the Green Mountain State, you'll soon be punished with weather even worse than expected.
My adage proved itself again. We had a relatively "nice" day Sunday, with temperatures actually getting up to near normal levels in the low 30s and there was some sunshine.
We knew the cold would return right away on Monday and it did. And this morning, our punishment for the weather on Sunday is low temperatures that were even colder than forecast.
In fact, record cold.
MANY FRIGID RECORD LOWS
Burlington, Vermont reached 19 below, eclipsing by one degree the record for the date set 101 years ago. I thought it would get into the low teens below zero, and then rise a bit toward dawn as clouds arrived and a southerly breeze that I expected to pick up.
But winds stayed light, and skies stayed clear all the way to this morning, allowing the cold to deepen.
Montpelier, Vermont had a record low of 23 below this morning, breaking the old record set in 1968 by 11 degrees.
Morning lows including minus 37 at East Berkshire and Canaan, Vermont, minus 36 at Island Pond, Vermont, -35 at Sutton, Vermont, 33 below in Whitefield, New Hampshire and 32 below at Gallup Mills, Vermont.
Most of Vermont was in the minus 20s. That level of widespread cold is very unusual for late February.
To demonstrate how topsy-turvy this weather is, while Danville and Whitefield were 33 below, Barrow, on the northern tip of Alaska was 4 above or 37 degrees warmer than those two New Engand towns.
Southern New England was cold, too. Norwood, Mass., southwest of Boston, got down to 17 below.
Matt Noyes at NECN had a very interesting statistic: At 5 a.m. this morning, the average temperature in New England was 14.7 below. That is incredibly impressive.
Other record lows this morning include -8 at Hartford, Connecticut, 6 at LaGuardia Airport in New York, 3 above in Islip, Long Island, 4 above at Newark, New Jersey, minus 9 at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 21 below at Concord, New Hampshire and 21 below at Massena, New York.
COLD CAUSES DAMAGE
In northern New England, this constant Arctic cold is taking a big toll. In a way, it's a slow moving mini-disaster, not on par with the Boston snow nightmare, but still a problem.
People are going through heating fuel left and right, and delivery companies are having trouble keeping up. Car mechanics are way behind in fixing vehicles that didn't start in the cold.
Even worse, pipes are freezing. Back in January, there was very little snow on the ground in Vermont. That allowed frost to penetrate deep into the ground.
Then the record cold of February hit. It's going to be the one of the top three coldest Februaries in northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. This means frost heaves on the roads are getting ridiculous. And much worse, water pipes are bursting like crazy.
In Winooski, Vermont, water mains in the city have frozen and burst, and some residents have not had water for days. Winooski's residents have been told to let faucets drip constantly until April, so that water flowing through the pipes will be less likely to freeze.
St. Albans, Vermont, where I live, is under a boil water order today because of frozen municipal pipes. The city is asking residents to keep water flowing from faucets today so other municipal water mains don't freeze.
(Luckily, I'm not on the city's water system. I rely on a well, and so far, knock on wood, my pipes haven't frozen.)
The town of Randolph, Vermont is also having trouble, because the frost has gotten so deep into the ground that municipal water lines are freezing.
Construction crews working in bitter cold amid flooded streets has become a common sight in many towns and cities in Vermont.
On a larger scale, if you take in the snow in the Northeast over the past month, the record cold over much of the eastern half of the nation during the past ten days, and the recent winter storms in the South, this stuck weather pattern is likely a disaster costing easily more than a billion dollars in damage.
 |
| Ice cover extent on the Great Lakes is near record high levels due to the persistent blasts of Arctic air. |
That's especially true if you take into account the businesses that stayed shuttered because of snow and cold, the people who stayed home rather than going out, the higher heating bills. Economically, this is a drag.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Now, we're going to get into another weather adage I have. In the Champlain Valley, it warms up cold in the winter.
What I mean by that is, when a strong Arctic high pressure system like the one we just had starts to move off the east, southerly winds quickly take over in the Champlain Valley of Vermont and New York.
That's happening today, so during the morning and early afternoon, temperatures will rocket upward into the teens. That's not warm, but it's still a lot balmier than this morning's lows.
The trouble is, when these southerly winds start, they funnel into the valley and get pretty strong. We'll have frequent gusts to 30 mph or more today. So while actually temperatures rise dramatically, the wind chill will stay frigid.
See? It warms up cold.
This forever style winter cold is going to largely continue, STILL, for the foreseeable future. Not just in Vermont but in most of the eastern two thirds of the nation.
It's already hitting hard in parts of the nation far from the New England ice box.
One storm system scooted along the lower edge of the cold air mass across the South. It's still producing a mess of snow, sleet and freezing rain in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Atlanta, Georgia, especially its northern suburbs, were a mess this morning. Motorists around Charleston, South Carolina were told to be careful because of freezing rain, or better yet, not drive at all.
Dallas, Texas was hit by thundersleet yesterday. That's heavy sleet accompanied by thunder and lightning. Yuck. The ice caused lots of crashes there.
Now, a new storm is getting ready to ride along the southern end of the Arctic cold, and Dallas is under the gun again for ice and snow. So is a broad band through much of Texas, Arkansas Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and, again, Georgia and the Carolinas for the next couple of days.
The storminess could clip eastern Massachusetts on Wednesday, and they could pick up a couple or few inches of snow Normally, one to five inches of snow in eastern Massachusetts is no big deal.
But with all the snow already there, even a dusting is problematic. Boston only needs 0.1 inches of snow to go over 100 inches for the season.
Another blast of Arctic air is screaming down from the North Pole this week, so more record or near record temperatures are a good bet in the Midwest Thursday and Friday.
I noted yesterday that the ridge of high pressure along the West Coast and the deep dip in the jet stream bringing the Arctic cold and winter storms along the East Coast is showing signs of backing up a little to the west.
That still seems to be happening, which would put the core of the coldest air heading into March over the Midwest.
It would still be cold and stormy in the Northeast if this pattern comes true, but not quite as cold as it's been lately. These storms would also bring more mixes of snow, ice and cold rain to New England.
That wouldn't exactly be an improvement, and might make things worse with roof collapses, snow removal problems and possible flooding later in the spring. Again, I don't have specifics about storms beyond Wednesday, but it's something we have to watch. Whatever happens, it's going to continue to be a very active weather pattern.
And not terribly spring like. I wish I had better news. Someday, I will. At least I hope so.
No comments:
Post a Comment