Another Day Of Weather Extremes Across Vermont, Northeast And It Ain't Over Yet

Boston Post Road near Enosburg, Vermot covered
with ice chunks and water as the Missisquoi River rises
amid rain and record high January temperatures Friday.

As of late afternoon Friday, we're still experiencing quite an extreme weather day here in Vermont and in the rest of the Northeast.

Flood watches and warnings, and a variety of winter weather alerts remain in play overnight and into Saturday as some truly bizarre weather moves through.

Record highs were abundant today across the region, just five days after record cold. As of last report, it got up to 61 degrees in Burlington, Vermont, breaking the old record of 55 degrees set back in 1980.

That's a full 81 degrees warmer than the record low of 20 below set just this past Sunday. Elsewhere in Vermont and eastern New York, there were a few reports of temperatures as high as 64 degrees.

Two more kind of weather geeky observations from today: Dewpoints got into the mid 50s. (The dewpoint is the level the temperature has to fall to fully saturate the air. It's a decent measure of how humid it feels out there.)

A dewpoint of 60 degrees in the summer makes us feel a little sweaty. Dewpoints in the mid-50s, like today, are actually quite common in July here in Vermont. Remember, if you can, one of hose pleasantly warm summer days when you're at the beach and it's sunny and 80 and the sky is blue and the humidity isn't so bad and it's a perfect out for swimming and picnicking and anything else. The dewpoint was probably in the mid-50s on that day you are remembering.

Another indication is something called precipitable water. It's kind of technical, but it's a measure of how much water is in the air that's available to come down as rain or some other form of precipitation.

Precipitable water is usually much higher in the summer than in the winter, since warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. In New England, precipitable water values were at record highs for this time of year.

No wonder. Much of the moisture feed for this current storm is coming straight from the Caribbean Sea. That's a lot of warm, moist air. No wonder the precipitation has been so heavy, and the air has been so warm and humid today.

Everybody in the Northeast is getting heavy precipitation and that will largely continue through tonight, and in some areas, well into Saturday.

One river of heavy rain has been moving today from southwestern New England into central western and central Massachusetts, central New Hampshire and into Maine.

Here in Vermont, the rain hasn't been quite as heavy, but it's still substantial. (Burlington, on top of its record high temperature, today had its wettest January 11th on record. - 0.64 inches of precipitation as of late afternoon and still counting.)

Add to it this warm, humid, which melts snow at the fastest rate possible, and no wonder pretty much all the snow has disappeared from valleys and melted substantially from mountains. And no wonder flooding is a problem.

Now, of course, that long promised sharp cold front is entering the region as of Friday evening.  The cold air will blast in near the surface of the earth first, and the warm air will linger a bit higher overhead.

That moisture feed from the Caribbean is continuing tonight, but will glide up and over that onrushing cold air.

We're still looking at the rain changing to freezing rain from northwest to southeast across the region tonight. Since temperatures will be crashing so fast, any standing water will freeze, too. It's called a flash freeze and you can get why.

Over New York, and the northwest corner of Vermont, the precipitation will be quicker to change to sleet and then snow overnight and into Saturday as the cold air really establishes itself. Which means the forecast is still on track for only relatively light icing from freezing rain tonight,  followed by four to as much as 10 inches of sleet and snow accumulation throught Saturday.

Further south in Vermont, forecasters are still expected a longer period of freezing rain before the sleet and snow come in on Saturday. There still might be enough ice accumulation to cause scattered power failures and broken tree limbs.

If you were planning on traveling anywhere in eastern New York, Vermont or most of the rest of New England Saturday morning, don't bother. Between the ice left over from the flash freeze tonight, the occasionally heavy freezing rain, sleet and snow coming down, increasing north winds, blowing snow and crashing temperatures, it will be downright scary out there.

Things will slowly start to improve Saturday afternoon and night, but the temperatures will keep crashing. falling well below zero Saturday night - somewhere near 10 below.

It'll stay cold during the first half of the week and then start moderating some - but not up to 60 degrees again!

The computer models are still disagreeing about a possible storm sometime around the Tuesday to Thursday time frame. Some of the models keep insisting on a substantial snowstorm for our area, while others are saying, meh! just some light stuff.

Let's just get through this storm and deal with any other problems afterwards. Dizzy yet?

I do have to say what I keep saying: That extreme weather in one location is no proof of global warming or the lack thereof. However, we here in Vermont have had an oddly large number of completely off the rails weather events over the past few years, and they seem to be coming faster and more furiously. Today just added to that growing list.

That seems to be happeneing in many other parts of the world, too. That, trend, of an increasing frequency of bizarre weather events, IS consistent with climate change. I do think this string of oddball weather happenings is a symptom.