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: