Challenging Weather Winter For New Englanders, And Forecasters

Coastal flooding in Highlands, New Jersey this morning. 

As we well know, the weather in New England has been all over the place this winter, with plenty of extremes, and quite a number of surprises. Most of the surprises have been bad.

Examples abound: The storm surge flooding in Massachusetts with the January 4 nor'easter was much more destructive than anticipated. 

The January thaw on the 12th was much warmer and much wetter than many forecasters anticipated. The result was ice jams and flooding that was worse than originally predicted region wide.

Today turned out to be another day of surprises for New England. Not so much here in Vermont: The cloudy, chilly weather that had been forecast for today by the National Weather Service in South Burlington and other Vermont meteorologists is verifying pretty much perfectly.

Not so in southern and eastern New England. Meteorologists knew an offshore storm would brush that region with some light to even locally moderate snow today. Once again, we have an overperforming storm.

As of 10 a.m., it was still snowing in parts of that region, and there are already several reports of six to eight inches of new snow in parts of Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Connecticut.

It's pretty gusty out there, too, with winds of up to 45 mph on Cape Cod and the Islands.

This is by no means a blockbuster snowstorm by New England standards, but it did surprise morning commuters with more snow than was in the forecast.

Worse, coastal flooding all along the coast from New Jersey north is a little worse than anticipated. We're nearing a full supermoon again, so astronomical tides are even higher than they normally would be. The not-so-impressive storm off the coast was forecast to make the tides a little worse, so some coastal flooding had been anticipated well in advance.

Though by  no means records, some of the coastal flooding is definitely worse than anticpated this morning.

Shoreline flooding has been reported in several communites in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Social media videos show flooding in Scituate, Mass., along Morrissey Boulevard in Boston, Hampton, New Hampshire and Ogunquit, Maine.

This isn't good. The flooding isn't super destructive, but let's face it. It's an astronomical tide that shouldn't be a big deal. The storm off the coast isn't that big at all. There should be basically no coastal problems.

Yet, we've got this. Sea level rise caused largely by climate change does seem to be making life along the New England coast, along with many other areas, more perilous.