New Year's Eve Road Alert, And New England's Weirdest Winter Storm

National Weather Service map from Monday afternoon shows a bizarre
combinayion of a ice storm warnings (in purple) and a severe thunderstorm
warning (in orange).  Usually these two warnings are in different
seasons, not together on the same day/

Hi, I'm back after a one day hiatus in which I was traveling from the blizzardy snows of South Dakota toward the very weird storminess over New England on Monday.

And what a strange storm it was!  I don't see anything the record books in which a nasty winter storm of snow, freezing rain, sleet and wind combined simultaneously with severe thunderstorms with damaging hail.

That was the situation in New England yesterday, folks!  There's a couple videos at the bottom of this post.

I'll get into more of that in a minute, but first, we're not even quite done with the storm yet.

This thing was a sprawling mess which kept sprouting new centers and new bouts of rough weather from California to Maine.

The last of these storms is near Downeast Maine, and is dumping heavy snow on the northern and western parts of that state.

It's a remnant piece of a previous part of this storm that we Vermonters have to worry about today and tonight.  In case you haven't noticed, it's pretty mild out there this New Year's Eve.

In many, but not all Vermont valley locations, yesterday's ice is melting off the trees. That's a good thing, as you don't want to have the branches weighed down by the ice and risk more tree and power line damage.

One reason it's mild out is there is a cold front of sorts attached to that remnant piece of the storm near the eastern Great Lakes.

This sort of cold front has a lot of energy with it.  There was even more lightning to report this morning in Ohio.  This front will generate some heavy snow showers as it approaches tonight.

The National Weather Service in South Burlington says the timing suggests that the heavier snow showers will come through northern New York between 4 and 8 p.m. today. They'll get into the Champlain Valley between about 7 and 10 p.m. and into the eastern half of Vermont between 9 p.m. and midnight.

This obviously means trouble for people out partying for New Year's Eve. A quick one to three inches of snow, combined with some wind, will sharply reduce the visibility on the roads, and get them slippery fast.

Probably more important is the temperature. When temperatures are near the freezing mark in this snow squally situation, it's a lot worse on the roads than if readings were far below 32 degrees. In very cold weather, a lot of the snow just blows off the roads. It does compact into some ice, but it's not too, too bad when it's super cold.

However, when the temperature is warmish, like today and this evening, water on the road freezes as the temperatures fall during the onset of the snow.  The snow will be relatively wet. Wet snow compacts into thick layers of slippery ice beneath car tires. There will still be a little water on top of all this mess, which makes things even more slick.

Arrived home from a trip to find the trees in my St. Albans, Vermont\
yard were mercifully not too weighed down by ice from Monday's storm.

Combine this with drunk drivers on New Year's Eve and you have a real mess on your hand. I get it that I'm being a New Year's Eve Debbie Downer with this news. But it's all in an effort to help you plan ahead.  

Or stay home. That's what me and my husband Jeff do every New Year's Eve.  Tonight is amateur hour. It's more fun to sip Champagne at home.

In any event, this snow tonight is good news for the ski areas. It'll be kinda powdery up there. Groomers can mix this in with the slop from yesterday, leaving the slopes in pretty good shape for welcoming 2020 with some skiing and riding

MONDAY'S WEIRDNESS

Monday wasn't the first time there's been lightning and thunder during a New England ice storm.  But these were definitely the strongest storms I and anyone else has seen with an ice storm.   For those of you in northern and central Vermont who wonder what I'm talking about, the thundersleet storms passed well south of you.

A New England ice storm is often a recipe for some thunder.  Usually, an ice storm features a very strong punch of very warm air from the south coming into New England several thousand feet overhead.

Meanwhile, low level cold air drains in from Quebec. Rain from the overhead warm air freezes on the way down to form sleet, or freezes on contact with the ground to accumulate some dangerous ice. This is exactly the situation New England faced on Monday.

This warm air above can be quite unstable and create elevated thunderstorms that form above the temperature inversion that is keeping the cold air locked in at the surface. For instance, there were thunderstorms in Vermont during the Great Ice Storm of 1998.

On Monday, the storms turned out to be quite strong, and formed into a system we normally and often see during severe thunderstorm outbreaks in the summer.

One thunderstorm formed ahead of the main line of storms and went through western and central Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut.  This storm very much resembled a supercell thunderstorms, the kind that can produce large hail and even tornadoes.

Supercells usually form ahead of the main band of storms that form along a squall line or ahead of a cold front. That's how Monday's initial storm behaved. It probably was technically a supercell, since it was rotating and had a radar presentation that resembled a supercell.

Because the storm was elevated above the cold layer near the surface, it would have never been able to spin down a tornado toward the ground. (The rotation with this storm was insufficient to produce a tornado even if that low level cold air wasn't around.)

However, supercells and that type of storm that formed Monday in central New England can produce large hail and this one certainly did. Rising and falling air currents in the storm grabbed raindrops and sleet pellets and formed large hail stones.

Some of the hail stones were an inch or more in diameter, as big or bigger than quarters and enough to dent vehicles. Certainly, these were the biggest hailstones on record for December in New England.

The main line of thunderstorms came through later, dumping more hail, and triggering more lightning and thunder across much of southern and central New England. Some of storms extended into southern Vermont.

On top of all this, the freezing rain was bringing down trees and power lines in the Adirondacks, southern Vermont and New Hampshire and much of Massachusetts.

Most, but not all of the power is back on in New England and New York as of early this afternoon.

Videos:

Security cameras caught the noisy thundersleet and large hail in Westfield, Massachusettts. And also the reaction from a stunned occupant of the building:



The freezing rain affected Ontario, Canada, too, as this enthusiastic motorist tells and shows us:

Dangerous Ice Storm Likely In Parts Of New England, New York

Areas in red are expected to be most likely to get enough freezing
rain to damage trees and power lines Monday. 

The forecast for New England and New York is coming into better focus, and it looks like parts of that region are in for a dangerous ice storm.

Areas surrounding the worst of the expected ice won't have a picnic with this, either.

The big storm in the northern Plains is still unleashing lots snow, ice and rain as of Sunday morning.  The snow and rain since yesterday has made 2019 the wettest year on record in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The old record was set just last year.  

Total snowfall amid near blizzard conditions in parts of the Dakotas and Minnesota should go over a foot in many places

This storm is dumping, or will dump, a lot of rain and create a severe weather risk today in the South a the system draws lots of moisture fron the Gulf of Mexico.

If all this makes you think the storm has a lot of moisture to work with, you're right.  And that's one key ingredient toward making life miserable in New England and New York on Monday.

That huge influx of moisture will ride up and over a warm front coming at us from the southwest. The problem is, the warm front won't make it through the northern half of New York and New England because of a stubborn chilly high pressure system in Quebec.

The warm air from the south will ride up and over the cold air near the surface that will be draining down from Quebec, setting the region up for the icy mess.

The weather setup has a few simularities to the Great Ice Storm of 1998, but luckily, this one won't be as intense and it won't last nearly as long.  So we won't have a disaster like that.

Areas in yellow are likely to get at least six inches of snow
and sleet accumulation.  Blue areas will get two to four
inches of sleet, snow and some freezing rain 

Still, at this point, it looks like a zone from the Adirondacks, southward into New York's Hudson Valley, southern Vermont, southwestern New Hampshire, western and central Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut are under the gun for a potentially damaging ice storm.

Ice on trees and power lines really starts to cause damage when ice is a quarter inch thick or more. Some spots in the zone I've outlined could easily get more than half an inch of ice from freezing rain.

As you go north and east, more into Vermont and New Hampshire, the amount of freezing rain would decrease if the forecast comes true, but they would get more sleet and snow.

Northern areas, as it stands now, should start as snow, with sleet and a little freezing rain mixing in during the day Monday. Current forecasts indicate four to six inches of sleet and snow - but not much freezing rain - roughly along and north and east of Interstate 89.

The more you head south and west of Interstate 89, the more likely you are to encounter freezing rain on Monday, though these southern areas will get some snow and sleet, too.

Another problem will be wind. Gusts will reach 30 mph, and closer to 40 or 45 mph in some of the western slopes of the Green and Adirondack mountains. Where these strong winds occur along with the freezing rain, the damage to trees and power lines would be magnified.

In the areas where the ice will accumulate the most, be ready for power outages that could last for a couple days. Even longer in more rural areas.

Those of us who will get sleet and snow can expect very difficult travel conditions all day Monday.

Some of this will last into Tuesday as mostly light snow, areas of freezing drizzle and perhaps a bit of plain non-freezing drizzle in the warm pockets continues.

The big caveat is this:  Computer models are in good agreement with how this storm will turn out.  But if the forecasts are off by only a degree or two either way anywhere in the Northeast, the outcome where you sit could turn out very different.

It's always possible that the worst of the freezing rain will set up north, east, south or west of where current forecasts put it. So keep paying attention for forecast updates.

The year 2019 was pretty stormy in the Northeast. The year is ending true to form.

Storm Update: Huge Plains Mess Today; New England Mess Monday

Ice covers trees in my St. Albans yard in 2017. Scenes like this
will be common in parts of the upper Midwest, Ontario and New York
and New England between now and Monday.

That ongoing, slow moving winter storm out in the middle of the nation is, as expected, creating a mess in the middle of hte nation and will continue to do so through the weekend.

This storm is a slow mover, especially compared to the usual fast pace of weather systems this time of year.

This makes the winter weather with this storm even more long-lasting, annoying and disruptive than usual. The storm will also be remembered as one that will have spread ice through large sections of the Plains and elsewhere.  

Then, the action will skip to New England by Sunday night and Monday, and there will be a huge mess there, too. More on that down below, but first we'll get into what's going on in the Plains.

A wide stripe from western Nebraska, central South Dakota, eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota is still getting or going to get socked by eight to 20 inches of snow.  Just east of that, in eastern Nebraska, northwestern Iowa southeastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota, they're in for rain, freezing rain, sleet, then snow, blowing snow and gusty winds, so it will be a real mess where I am in Yankton, South Dakota.

In parts of southwestern Minnesota, an ice storm warning is in effect.  Freezing rain could accumulated to as thick as a half inch, which is more than enough to bring down trees and power lines.

A little to the south in Iowa, a few areas could see enough rain to cause some localized flooding

All this precipitation in South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa is unwelcome for another reason. This year will roughly tie last year as the wettest year on record in this region.  Despite what has been until now a relatively dry December, the ground is still totally soaked from two years of unprecedented rain and other precipitation.

The snow and ice will have to eventually melt, which will just provide more excess water. The James River in South Dakota, unbelievably, has been constantly in flood stage since March.

Further south, broadly in the area where Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma meet, there is a risk of severe thunderstorms and perhaps a tornado or two later today and tonight.

ON TO NEW ENGLAND

This is just one forecast among many varying ones regarding the
potential for ice Monday. This map depicts ice accumulation
of more than a half inch in darker pink areas. That's enough to
cause damage. I would emphasize this is just one computer run
on one model and results will likely be very different, and likely
not as bad as this forecast indicates. Still something to
with out for, though. 

As the strong storm center moves into the Great Lakes, its warm front will want to come in from the southwest, bringing plenty of moisture for steady precipitation with it.

Meanwhile, cold high pressure way up in Quebec will be stubborn as hell, and not let the warm air advance.

The warm air will try to go up an over the cold air, which sets much of New England and New York up for mixed precipitation. A large section of Ontario is under the gun for freezing rain and sleet, too.

The battle between the cold and warm looks like it will reach a stalemate right over or near northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and maybe Massachusetts, so tha'ts the zone we have to really watch for ice and sleet.

Early indications are the freezing rain would be the biggest problem from the northern Adirondacks, southeastward into far southern Vermont, and into central New England, say in a broad area around Worcester.

There's a risk -not a certainty! -  these areas could see a damaging ice storm. The prolonged nature of the freezing rain from perhaps Sunday night through Monday, could bring enough freezing rain accumulations to bring down trees and power lines.

Remember, this freezing rain zone could end up being a little north and east, or a little south and west of current forecasts, so everybody in and around Vermont will want to watch this one.

People just to the northeast of the most intense freezing rain zone could end up getting a lot of sleet. I suppose that's better, because sleet doesn't accumulate on power lines and trees, it just bounces off. But if you get a bunch of sleet, it's heavier than hell to shovel away.  Far northern New England, maybe northern New Hampshire and a good chunk of Maine stand to get at least several inches of snow.

A secondary storm will likely form south of New England and move northeastward.  That would eventually help colder air leach in through all layers of the atmosphere, which would change much of the rain to snow.

Meanwhile, the parent low over the Great Lakes will slowly weaken and drift toward New England. All this means that the ski areas of Vermont and surrounding states will get a long period of snow. This would go probably from Monday night well into Wednesday.

It won't snow super hard, butthe long duration means the ski slopes would get many inches of recovery snow.  Temperatures won't be very cold, so the light snow would mix with rain in some of the valleys. Plus precipitation will be even lighter in the valleys than in the mountains.

This whole New England forecast, especially for the ice Sunday night and Monday will almost definitely change. This whole essay just gives you an idea of what we might expect. Stay tuned for inevitable adjustments to the forecast.

Bottom line: Expect lousy travel throughout the region Monday, with a risk of spotty power outages and tree damage.

I Might Get To Experience One Nasty Winter Storm Twice. Oh Joy!

By Monday, the big storm will be affecting everywhere from
the Dakotas to New England and down along the East Coast.

That large storm slated to cross the nation this weekend still looks like it's going to be a humdinger, and a huge area of the nation will be affected.

Already, a broad stripe of the United States from Arizona to Minnesota is under a variety of winter storm warnings, watches and advisories.

Blizzard conditions could well envelop the western half of the Dakotas down into western Nebraska by Saturday or Sunday.

At this point the heaviest snow looks like it will come down from in central and northeastern South Dakota, southeastern North Dakota and western Minnesota, where a good 18 inches might accumulate.

A stripe just to the east of the potential blizzard zone will probably get a lot of mixed precipitation, then snow and wind.  I'll be in Yankton, South Dakota still at that point, so that will be fun. The forecast is especially uncertain where I am, since we will be right on the edge of the snow/mixed precipitation line.

This will be a long lasting storm in the central and northern Plains starting late tonight and coming in waves through Sunday night. Precipitation rates will ebb and increase repeatedly, with the worst of the weather expected Saturday night and Sunday.

I'm allegedly traveling back to Vermont Monday, but there will still be near ground blizzard conditions in the Dakotas then, lots of wind in the Midwest, and a potential messy storm in Vermont. That'll be fun!

It's unclear just how messy things will be with this storm in Vermont.  It could be light precipitation, it could be a mix, or it could  mainly snow in some spots.

There is expected to be a sharp contrast between very chilly air in the north and balmy air to the south, with Vermont being in the transition zone.  That means it's anybody's guess what will fall from the sky.  We probably won't know exactly what to expect even up to the time the storm arrives.

One run of the European computer model gave us sort of a worst case scenario with up to a foot of snow in parts of central Vermont and enough ice to cause tree and power line damage in southern Vermont.

Take that forecast with a GIGANTIC grain of salt, as these forecasts tend to be all over the place and wrong days ahead of the event. This is just to give you an idea that this has a chance to be pretty bad, but there's no sense in panicking now. It very likely won't be as bad as this Euro run.

Christmas Is Over. So Is Quiet Weather. Brace For The Usual Winter Storms

Forecast weather map for Sunday. A big winter storm will
spread tricky weather through much of the nation. You
can see the storm's size envelops much of the nationl 

The rather odd quiet weather pattern for most of us across the nation over Christmas is about to end.

It's back to the usual winter slog of wind, snow, sleet, freezing rain, rain, thunder and other hazards that can drive one crazy with either dread or delight, depending upon your perspective.

Things were so nice on Christmas Day that there were at least a couple dozen record highs in some parts of the Midwest, and Tennessee and Ohio valleys.  

Now, however, attention turns to the next storm, which will actually affect most of the nation. It's going to be one of those big, windy lumbering affairs that starts off in California and heads northeast toward the Great Lakes.

This type of storm and storm track is the kind that gives everybody some sort of inclement weather.

Things started in the Southwest Christmas and Christmas night with heavy rain and local flooding in southern California. There was even a brief tornado warning around Santa Barbara, California, though I'm not aware of anything touching down.

As is the case with most storms like this, this system will spend today and most of Friday getting its act together over the Southwest and southern Rockies, then it will plow northeastward.

By later Friday night, snow and mixed precipitation will blossom northward through the Plains states. There's already a winter storm watch out for parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico, and I'm sure that watch and other advisories will soon expand into neighboring states like the Dakotas, parts of Iowa and Minnesota.

Where I'm staying in Yankton, South Dakota for the holidays, not too far from the border with Iowa, there's a good chance this storm will dump quite a bit of freezing rain.  In fact, there will be a band of ice with this thing probably all the way from Nebraska, through parts of the Great Lakes and eventually into northern New England on Monday.

(More on Vermont impacts further down).

Early indications are that heavy snow and near blizzard conditions could develop in the colder air from the western half of Nebraska, into central and western South Dakota, the eastern half of North Dakota and a good chunk of Minnesota.

The storm will be strong, so whatever falls from the sky will produce a lot of wind through the Plains and Great Lakes.

Severe thunderstorms and sometimes tornadoes occur with this type of storm in the warm air well south and east of the storm center.

That looks like that might be the case with this storm in the lower Mississippi Valley, but early indications are this won't be an incredibly widespread severe outbreak.

VERMONT IMPACTS

The Green Mountain State is in for two bouts of mixed precipitation.

The first one is coming through during the first half of Friday.  A weak storm system will swing a warm front our way. There won't be much freezing rain Friday morning, but a little bit goes a long way. Expect slippery roads in most of Vermont for the morning commute, which is why there's a winter weather advisory up for the early monring hours.

The storm from the Plains will affect us in New England on Monday.  It's still hard to say how much of what will come out of the sky.  The storm's warm front will try to bring some mild air in, but cool high pressure from Quebec will insist on at least trying to keep us below freezing.

This sounds like a recipe for mixed precipitation and more ice late Sunday and Monday, so we'll have to keep an eye on it. More details to follow.

"On One Foggy Christmas Eve...."

Dense fog in Yankton, South Dakota this morning. 

I've seen all kinds of weather on Christmas Eve and Christmas.  Snow, cold, wind, clouds, rain, sleet, freezing rain, you name it.

Sometimes there's been a little patchy fog, like when it's raining.  But this time of year, there's usually not much in the way of dense fog. It's most common on still summer and autumn mornings, especially during periods of wet weather.

It's usually too windy and too brisk for much fog to form around Christmas. Which made the song "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" confuse me when I was a kid. (It can certainly be foggy often in other parts of the world this time of year, but I didn't think about that).

Anyway, I felt an element of surprise Christmas Eve and this morning while on my visit with relatives in Yankton, South Dakota over the dense fog that has enveloped the area this morning.

The fog was widespread over the northern Plains, parts of the Great Lakes and elsewhere this morning. Some of it is freezing fog, which is making trees beautiful and frosty, but slickening roads. Here in Yankton, it was a tad above freezing, so there's no ice out there. But it was still tricky on the roads, as visibility was lousy.

Still, based on evidence found under Christmas trees throughout Yankton, it looks like Santa did manage to break through the fog with the help of Rudolph and successfully deliver all the presents.

Reports are the fog did not hinder Santa anywhere. Which is to be expected.

As I said, it is an unusual weather pattern for Christmas. One that will break up as more wind and storminess starts to glide across the country, returning us to a more normal weather pattern, relativelly speaking.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Vermont Christmases Seem To Be Getting Less White

Snow falls from pine trees in West Rutland, Vermont on Christmas
morning, 2017. It was the only Christmas this decade when
Vermont received a decent amount of fresh snow. 

Vermont is the land of white Christmases, so goes common "knowledge."

The 1954 movie "White Christmas" cemented the idea that Vermont is a beautiful Christmas snowscape, reliable for the twinkling lights glinting beneath the snow and frost in our Currier and Ives-style quaint villages.

But at least in the state's valleys and warmer spots, Vermont is somewhat less what than it might have been decades ago.

The data from Burlington this past decade does show that the chances of white Christmases has been iffy in recent years.  Granted, Burlington is one of the warmer and drier parts of the state, which means there's more likely to be snow on the ground away from the Champlain Valley.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, Burlington has a 77 percent chance of a white Christmas and 13 percent chance of having at least ten inches on the ground.

The decade now ending fell short of that average.

Since 2010, including forecasts for this year, snow was/is on the ground seven out of 10 Christmases, which gives a 70 percent chance of having snow on the ground for the holiday. That's seven percentage points lower than average. Close but no cigar.

This stat is based on a forecast that it will not snow in Vermont by tomorrow morning. The ground in Burlington is pretty much bare, though snow remains in some parts of the state.

Even that 70 percent chance of snow stat is deceiving. Only five of those Christmases had 2 inches or more of snow on the ground. And one of those two-inch years - 2014 -  was during a thaw, so the ground was half bare on Christmas morning and had even had less snow by afternoon.

Only three Christmases had at least six inches of snow on the ground, which means those were unequivocally white.  The deepest snow cover was in 2017, with seven inches, so we fell short of having at minimum one Christmas per decade with at least ten inches of powder on the ground.

We also fell short of the NCDC stat that says five out of ten Christmases should have at least six inches of snow on the ground. This decade, there were only three such years.

By the way, it almost never snowed on Christmas Day in Burlington during this decade. The only year with measureable new snow was 2017, when 3.5 inches fell.  Trace amounts fell on four other Christmases.

If you average out the temperatures for the Christmases over the decade just ending, it was a little on the warm side. For 2019, I'm using the forecast high and low.  If you average out the decade, the mean Christmas temperature was 26.5 which is four degrees above normal.

There were some cold Christmases, but they were outweighed by warm ones. Two of those Christmases - 2014 and 2015 - had highs in the 50s.  In 2015, the high temperature in Burlington on Christmas Eve was  68 degrees, the hottest December temperature on record.

That year, last minute Christmas shoppers strolled Burlington's Church Street Marketplace in t-shirts and shorts.

The coldest Christmas this decades was in 2013, which had a low of zero degrees.

In the record books going back to the late 1880s, the hottest Christmas was in 1964, when it reached 62 degrees. No snow on the ground that holiday!

The coldest Christmas was in 1980, and it was brutal!  The low temperature was 25 degrees, and the high was minus 5, and that occured just after midnight.  Strong north winds made wind chills unbearable. On the bright side, there was nine inches of snow on the ground that year.

On Christmas Day, 1970, there was a whopping 32 inches of snow on the ground in Burlington. This was during the snowiest month on record.

The most new snow on Christmas Day was in 1978, when 16.9 inches fell on December 25 in Burlington.

Florida Storm Floods Big Time, Brings Odd Tornado Scare

Flooding at the Fort Lauderdale airport last night. 

As I mentioned yesterday, most of the nation is having quiet Christmas week weather, but not sunny Florida, which at the moment isn't so sunny.

Parts of the state got hit by some big time flash flooding overnight. It was so bad it temporarily blocked access to the Fort Lauderdale airport.

The flooding was mostly concentrated between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, with rainfall amounts outside thar area being not as bad. Where it rained hardest, though, the rain was incredible.

Hallandale, Florida reported 12.8 inches of rain. Fort Lauderdale itself had about eight inches of rain.

The downpours hit in a very short amount of time, which made the flash flooding worse. The Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport had 4.45 inches of rain in just an hour. For comparison's sake this area normally gets about two inches of rain during the entire month of December. It's normally the dry season in South Florida about now.

Access roads to the airport were closed, and a lot of flights were delayed.  The airport has since reopened, but the water flood had been replaced by a flood of traffic from cars originally blocked from being allowed in. A number of homes and businesses were flooded in the region.

Meanwhile, in the Florida Keys, residents and tourists hunkered down as rare tornado warnings were issued. Supercell thunderstorms came ashore in that area, carrying the risk of strong waterspouts that would turn into a risk of strong tornadoes down there.

Waterspouts are common around the Keys, but almost always, they stay offshore and weak. This was a totally different scenario with the nearly Midwest-style supercells creating a risk of stronger twisters.

So far, though, there have been no official reports of any tornado touchdowns.

The storm is moving northeast into coastal Georgia and South Carolina.  Flooding is especially likely to hit coastal South Carolina today.

Early this morning, rain and high tides had already blocked sections of 26 streets and roads in Charleston, South Carolina.

The storm will then go safely out to sea and not affect the rest of the Eastern Seaboard.

Here's a news report from the Fort Lauderdale airport:

Odd Quiet Weather Pattern This Week Producing Fog, Pollution

Aftermath of a pileup on Interstate 64 in Virginia this morning.
Fog lifted after the crash. But dense fog and ice contributed
to this crash. 

The eastern two-thirds of the United States is still oddly quiet in the weather department.

Great for travel, but not so great for air quality. Or the production of fog.

The storminess we usually see this time of year mixes the air. Strong winds dissipate and blow away any emissions we produce and most of the fog that tries to form in moist air.

But high pressure is dominating this week, so the air is relatively still. When high pressure, fair weather systems dominate in the summer, you can get pollution problems too. But the strong sun of summer mixes the air, so that helps dissipate fog and pollution.

Around now, the winter solstice, the sun is weak, of course. So you don't get the updrafts caused by the sun's heating, and the air doesn't mix. In fact, an inversion often forms, in which the air above is warmer than the air at the surface. That locks in the air, not allowing fog and pollution to escape.

That's why it's hazy from the Plains through the Midwest to the East Coast this weekend. I noticed this while flying from Burlington, Vermont to Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Saturday. During a stopover in Chicago, it was actually kind of smoggy.

As my plane took off from O'Hare, you can see a brown smudge enveloping the air over the Windy City, which was anything but windy on Saturday.

Some places are worse than others. There's an air quality alert in southwestern New Hampshire, as air pollution is accumulating in low elevations there.

Elswhere, dense fog advisories were up for large parts of the central Plains this morning. Where I am this morning in Yankton, South Dakota, the sun is out, but you can see haze accumulating in the atmosphere.

Sometimes, this situation can get dangerous. Fog can get thick, and in the winter, the moisture from the fog can ice up bridges and highways. Motorists start sliding on the ice, and can't see each other in the dense fog.

Such was the case early this morning in Virginia. Dense fog and ice contributed to a 45-car pileup on I-64  and many people are injured, according to Virgina State Police.

Weather conditions will slowly begin to get more active on and after Christmas, so the haze and fog will start to decline, only to be replaced by our usual winter hazards of snow and ice, at least in some parts of the country.

Start Of Christmas Travel Looks Good, At Least (*Results May Vary)

This map shows the probability of snow through Monday, December 23.
If you're in a white area, it ain't going to snow. 

I'm heading out to South Dakota today to spend Christmas with the inlaws or outlaws, or whatever you want to call them. I'm totally psyched about today's trip.

Before you burglars get any ideas, there's people at the house and people watching it, too, so there's that.

One thing I don't like about traveling this time of year is the weather. It's usually abysmal. Flight delays, icy roads, sleet, snow, freezing rain, intense cold. It's not fun.

For those of you traveling to or from somewhere for Christmas, I'm happy to report an exception this year: Most of us will have a fine trip.  When you return towards New Years, all bets are off, because it's too soon to offer a decent forecast,

An odd, large ridge for this time of year in the upper layers of the atmosphere is giving us a break as we travel before and on Christmas.

This ridge is blocking any chance of a substantial storm, except in the Pacific Northwest and the far Southeast, especially Florida.

That means there's really no storms in most of the country that would delay flights screw up the roads or otherwise make a mess of things.  There is a fast west to east flow across the central and northern United States, so flights might be rather bumpy.  If you're sensitive to that, Dramamine might not be the worst idea.

For those of you who want a white Christmas, things are not looking good, though, at least for much of the snow belt. That ridge of high pressure is warm, and most areas east of the Rockies are in for warmer than normal weather. Read: Above freezing.

Unless you have a ton of snow on the ground, most or all of it will be gone by Christmas.

Here in Vermont, we're not going to get the most intense part of the warmth. But if your snow cover is really thin, you're out of luck. Temperatures in the valleys and mid elevations will get into the 30s Sunday and well into the 40s Monday, which would kill the snow cover.

Christmas will be seasonably cool in the low 30s, but there's nothing I see coming that would make it a white Christmas in the parts of Vermont that don't currently have much snow.

I will be in Yankton, South Dakota for Christmas. You'd think it would be a white Christmas there, but I'm dubious. It'll get up to about 50 there on Sunday, and though it will cool by the time December 25 rolls around, there's not much in the way of storminess coming there either.

But who knows?  Christmas miracles can happen. A weak system could dump a little snow on eastern South Dakota Christmas day Unikely, but possible.

I mentioned in the headline that this tranquil weather pattern will have exceptions.

An atmospheric river is coming off the Pacific Ocean, causing so much rain there is a flood risk for the next couple of days in parts of Washington and Oregon. The rain will taper off somewhat by Christmas, but it will still be damp and drizzly.

In the Southeast, an oddly strong storm will dump a good amount of rain in some areas, especially Florida and eastern Georgia and South Carolina.

By the time we start getting toward New Years, things begin to look stormier and the East and much colder in the middle of the nation but details are still sketchy. Stay tuned!

Australia Heat Unprecedented, And Fires Threaten Sydney

Worrisome front page of Australia's Sydney
Moring Herald today. 

I've been harping on Australia for a month or two now as they had such an extreme, dangerous spring and summer so far. And it just got a lot worse.

As a reminder, Australia is south of the Equator. So as we Vermonters shiver in subzero weather, it's time for heat waves down under.

Australia is always generally hot in the summer, but what's going on there is both unprecedented and scary.

For the continent as a whole Wednesday the average continent wide daytime high temperature was 41.9 C or 107.2F, which was the hottest day in Australian history.  It shattered the previous record set just the day before, on Tuesday by a full degree Celsius. Which is a lot when you're averaging out a whole continent.

A small hamlet named Nullarbor in southern Australia reached 121.8 degrees, which is the highest temperature recorded anywhere on Earth in any December, says Bob Henson in Weather Underground's Category 6 blog.

That's not quite the hottest temperature every recorded in Australia, but it was close. (The hottest being 123.3 degrees in January, 1960.

Henson, in Category 6, explains the extreme Australian heat is being caused by a number of factors. It's right around the Summer Solstice down under, so sunshine is at its peak. An  ongoing drought means the solar energy is warming the ground and the air just above it, and not evaporating soil moisture. (Evaporation tends to keep temperatures down a bit.)

A cyclical weather pattern is encouraging air to sink over Australia. Sinking air clears the skies and warms the air.  On top of this, climate change is probably turning what would have been a nasty heat wave into an extreme, record breaking one.

Climate change is affecting Australia like it is most of the world.  The trendline in Australia has been toward more intense heat waves and droughts, interspersed with more intense storms and flooding.  Ominously, this trend will likely continue in the coming decades, so the heat and fires Australia is now experiencing could easily get even worse in the future.

Speaking of wildfires, it's bone dry in the heat in large swaths of Australia, and destructive wildfires have been burning in many areas, as i've noted before.

The front page of the Sydney Morning Herald today is terrifying: "Fires Close In On City" with a large photo of an intense fire.

Two firefighters died in a crash while fighting wildfires on Thursday.  The heat and wind are iexpected to intensify through Saturday in southeastern Australia, including around Sydney, so that is far from good news.

Here's a rather dire newscast about the fires from Australia:

Those Snow Squalls Wednesday Were Big, Photogenic

ABC7 in New York captured this dramatic image of a snow squall
blowing into Manhattan Wednesday. 

As expected, Wednesday was a busy day for snow squalls in the Northeast, including here in Vermont.

Snow squalls can be dangerous, for sure, but they are pretty cool in that they are in and out so quick, and in such a dramatic fashion.  For proof, look at the the time lapse videos of a squall in New York City yesterday.  

National Weather Service offices in the Northeast issued at least 46 different snow squall warnings, notes meteorologist Jonathan Erdman (@wxjerdman) on Twitter. The NWS office in South Burlington issued six of those snow squall warnings in northern New York and Vermont.

I got a NWS Burlington warning for one of those snow squalls as I was driving north in Interstate 89 in Georgia Wednesday afternoon, and I could see it coming at me in the form of a very black cloud. I decided, wisely, to pull off the Interstate just as it was sweeping in. I took the Georgia exit and waited it out in a convenience store parking lot with my two dogs with me in the truck.

Visibility went to zero, but the squall passed in less than 10 minutes and we were on our way back home again. In this round of snow squalls, I'm not aware of any serious pileups or traffic backups because of the weather on Vermont highways.

Rare for December convective clouds spitting out snow squalls
Wednesday as seen from St. Albans, Vermont. 

The squalls took a tragic turn on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania, though, as a 20-vehicle pileup in a whiteout killed two people in White Deer Township, the Associated Press reported. 

Elsewhere, the upper lanes of the George Washington Bridge in the New York metro area shut down for 45 minutes at rush hour due to the snow squalls and the need to remove ice from the bridge left behind by those squalls.  

As most of you have surely noticed, the coldest air of the young winter season swept in behind the squalls and Arctic cold front. Here in Vermont, Burlington  had its first subzero reading of the seasoin this morning as it got down to minus 1.  Saranac Lake, New York was down to 13 below.

Pretty much everybody in Vermont was below zero this morning with wind chills in the minus teens in most spots. Wind Chill Advisories were in effect this morning.

It will only slowly warm up through Friday before a somewhat more dramatic warmup hits by the weekend. Highs then will be in the 30s to near 40.

For those doing their Christmas errands, there are no storms (or snow squalls) on the horizon at least into early next week.

Here's a couple time lapses videos of a big snow squall hitting New York City:



This one has a few time lapses, not just one:



I  can't get enough of these. Here's the area around the George Washington Bridge disappearing in a snow squall, the emerging from it whiter than before:

Snow Squalls And Whiteouts A Big Risk Around Vermont Today

A heavy snow squall in Burlington, Vermont a few years ago. 

For the third time in a week, snow squalls will make things challenging in and around Vermont today.

The snow squalls coming up will probably really be business, and be quite a bit worse than the ones last Thursday and Sunday.

Everything is coming together to make the snow squalls a lot like a summertime line of strong to severe thunderstorms.  Except of course it will snow.

A strong Arctic cold front is approaching from the west.  There's a lot of instability in the air ahead of it, so there will be lots of sharp updrafts to create towering clouds, like the kind you get with thunderstorms. The cold front is grabbing a bunch of moisture from the Great Lakes to supply the snowfall.

No guarantees, but there's actually a very slight chance that some of us will get thundersnow today.

The squalls will probably organize into a line or lines of squalls heading west to east across the region today. They won't last super long in any one place, but while you're in them it will be nasty.  The snow will come down really, really hard, the wind will pick up to maybe 40 mph in gusts, so the snow will blow around a lot.  Expect whiteouts, which are terribly dangerous on the highways.

Across the northern half of Vermont, yesterday's snowfall overproduced and accumulated more than expected. Now there is a few inches of very fluffy snow on the ground. (There's close to five inches of it in my St. Albans yard.)

That fluffy snow will also blow around, worsening the whiteouts.

The timing of these, very roughly, is as follows, as estimated by the National Weather Service: The squalls will be crossing the Adirondacks around noon, enter northwest Vermont after 1 p.m., rocking across the Champlain Valley around 2 p.m. or so, then continuing east and getting into the Connecticut River Valley and towards New Hampshire around 5 p.m. or a little after.

Since at least some of these squalls sound like they're going to be particularly intense, don't go out driving in them.  The National Weather Service in South Burlington will probably be issuing snow squall warnings as they approach.  Listen for these because they are super helpful. Snow squall warnings are much like severe thunderstorm warnings in the summer, and cover only a county or a few counties at a time.

These warnings will tell you when the squalls are expected to arrive, so you'll have a chance to sort of hunker down where you are until after they pass. You probably don't want to be out on the highways when they hit.

Snow accumulations will be hard to measure with all the wind, but most of us will get no more than one to three inches. As I said, the snow squalls won't last long, so the heavy snow won't have a chance to linger over one spot and dump big amounts.  It's the wind and blowing snow that will getcha.

Wouldn't you know I get out of work around 2 p.m., then I have to get the dogs from the kennel and drive home with them right around the time things are likely to be the worst in the Champlain Valley. I'll probably have to take my own advice and wait it out until after the snow squalls clear.

Let's hope there's no pileups on the highways before the Vermont Agency of Transportation plows and salt shakers clean up after the snow squalls.

Since this is an Arctic cold front, expect temperatures to start feeling, well, Arctic. It'll get much colder very fast behind the cold front and squalls.  Wind chills will be a factor this evening, overnight and into Thursday.

The wind chills at their worst tonight and Thursday will be in the teens and 20s below zero.

Tornado Outbreak Kills 3, Causes Huge Damage, And Alters Storm Forecast In Northeast.

A tornado destroyed this school Monday in Alexandria, Louisiana
Image from KALB

Monday's tornado outbreak in the South killed at least three people and caused millions of dollars in property damage.  But as they always say, it could have been worse.

Warnings were excellent as the powerful tornadoes moved through, and those warnings saved lives.

One such example was in Alexandria, Louisiana, which was in the path of a strong tornado with a long track of 63 miles.  In that path was the Hope Baptists School and Church, where 18 kids and their teachers were in classrooms as the storm approached.

According to television station KALB, teachers in the school received phone alerts of the approaching tornado.  The teachers hustled the children to a safer church sanctuary next door. Moments later, the school collapsed in the tornado. The sanctuary was also badly damaged, but everybody was by then hiding in protected corners of the building.

The complex was destroyed, but nobody was hurt. Just after the tornado, emergency responders  took the kids to a nearby, undamaged building where parents picked them up.

Not everyone was so lucky. A husband and wife in Town Creek, Alabama were killed by a tornado and several others hurt, according to the Weather Channel, citing an Associated Press report. 

So far, there are 37 reports of preliminary reports of tornadoes in the Deep South.

There is a history of terrible December tornadoes in the South.  A twister hit Tuscaloosa, Alabama on December 16, 2000, killing 16 people. Several rounds of southern tornadoes in December, 2015 killed 20 people.  The deadliest December tornado on record killed 38 people in Vicksburg, Missisippi on December 5, 1953.  (That was the end of a terrible tornado year in which powerful tornadoes killed hundreds of people in Texas, Michigan and Massachusetts.)

The large number of tornadoes and violent thunderstorms Monday pumped a lot of latent heat into the atmosphere, which has helped pump up a high pressure ridge off the East Coast. That is affecting the snow and ice storm hitting the Northeast today.

It doesn't change the forecast much for the northern two thirds of Vermont (One to three inches north, three to five inches of snow south).  But the extra heat and moisture in the atmosphere might boost snow totals in southern Vermont and New Hampshire up to or even beyond six inches.

And that extra heat floating around as a "gift" from yesterday's thunderstorms are creating   more favorable conditions for a lot of freezing rain in parts of southern New England, New York, New Jersey and Pensylvania. It was already a total mess in these areas early this morning.

Here's a video of a close miss tornado to the video maker's house. Her name is Heather Welch. Early on in the video you can see large debris falling and trees toppling as the twister made its closest approach to the camera person.

I probably would not have been standing under those trees. When a tornado just passes, you get something called a rear flank downdraft, which can contain powerful winds that would easily topple trees and cause additonal damage, even away from the tornado's direct path:



Another large tornado near Bogue Chitto, Mississippi:



This aftermath video of the Hope Baptist School in ??? is scary because of what could have happened to all the kids inside. Video shows the destruction and children being evacuated:

Breaking: Tornado Swarm Developing In Louisiana and Mississippi

Radar images indicated what appeared
to be a strong tornado on radar
heading toward Alexandria, Louisiana.
Note on the lower image the opposing
bright colors close to each other
indicating a tornado.

As of 1:30 Eastern Time, there have been several reports of tornadoes on Louisiana and into western Mississippi.

Details are sparse right now because this is just the beginning of a tornadic afternoon in these areas. But radar images indicate at least one or two strong tornadoes. They show "debris balls" which is debris being lofted high into the air. 

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center says a corridor in central Louisiana is now open for the development of strong tornadoes.

For the rest of the day, eastern Louisiana and western and central Mississippi seem most at risk for strong, dangerous tornadoes.

One especially dangerous looking tornado (at least on radar) was heading toward Alexandria, Louisiana, population about 47,000 as of 1:40 p.m. Eastern Time.

There is sometimes a severe tornado outbreak in the Deep South in December as strong storm systems pass through. For most of the nation, though, tornadoes are most likely in the spring and summer.

I'm sure there will be more news on this later as reporters on the ground give us storm and damage updates. Stay safe down there!

Interstate Highways Are Snow Traps

Cars stuck on a steep hill during a March, 2017 blizzard in front of
my St. Albans, Vermont house.  Luckily for the drivers, this isn't a
limited access highway like Interstate 89, so the motorists were able
to use my driveway and those of my neighbors to turn around.
They weren't stuck for hours like they would have been on the Interstate.

Here's one of those problems in which no good solutions come to mind: Snowy crashes on Interstate highways that trap motorists for hours.

Under normal conditions, the United States Interstate Highway system moves people and goods efficiently from one place to another.

Along with us dweebs in cars and small trucks, zillions of tractor trailers zip back and forth delivery goods and supplies to zillions of places and people.

Until it snows.

There's no good mechanism for getting people moving again when tractor trailers jack knife on ice, or cars slide off the highways and into ditches or other cars.

Such was the case last evening, when a snow squall froze a previously just wet section of Interstate 89 between Burlington and Montpelier. The Interstate was basically a parking lot from mid afternoon into the evening because of this mess, reports WCAX-TV.  The traffic jam continued hours after the snow squall had ended, demonstrating how hard it is to untangle an Interstate highway crash.

Elsewhere yesterday, parts of Interstate 80 in Nebraska, Interstate 35 near Kansas City and Interstate 70 southeast of Manhattan, Kansas were closed due to a snowstorm Sunday, the Weather Channel reported.

More closures are possible as the storm heads northeast into the Ohio Valley and eventually southern New England.

Snow squalls are the worst, because they cause rapid changes in road conditons and sudden white out conditions.  That's still a threat here in Vermont Wednesday, which would make it the third time in a week that heavy snow squalls either shut down parts of Vermont highways or threatened to.  Wednesday's snow squalls here in Vermont might be the worst of the bunch. (There were problems with snow squalls last Thursday and again yesterday.)

The limited access of Interstate highways that make them safer with no cars merging from side streets.  But the only way to get cars trapped behind snowy wrecks, or any kind of wreck is to wait until the mess is cleaned up so people can progress to the next exit at least.

Sometimes, people are directed into those little patches of asphalt connecting opposite lanes of highways where cops wait for speeders. Then the motorists can go basically U-turn back toward their starting point but that takes a long time to accomplish too.

Police and first responders must give priorty to getting the injured to hospitals, investigating the cause of the crash, and getting things cleared in a safe manner that doesn't cause more injuries.  Plus, they often don't have the manpower to figure out a way to move all the stuck traffic behind the wrecks.

That's why people are often stuck for hours behind Interstate crashes. They're not the highest priority, I'm afraid.

My advice, and it isn't perfect:  Make sure you have a full tank of gas, especially in the winter, before you venture out.  If they say snow squalls are on the way or are already here, stay home.  Try to listen or hunt for traffic alerts so you can avoid gummed up areas.

As we enter a winter full of ice storms, snowstorms and snow squalls, you, too might be stuck on the Interstate for a long time.  They only way to manage it is to be prepared.

This Coming Week Super Busy For All Of Us: Here's Weather We'll Deal With

It'll probably look like this occasionally in
Vermont as people rush to get their Christmas
stuff done. 

Today through next weekend is a frantic time for many of us as we get ready for Christmas. There's decorations to keep putting up, there's a lot of holiday shopping and errands to do, parties you either want to or have to go to, or you have to travel.

By next weekend, right before Christmas, I hope things will settle down for you and me. But meanwhile, we Vermonters, as always, have weather to deal with.

So here's a brief day by day breakdown of what you'll have to deal with in the Green Mountain State. Luckily, there's nothing too extreme coming down the pike, but it is Vermont.

There are complications. Also note as we look at things later and later in the week, things might change from current forecasts. But we have a good idea generally what will happen

TODAY (Sunday).  Expect lots of wind.  Pretty much all except western Vermont north of Bennington County is under a wind advisory today for gusts reaching 50 mph.  Even in relativel "calm" areas, like the Champlain Valley, winds will go to 40 mph or higher.

There will probably be a few power outages, especially in the eastern half of Vermont because of the wind.  The ground is quite saturated, so the wind will more easily push over shallow rooted trees.  Today is not a good day to install outdoor Christmas decorations. And for gawd's sake deflate those damn blow up decorations so they don't blow all over the place.

MONDAY: This will be a quiet, relatively calm day to get things done.  The sun will be out a good part of the time, and the wind will be much lighter than it is today. It'll be chilly, but nothing scary for mid-December with highs somewhere in the 20s.

TUESDAY:  A little bit of trouble for your Tuesday.  A mid-size storm will be passing by to our south, and that will throw some snow into Vermont.  This is subject to change, but as of Sunday, forecast trends have pushed the storm further south than first thought a couple of days ago.

If this trend holds, southern Vermont would get the most snow, with maybe six inches in some favored spot.  Northern Vermont could get as little as one to three inches. There still are uncertainties on how this storm will play out, so stay tuned for possible changes in the  snow forecasts. It could still go up or down.

Note that this same storm is likely to cause severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes in the Deep South Monday. Plus, for those of you who are traveling, there's a lot of risk for a bunch of freezing rain from Oklahoma to southern New England as this storm travels cross-country.

It could get particularly nasty in southern New England, southern New York, Pennsylvania and parts of New Jersey on Tuesday. It's probably a good idea to avoid those areas on Tuesday if you can.

WEDNESDAY: At least part of the day could prove to be, um, interesting here in Vermont. It'll start off quiet enough, but a sharp cold front will raise the risk of heavy, potentially dangerous snow squalls. Kind of like what we had last Thursday, but possibly even worse.

It's not definite that we'll get the snow squalls, but there's a lot of players coming together that could produce them.  If you're venturing out Wednesday, listen to forecasts first.  The National Weather Service in South Burlington and other Vermont meterologists are pretty damn good at timing these things out.

It's too soon now to say when or even if those snow squalls will develop, but pay attention to forecasts all day Wednesday.  That'll give you a sense when whiteouts and dangerous road conditions are most likely.

THURSDAY: Quiet and very cold for this time of year, though it won't be a record breaker. It looks like highs will only be in the teens to around 20 with lows a few degrees either side of zero. At least that's how it looks now.

FRIDAY: Still quiet and cold. A risk of a subzero morning, but temperatures should moderate a bit by afternoon.   It'll still be chilly, but highs in the 20s aren't all that bad.

Let's Go Back To Australia For More Weather Drama

A recent wildfire near Perth Stadium in western Australia. An incoming
heat wave will only make things worse.  Photo: AFP via BBC.

Summer has barely started in Australia, and the extremes are just coming fast and furious down under.

We've already mentioned the massive wildfires hitting large parts of the nation/continent. To make matters worse, a long lasting, intense heat wave is now moving into pretty much all of Australia, which is very roughly the size of the United States, excluding Alaska.

Perth in far western Australia, and Melbourne, in the southeast are expecting high temperatures of around 105 degrees this coming week, according to the BBC.  There's even a chance Australia could break the record for its all time hottest temperature, which is 123.3 degrees.

And there have been incredible thunderstorms, producing massive hailstones that have pummeled and wrecked countless cars, roofs and windows, and flash flooding that have quickly inundated neighborhoods. Some areas around Brisbane got as much as five inches of rain in a little more than an  hour.

Before you say that at least the storms are dropping rain to squelch all those wildfires, think again. The storms, intense as they are, have been quite localized, causing patches of severe damage, but not wetting down most of the landscape. So the fires burn on.

Image from the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
shows a big upward trend in that nation's temperatures.

Still, areas around Brisbane got a little drought relief from the storms, so that's a small area of good news in hot, burning Australia. However, areas in southeastern Australia below Brisbane with the most intense fires got little or no rain.

The incoming heat wave will also dry out any place that did manage to get some rain and hail, increasing the risk of wildfires.

If you think I've been harping on Australian heat and fires every winter (their summer), you're right. Like most of the rest of the world. Australia is heating up with climate change, so the summers are generally hotter there. That, in turn, helps make the bush fires, bigger, more intense and longer lasting.

Even if the heat and drought are briefly interrupted by thunderstorms, destructive as they may be, they're generally not enough to overcome the effects of the summer heat

Here's a hailstorm wrecking a roof of one Australian house in the past couple of days:



News report on the Brisbane storm. Mixed emotions, clearly. Happy for the drought-relieving rain, not so much for the flash flooding:



Meanwhile, in New Zealand, heavy rains caused this huge cliff to collapse. Hope nobody was standing beneath it!

Stormy Vermont Weekend, But Nothing Like Iceland!

Flooding in Johnson, Vermont from the October 31/November 1 storm
this year.  A storm that will look similar on weather maps to this
one will hit Vermont this weekend, but the real-life effects will
NOT be nearly as bad as the previous storm.  Photo by Jenn Chittick.

The bad news is we are in for a rather stormy weekend here and in the rest of New England.  The good news is that although the storm will be similar in some ways to that destructive flood and wind storm at Halloween, it won't be nearly as bad.

This weekend's storm will look a lot like the storm two months ago on weather maps. But it will look radically different here on the ground. If there's damage this time, it will be quite light.  

Also, it won't be nearly as bad as a storm that swept through Iceland a few days ago. I'll get into that in a bit.

First, the weekend storm here in New England.

The first problem will come this evening in the form of a very light drizzle or freezing drizzle. That doesn't sound too bad at all, but remember, it takes just a tiny bit of ice to make roads very dangerous.  This evening's ice will mostly affect eastern Vermont and the Adirondacks. It will also be mainly a problem on untreated roads and sidewalks.

It's looking like the Champlain Valley will be a tad too warm for the drizzle to freeze, so that's good.

Overnight and Saturday morning, the storm will produce a hefty slug of rain. It will be setup sort of  like that Halloween storm, with rain riding north amid lots of moisture coming in from the south. This will be ahead of the storm's cold front.

I do want to emphasize that on the weather map, this will be somewhat similar to Halloween, but for those of us on the ground who have to live with it, this will clearly NOT be nearly as big a problem.'

Many of us could get an inch or even more of rain in some spots out of this.  But there's not much snow on the ground to melt, so that won't add much to the runoff.  And the expected rainfall totals are a lot less than the two to five inches we got on October 31.

The bottom line is there will probably be areas of minor flooding across Vermont and surrounding areas, so you will want to watch out for that.  You won't want to drive over flooded roads, and avoid any flooding in general. But this certainly won't be the disaster we experienced a couple months ago.

There is a somewhat higher risk of flooding from this storm over far eastern New England, where rainfall is expected to be heavier than in Vermont.

Rain will probably turn lighter and more showery Saturday afternoon, but then pick up a little more Saturday evening all the way into Sunday.  This rain will turn to mostly a wet snow overnight Saturday into Sunday morning. Accumulations will be light, but the mountains might pick up a few inches.

Snow showers will probably continue all day Sunday, but they won't amount to anything, really, in the valleys.  There will be a bit more accumulations when you go uphill, especially along the western slopes of the Green Mountains.

Also, in a way that was similar to the October 31-November 1 storm, the wind will really crank on the back side of the storm on Sunday.

Again, it won't be nearly as bad as it was a couple months ago. But wet soils and gusty west winds will make it easy for shallow rooted trees to topple, much like they did on November 1.

Since winds will be lighter than they were then, the chaos of widespread power failures looks unlikely. Still, some people will lose power, and tree branches and even a few trees on Sunday amid the gusty winds.

The worst of the winds look like they will be on the east slopes of the Green Mountains and Adirondacks.

There's no rest for the weary. Another storm looks like it will come through on Tuesday with a batch of snow and/or mixed precipitation. It's too soon to figure out how extensive that storm might be.


HUGE ICELAND STORM

Iceland, a country I'd like to visit due to its cool geography, is not a place to visit in the winter.

It's dark, cold and stormy up there, as you might imagine for an island that far up in the North Atlantic.

The Capitol, Reykjavik, actually has average temperatures this time of year similar to Vermont's. (Although summers are much, much cooler in Iceland than in Vermont.)

Winter storms, however, are much stronger in Iceland than here in the Green Mountain State, and they just got hit by an immense doozy.

As the Washington Post and other media outlets report, Winds gusted as high as 149 mph on at least one location in Iceland, and sustained winds were at 63 mph in Reykjavik.

The nation of about 360,000 people was also hit by up to ten feet of snow.  Most places had much less than that, but it was hard to measure, given that the winds were so strong.

The storm was probably the worst in ten years.  Most roads were impassable because of snowdrifts.  This in a North Atlantic nation that should be used to winter weather.

Iceland is positioned in a spot that naturally makes it stormy.  Iceland is as far north as southern Greenland, northern Canada and central Alaska.  So yeah, it's close to the North Pole.
'
But the warm Gulf Sream in the Atlantic Ocean passes northeastward just off the eastern Icelandic coast. That explains why Iceland is relatively mild in winter, given how far north it is.  Yet it's sofar north that extreme cold lurks nearby.

That contrast helps fuel powerful storms, like the one they got this week.

Some videos. The first one looks unpleasant enough:



Here's a view from inside an Icelandic Coast Guard vessel:



I do like how nonchalant people in Iceland are in storms. Here's a video of Reykjavik as the storm was bearing down.  It looked nice. Despite the snow, cold and strong winds, a guy was walking around in shorts, a busker played guitar on a corner, and parking was tight as people enjoyed holiday season shops and restaurants: