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| Water vapor imagery from the National Weather Service shows an incredibly dynamic storm taking shape in the East as of late Sunday afternoon. |
This storm that's coming in, originally billed as a flood threat, is turning into more of a damaging wind event for the region.
Flooding is still a good bet, especially in parts of New York, New Jersey, northeastern Pennsylvania and I think parts of New Hampshire and Maine. Already, flood warnings are up for a wide swath of New Jersey, and the heaviest rain is just now reaching that state. They have hours of downpours to go.
The New York City metro area is also very much under the gun for flash flooding overnight.
The wind is going to be the big weather maker with this storm, though. If anything, signals have become stronger and stronger all day that we're in for a big blow. That's here in Vermont and also much of the rest of the Northeast.
So far the wind hasn't been that bad, and has been fitful. But that was expected as the main action will come late tonight and Monday morning. (It'll probably begin sooner than that in southern New England and Long Island.)
Still, it's already beginning. As of late this afternoon, gusts have reached 43 mph in East Berkshire, Wells, and Underhill, Vermont, says the National Weather Service office in Burlington, Vermont. This happened many hours before the conditions become ripe for the strongest winds.
As of 5 p.m. there were already 400 or so Vermont homes and businesses without power, mostly in Addison County. Again, this is many hours before the main event arrives.
While the entire Northeast will have damaging wind gusts and power failures, there are areas in particular where the wind will be especially strong.
Those places will be all coastal locations on Long Island, all of the New England coast, on up into parts of the Maritime provinces of Canada. Winds in a few of these spots could easily gust past 70 mph. Along the coasts, the strongest winds will come through between roughly 10 p.m. tonight and 4 a.m. Monday, though later up toward Maine.
Other areas under the gun for wind gusts of up to 70 mph or maybe even more are along the western slopes of the Green Mountains in Vermont, parts of the northern Adirondacks, and downslope wind zones in parts of Vermonts's Northeast Kingdom and northwestern New Hampshire.
Here in Vermont, if you live in towns like Bakersfield, Jericho, Underhill, Cambridge, Huntington, Richmond, Bristol, and communities just east of Rutland will probably be especially hard hit.
The dynamics of this storm are so strong that we'll have to watch late tonight and tomorrow morning for some of these west slope of the Green Mountains winds to extend further west, with possible gusts to 60 mph in the more populated communities of Rutland City and Town, Middlebury, the Burlington metro area and St. Albans City and Town. No guarantees the wind gusts will get that strong there, but it's something to watch.
No matter what, the wind will howl, and this will be a bigger blow than our standard type of windy storm.
A band of heavy rain will probably precede the strongest winds. A punch of drier air looks like it's going to wrap into the storm system late tonight and early Monday. That would make it a little easier for screaming strong winds a few thousand feet above us to mix down to where we live in the form of sporadic strong gusts.
It also looks like a cold front of sorts will form Monday morning and pass through the Champlain Valley with more strong to damaging and shifting winds
Power failures and tree damage in the hardest hit areas of Vermont and other parts of the Northeast will probably be pretty extensive, and I wouldn't be surprised if some areas have no electricity for one, two, possibly even three days. (Though I think most places will get power back within hours, or less than a day.)
Vermont Emergency Management put out a helpful checklist of things to do this evening before the storm, and during it.
Among them:
1. If you haven't put aware or secured outdoor objects like lawn furniture and Halloween decorations, do it now, before the wind really gets cranking.
2. Have headlamps, flashlights and LED and battery operated candles ready to go and easy to find in the dark. If the power goes out, it will probably be while it's dark. Don't use regular flame candles. They could cause fires. And as I said, charge up those electronic devices.
3. Be ready for a rough morning commute. If you can, avoid driving while the wind is strongest, as it's harder to control your car in wind gusts, and trees and branches and power lines might be falling on roads. Be prepared for fallen trees on roads. And don't drive over fallen power lines. That's dangerous. Also, watch out for flooded roads.
4. If you use a generator, make sure it's running well away from the house, and certainly not in it. If you do, you could easily die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
It will remain gusty all during the day Monday, but you'll start to notice the strongest winds dying down a bit in the afternoon and evening. The strongest winds for most of us will come out of the south and east overnight and tomorrow morning, then shift to westerly. The strongest winds in much of northern New York will happen once the wind shifts to the west on Monday.
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