My Own Little Holiday: "Leaf Out Day"

A first hint of green in the woods behind my St. Albans, Vermont home
with some lilac buds in the foreground. 

Every spring I celebrate my own totally arbitrary holiday with my own personal arbitrary rules in which I  arbitrarily pick the date based on some green I see in my surroundings.

It's called Leaf Out Day.

Every spring, I note the first time I see any fairly sizable tree around me with new, tiny fresh green leaves. This year, the moment came two days ago, on Tuesday.

The celebration will now go on as as Ma Nature picks away at the predominant brown surroundings and turns them green.

The first "green" tree of the season is usually a very hardy poplar. They're not my favorite trees, usually, but some varieties are the first to green up.

As I said, my rules for Leaf Out Day are totally arbitrary. The scrubby invasive honeysuckle bushes on the side of the highway turned a little green more than a week ago, but I don't count those. Some willow trees seem vaguely green, too, but I don't count those, either.

I also know the spring green up in Vermont is a months long process, starting with the first crocus shoots in March and ending with fully mature summer leaves around Memorial Day, when you can finally plant your tomatoes.

The entire greening process is wonderful, but for me Leaf Out Day is the time to really start celebrating spring full blast.

Leaf Out Day's date cannot really be foretold in advance. It all depends on weather conditions. This year's was about normal as far as schedule goes. I've lived in Vermont all my life, and Leaf Out Day has changed.  It used to come in the first week of May, decades ago when I was a kid. Now, it almost always hits during the last week of April.

The earliest one I can remember was in 2002, when an early season April hot spell of 90 degrees made Leaf Out Day come on April 17.

There are other aspects of Leaf Out Day that I love. It's about the time daffodils are peaking. I also love the landscape. In areas with a decent sugarbush, you have lush green fields bordering those maple trees which have gone from winter gray to this rich reddish brown as their buds reach to a point where they are juuustt prepare to open.

Soon, those buds will pop into green, too.

Daffodils and hyacinth continue to bloom in my St. Albans,
Vermont garden. 

The greening process continues into what I call Vermont's real foliage season in May. Everybody is in awe of Vermont's autumn, but the spring foliage season is far better.

True, in the spring, most of the colors are green, but they are every imaginable shade of green. And the way the sun backlights new green leaves into this shimmering emerald is just spectacular.

The pace of Leaf Out Day, and the subsequent Leaf Out Month as I call it. The pace of that also depends on the weather. This might be one of those years where the pace is relatively slow. (In recent years, we seem to go from winter to summer in a blink of an eye.

Temperatures are forecast to be mostly cool through the middle of May. In fact, I do worry about signs that one of these cold shots might be too strong, and deep frost could kill some of these new leaves. But that remains to be seen.

All of what I just talked about is very familiar to any Vermonter who has so much as stepped outside to enjoy spring.

But do what I do. Especially in troubled times, it's great to create your own happy holiday. Leaf Out Day isn't just mine. It's everybody's. And you get to choose all those arbitrary rules as to what constitutes the holiday. Your rules might be totally different from mine, and that's part of the beauty of it. It is your own personal holiday.

It's a rolling holiday, too, starting way early in the South, maybe in late February and going up into Canada as the month of May rolls through.

Happy Leaf Out Day, everyone!

Television Meteorologists Improvise During Lockdown

Betty the weather cat poses for a quick photo while preparing a
weather forecast for the Evansville, Indiana area, with her
meteorologist human, Jeff Lyons

Very many television meteorologists are giving their reports from home, given most of us are in lockdown while we wait for the coronavirus pandemic to at least ease.

That means these meteorologists need to improvise.  Some of them create new celebrities.  For instance, WFIE-TV Chief Meteorologist Jeff Lyons set up at home during the quarnantine to give his daily weather forecasts for the Evansville, Indiana area.

A few weeks ago his cat, named Betty, made a quick cameo during a forecast. Now, Betty is a regular on Lyons' daily forecasts and is his full co-host. 

There's even graphics that Betty uses to offer forecasts. For instance, when she's forecasting rain, there's an image of her tail going up vertically, and it turns into an umbrella to ward off the wet weather.

Betty the weather cat has become a star, having been seen worldwide in viral clips on social media.  It'll almost be a bummer when Lyons eventually goes back to providing forecasts from a television studio. I hope they find some way to keep Betty on the air.

Here's a clip of Lyons and Betty, then we'll move on to another television meteorologists who is making do just fine during these trying times.



You can't have a proper televised weather forecast without intro and outro music, so what do you do when you're working from home?

Here's Welsh BBC weatherman Owain Wyn Evans, who decided he need to figure out the BBC's outro music at the end of his forecast. So he came up with this totally mean drum solo:

Too Bad The Ski Areas Are Closed.......

Brookfield, Vermont yesterday

As the cool spring weather continues in Vermont, the snow periodically keeps coming. For  most of us, when it has snowed in the past couple of weeks, the snow cover has melted pretty fast.

For instance, you saw that snowy scene in yesterday's post from a web cam grab along Interstate 89 in Brookfield. As of early this morning, almost all that snow was gone, and the remainder will have disappeared by this afternoon, I'm sure.

I bet yesterday's snow winner in Vermont, a fairly high spot in Ludlow, with 4.8 inches of fresh, albeit wet powder, will lose the remaining snow today.

It's harder to melt the snow above say, 2,500 or 3,000 feet, so the high elevations are still pretty deep in winter.   If you look toward the Green Mountains and Adirondacks during today's sunshine, you'll see a lot of snow up there.

As of yesterday, the summit of Mount Mansfield still had 70 inches of snow on the ground. Spring is a long way off there.  Believe it or not, while that amount of snow at that 3,900 foot elevation measuring site is above normal, compared to the average of 53 inches, this is nowhere near a record depth for the end of April.

All this is according to a cool, useful, interactive site by Matthew Parilla. You can compare the current snow depth up there to this date in past years. (And other dates).  Probably the latest arrivin and worst spring up on Mount Mansfield was the notoriously wintry spring of 1971.  On this date that year, there was still 106 inches of snow near the Mount Mansfield summit, according to the data Parilla has.

Right about now is when the snow depth atop Mount Mansfield just begins to crash.  It normally falls very fast through May, and by early June, it's all gone .

And Brookfield, Vermont this morning. Doesn't take long for
snow to melt this time of year, except on the mountain peaks

True to form, the next good storm, coming at the end of this week, looks like it will be rain, even at the summits.  The relatively warm weather during this expected half inch to an inch of rain will melt high elevations snows, for sure. Not all of it, but a lot of it.

That's why the National Weather Service in South Burlington is keeping an eye out for some minor flooding possible Friday or Saturday.

They're saying there will be sharp rises in river levels in Vermont due to the rain and melting high elevation snow. At this point though, if there is any flooding, which is iffy, it will be pretty much minor, nuisance stuff.

Believe it or not, there could well be a period centered around May 12 and 13 in which the snow cover goes back up in Vermont's mountains.

Long range forecasts are notoriously dicey, but if these are to be believed, another near record spell of cold weather and snow could strike Vermont then.  I'm definitely NOT saying it will happen, but unfortunately, it's possible.  Ma Nature might just have it in for our gardens, huh?

Not TOO Wintry Out There In Vermont This Morning: Good?

Vermont Agency of Transportation traffic cam image of Interstate 89
in Brookfield, this morning. Looks like there sas a good couple inches
of snow on the round there, and you can see it was still snowing. 

It's chilly and damp and raw across Vermont this morning, but early indications are, it's not that wintry in most places.

Which has some springtime lovers sighing with relief, as some areas that were expecting snow never really got it.

Snow definitely accumulated overnight in the higher elevations across Vermont, and got probably got down to as low as 1,000 feet in elevation as expected.

As of early this morning, there were not a lot of snowfall total reports, as they usually trickle in through mid-morning.

Some Vermont Agency of Transportation highway web cams showed new snow on the ground, but the roads, at least in the spots where the cameras were mounted, were just wet.

Along Interstate 89 in Brookfield, it looked like there was a couple inches of snow on the ground.  In far southern Vermont, a high elevation spot around Readsboro picked up 2.9 inches of snow.  East Barre reported 1.8 inches. Several inches accumulated on higher peaks. There are a lot of photos on social media of at least some snow on the ground in different parts of Vermont.

Rainfall (and melted snow) amounts weren't super big, either, especially in the north At my place in St. Albans, I measured 0.3 inches of rain so far - and no snow.   It was dry heading into this storm, so I was hoping for more rain than I got. Most other areas of the state got a so-so half inch of rain

We do have a shot of more substantial precipitation, mostly on Thursday, as another slow moving storm is expected to pass through. That one could really dump a fair amount of rain. At least it has the potential, we'll wait and see.

In southern Vermont, where it has been wetter than the north, it might be worth it to watch that Thursday storm, as rain might be heaviest there. The ground is already wetter than in the north, so there could be some minor flooding at the end of the week. Nobody is sure on that one yet, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

Before that happens, today will be damp and raw for the end of April. Most of us won't get out of the 40s, and light rain showers will continue. Some snow might still come down in the highest spots, but it won't amount to much.

Tuesday was initially forecast to be almost as crummy as today, but now it doesn't look terrible. Just meh. It'll be partly sunny to mostly cloudy, depending on where you are, with afternoon temperatures near 50 degrees. That's cool for this time of year, but, oh well.

Clouds will thicken up Wednesday and winds will increase ahead of that next storm. At least it will be a little warmer, with many areas getting up to about 60 degrees, which is roughly normal for this time of year.

.If you're a crazy snow lover, you're out of luck with this next storm.  It'll be a rainer, not a snower.

Spring Snow To (Temporarily) Crush Spring Hopes

A spring snowstorm in Burlington, Vermont back on April 27, 2010.
See? This kind of thing HAS happened before. 

It seems hard to believe, this late in the season, and after a really nice spring day on Saturday that brought sunshine and temperatures near 60, that much of Vermont is under a winter weather advisory for snow.  

But yep, much of Vermont is under a winter weather advisory.

It's a tricky forecast, so I'm anticipating some of the forecasted amounts of rain and snow with this system are going to off in some areas.

But I guarantee snow in at least part of Vermont and some flakes will probably make it down to valley floors in many locations, even perhaps the "tropical" Champlain Valley.

For snow die hards, some of the highest peaks, especially in central Vermont, could get buried. What I said yesterday about Killlington Peak probably managing a foot of new snow out of this still holds.

In lower elevations where most of us live, it won't be that bad. But still, a late April forecast that features a few to several inches of snow, the risk of slick roads and a few power outages, is not exactly encouraging.

The majority of Vermonters, I would say, live at elevations below 1,000 feet. In those spots, if any snow accumulates tonight, it'll be a slushy coating to an inch, which will melt on Monday despite continued chilly temperatures.

There is one interesting thing, tbough that the National Weather Service in South Burlington has picked up on. Some high resolution computer models have a particularly heavy band of precipitation setting up across central Vermont tonight.

Heavier precipitaiton will more likely be snow, so it's possible a narrow band in central or north central Vermont could pick up as much as half a foot or even more of snow. This is uncertain, but something to watch.

The higher you go above 1,000 feet, the more snow you'll get, especially in the southeastern ntwo thirds of Vermont. I'm guessing perhaps two to six inches will pile up in some areas above 1,500 feet in elevation.

The winter weather advisory (I'm sick of those three words at this point) cover all of Vermont except the Champlain Valley, lower elevations of Rutland county and the Connecticut River Valley from about Springfield south.

TRICKY FORECAST

There are a lot of complication to this forecast, as I mentioned above. The air to start this morning was very dry. Temperatures were able to get up to the low 50s by mid morning as a little sun was easily able to heat that dry air. Those will be the high temperatures for the day.

This sounds odd, but a warm front will create most of our snow risk.  The warm front, well to our south this morning, will strengthen as it moves north, but it won't ever quite make it through.

Precipitation will start to fall from the thickening clouds overhead early this afternoon.  At first, rain will evaporate on the way down as it encounters the dry air.

Eventually, as the air moistens, the rain will make it to the ground, and the temperature will fall as the rain continues. Eventually, tonight, it will cool off enough to change the rain to snow, starting at the highest elevations then working downhill.  When precipitation starts to fall especially heavily, that would pull more cold air down to the surface, encourage snowflakes to reach valleys, and create quick hits of one inch snow accumulation rates up high.

Another tricky thing is a dry high pressure system to the north. As the moisture comes in, the dry air to the north will battle it, possibly causing bits and pieces of that dry air to get mixed in with the flow of air north of the warm front.  That could cause the rain and snow to be spottier and more intermittant at times, especially along and north of Route 2.

The heaviest rain and snow will have passed by Vermont by early Monday morning. This storm is a slow mover, though, which is typical of spring storms. (The snow is unusual for this time of year, but the forward speed of the storm is not).

That means cold rain showers and high elevation snow showers will continue all day Monday, Monday night and into Tuesday. The rain and snow won't come down hard, and be mostly focused on the mountains, but the start of the week will be nasty for the closing days of April.

High temperatures both days will only be in the 40s, compared to normal temperatures near 60 degrees. On the vaguely bright side, nighttimes won't be nearly as cold in the coming days as that wintry blast we had last week.

Instead of teens and 20s for lows, temperatures will stay in the low to mid 30s tonight, Monday night and Tuesday night, though there will probably be some upper 20s showing up in colder spots Tuesday night.

OUTLOOK AND HISTORY

We get another brief break on Wednesday before the next storm lumbers in on Thursday and hangs around for a few days after that.  It still looks like that next storm will be mostly or exclusively a rainy one.  There is the potential for a lot of rain with that one. We'll have to wait and see.

The weather pattern continues to look on the cool side at least into the second week of May.  There will probably be a few warm or warm-ish days thrown in, too. And remember, normal temperatures keep rising, so the cool spells will keep getting less and less cool.

For the moment, at least, I'm not seeing signs of any more snowstorms after this one. I'm hoping we're done until  about Thanksgiving. Then it can snow again.

History doesn't always repeat itself, but I'll give a grain of hope for those longing for some hot summertime weather.

On May 9, 1977, a record late snowstorm struck New England, including much of Vermont. Up to 20 inches of snow fell on central Massachusetts, felling lots of trees that were already in full bloom. Parts of Vermont got more than six inches of snow.

Just eight days later, on May 17th that year, it was up to 90 degrees, and a few days after that, Burlington set its all time record high temperature for May of 93 degrees. (The record has since been tied).

In 2010, five to 12 inches of snow fell on parts of the Champlain Valley and northern Vermont on April 27-28. Five days later, temperatures were in the mid-80s.

That won't happen this year, but it is a sign that spring and summer will get here eventually.

Did Someone Say Snow? Again?

Despite the recent chill, I'm starting to see more pops of spring
color around the shed on my St. Albans, Vermont property. 

It's the end of April and spring should be in full swing.

But is it?  

This year, occasionally, at least, it's hard to tell. March and the first half of April in Vermont were pretty good in the spring department, at least by Vermont standards.

Temperatures during that time were generally warmer than normal, and some of the early spring garden plants got off to a roaring start.

Since the middle of the month, things went down hill,  back toward winter. Sure, there's been a couple nice days thrown in there, and today is certainly going to be nice enough. Sunshine and temperatures in the 50s to near 60 is not far from normal this time of year, after all.

But another chilly storm is on our doorstep, and for some Vermonters, it means, yes, more snow.

This next storm is going to be a pretty strong one.  It was developing around Missouri this morning and will steadily move northeastward toward New Jersey or so by Sunday night, all the while gaining more oomph.

Since it's going by to the south, central and southern Vermont, and by extension, central and southern New England, will see the most action from this.

The storm will spread a cold rain across New England Sunday, and it will come pretty hard at times Sunday afternoon and evening.  In Vermont, that's especially, I would guess, south of a Middlebury to Wells River line.

Temperatures will be close to cold enough for snow in the higher elevations. The heavier precipitation will probably bring down some even chilier air, bringing some snow Sunday evening down to elevations as low as 1,000 feet.

Having mostly survived a nasty cold wave earlier this month, spring
blooms in my St. Albans, Vermont ard bask in a little warm sunshine
this  morning before the next cold storm arrives tomorrow. 

A slushy coating is a good possibility in central and southern Vermont at 1,000 foot elevations and that will gradually increase as you go up in elevation. By the time you get to the top of Killington Peak, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a foot of new snow way up there.

Other high elevations of New Hampshire and Massachusetts will also probably see areas of accumulating snow out of this. It won't be the latest snow on record, but it is awfully late in the season.

Southern Vermont could get more than an inch of rain (and melted snow) out of this. It's been dry-ish, so this amount of rain shouldn't cause any flooding  problems.

As noted, northern areas should escape the worst of  the weather because they will be furthest away from the storm. Also,  dry air will feed down from Canada, making the precipitation a little lighter and spottier. There will only be probably a quarter inch of rain or melted snow north of Route 2, which isn't so bad. And that northern snow wil only accumulated above 1,500 feet in elevation, and amount to only an inch.

Unfortunately, there are few signs of a big warmup anytime soon, NOAA's extended outlooks call for mostly below normal temperatures in all of New England through at least May 9. Grr..

The storm from Sunday will meander off the coast until later on Tuesday, which will keep cold, light rain showers and a little bit of higher elevation snows going at least into Monday night.

The next good sized storm looks like it will arrive Thursday. I'm hoping and thinking that one will be a little warmer, so it would produce almost exclusively just rain

If you think the current weather pattern and forecast is bad, let's take a trip down memory lane. Just to prove it could be much, much worse.

Let's take the spring of 1971 for instance.  In Burlington, Vermont's banana belt, there was 33 inches of new snow in March and there was at least a foot of snow on the ground every day through March 30.

In April that year, there was at least some snow on the ground every day in April until the 22nd. Six nights that month got down into the teens, and only ten days cracked the 50 degree mark. Note it was colder and snowier, as usual, back then, outside the Champlain Valley. But we survived.

So yeah, mentioning snow in a Vermont weather forecast this time of year is a little disheartening. But we get through it. Everything does.

Remember the other day I was lamenting the likely loss of my early season flowers because of the sharp cold wave earlier this week? Well, as I said, everything copes. I would say 90 percent of the blooms and buds survived.  A little sunshine yesterday sprouted more blossoms and I expect more in today's sunshine.  Hope springs eternal. Literally.

"Ice Shove" Wrecks Minnesota Home; This Is A Weird Thing That Has Happened Before

Strong winds earlier this week pushed a ton of lake ice
into this Minnesota house. 

A perfect combination of wind and spring thawing shoved a bulldozer like wall of ice into at least one lakeshore home in Minnesota this past week.

The 10-foot high wall of ice crunched into the home on Lake Mille Lacs in Isle, Minnesota. Isle is little under 100 miles north of Minneapolis.  

Lake Mille Lacs covers about 207 square miles, and the town of Isle is on the southeast corner of the lake. The ice on the lake was weak from the ongoing spring thaw.

As Minnesota Public Radio reports, a warm, mostly sunny day with northwest winds gusting as high as 50 mph on Monday pushed the wall of ice onto the shore in dramatic fashion.

This one smushed a deck and pushed in a wall of the Minnesota house.

Some people call these things ice tsunamis, because they do rise quite a way out of the water and go inland a fair amount like a slow motion, frozen tsunami.

Of course, ice shoves don't occur on every lake and they don't occur most years. You need the right combination of thawing ice that's ready to break up, a warm day, a strong wind and a shoreline to help steer the ice into big piles.

Other ice shoves have caused far more damage than this.

Lakes in Vermont aren't immune to ice shoves. There was a good one on Maquam Bay in St. Albans, Vermont on Lake Champlain in 2013.

Here's a news video from WCCO of the mishap:



An even worse ice shove hit the shoreline of Lake Mille Lacs in 2013:



Ice shoves can be pretty unpredictable, so you should stay away from them, as footage from this February, 2019 Lake Erie ice shove proves:



These things can move pretty fast, all things considered:

Brutal Cold To Ease Up, But Dry, Chilly Weather Continues; More Southern Tornado Drama

Bowed but unbroken? Daffodils once again sag after a brutally
cold, subfreezing night in St. Albans, Vermont but it still looks
like they have a shot at reviving when it warms up 

It looks like those Vermont daffodils have a shot of surviving after all.

Last night and this morning were certainly very cold for this time of year, but due to I think two factors, the chill didn't go quite as deep as it could have.

The core of the coldest air from Canada several thousand feet overhead was over northern New England during the day Wednesday. That's why, really amazingly for this time of year, temperatures never did get above freezing in much of the Northeast Kingdom, all day.

Although the air overhead remained incredibly chilly for late April, the coldest of the air had moved off to the northeast by late last night and this morning. That helped keep temperatures at the surface a wee bit milder than they would have.

More importantly, the wind kept going all night. It wasn't strong by any means. But to get the coldest possible temperatures on a clear night, you need light winds or no winds to get the best conditions to radiate heat to outer space.

That didn't happen last night. Temperatures did get into the upper teens in the coldest hollows, and most of us stayed in the 20s. Burlington, I think got down to 29 degrees. Montpelier was 25. Neither were record lows, and it was actually a tad warmer this morning than yesterday morning, which was the opposite of forecasts.

Many of the blooms outside our Vermont doors, because they're such early season specimens, will probably survive what we got last night.  Some things probably didn't make it, but overall, we will have spring after all.

Just not right away. Although it will turn "warmer" than yesterday - how could it possibly be any colder? -- temperatures will remain below normal into next week at least.

The good news is below normal ain't what it used to be.  Normal temperatures continue to rise fast this time of year.  Normal highs are in the mid 40s on April Fools Day and around 60 as the month ends.

Coming up over the next week, there will be a couple days here and there that get into the low and mid 50s. That's really not bad, but still a little on the cool side for late April.

HOW DRY I AM?

One thing I've noticed is, despite the rain showers and frequent unseasonable snows this month, it's a bit dry, particularly in northern Vermont. I noticed the gardens, when not frozen, are a bit dusty.

The dry conditions can raise the risk of brush fires this time of year. All that dead vegetation is dry out there. Sure, last year's leaves, weeds, twigs and such get wet whenever it rains or snows, but things dry out fast this time of year.

That's especially true in Aprils like this one in northern Vermont in which each precipitation event doesn't amount to much. It makes it easier to dry things out. It often get dry readily in Vermont anyway this time of year.   Here's why:

First of all, there's no leaves on the trees yet. That means the sun's heat can go down to the forest floor without being shaded by foliage. That allows things to dry out faster.

Also, when trees are leafed out, they add moisture to the air. There's no leaves yet.  If you make the air more humid, it makes it harder for fires to start and spread.

This time of year, pushes of air from Canada are particularly dry. These airmasses from the Great White North are cold, as we know from experience over the past couple of days.

The April sun is strong, though. That causes air pockets to warm and rise. Something has to replace that air that came up from near the surface, so really, really dry air from up above makes its way to the surface. These updrafts and downdrafts can create some erratic wind gusts, even when the overall weather pattern isn't that blustery.

Today will be a classic example. Temperatures will recover this afternoon well into the 40s.  That's still a good ten degrees cooler than normal, but it's better than yesterday, for sure. The air mass today is really dry, and will get drier as the afternoon sun mixes the air.

A great measure of how dry it is is by looking at the dewpoint temperature. Here's an example: If the actual air temperature is 45 degrees and the dew point is 25 degrees, that means it would have to cool down to 25 degrees to create fog or at least dew or frost on the grass.

The wider the spread between the actual temperature and the dew point, the drier the air is.  Today, a typical Vermont location will see afternoon temperatures of around 45 degrees with a dewpoint within a few degrees either side of zero.

That's super dry, and can easily create conditions to start brush fires. Luckily, we did have that bit of snow and rain yesterday and the day before, so that wetted things down just a little bit. Plus, although winds today might be erratic, they won't be particularly strong. That leaves us with some fire danger today, but not an extreme one.   The driest area seems to be the Champlain Valley.

So please, no outdoor burning today, or any other similarly dry days.  It can easily get out of hand and you don't want that.

It might turn a little wetter as we head into the weekend and next week, especially in southern Vermont, so that might help.

SOUTHERN TORNADO DRAMA

Screen shot of video by storm chaser Pecos Hank as a tornado rips through
the town of Madill, Oklahoma Wednesday.

More tornadoes ripped through the South again yesteraday and overnight.  Reports are that five people have died - three in Texas and two in Oklahoma.

A remarkable string of four tornadic supercell arranged themselves in a tight north to south line in southern Oklahoma during the afternoon and evening, producing some photogenic, but unfortunately destructive tornadoes.  

Click on this link to watch a very wild video by Pecos Hank as he sat pretty much in a tornado that rapidly developed in Madill, Oklahoma. You'll see it wrecking a steel wire plant there. The tornado then moves on, leaving wreckage and a beautiful, sunny late afternoon. (It was even sunny from Pecos Hank's position watching the tornado. Go figure.

An even more remarkable tornadic supercell formed near Austin, Texas and traveled nearly 450 miles to the Louisiana-Mississippi border Wednesday afternoon and evening. That is an incredibly long lasting, durable supercell, especially considering it kept dropping tornadoes along the way.

The worst one was in Unalaska, well north of Houston, where the supercell dropped a powerful tornado that led to three deaths and widespread destruction in town, according to television station KPRC in Houston.

Severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes continued overnight and into this morning in parts of Mississippi and Alabama.

Another round of storms and possible tornadoes are in the forecast for later today, especially in the southern halves of Alabama and Georgia.

Snow, Record Cold, Hail, Storms, Twisters: We Just Can't Have Nice Things

Springtime killed. Amid a dusting of snow, the sagging blooms and
the dark color leaves on these daffodils in my yard indicate
they might have been destroyed by the frigid temperatures. Photo was
taken while temperatures were still well below freezing. The
damage will probably be more apparent later. 

In the grand scheme of things, the losses and potential losses I found outside my house in St. Albans, Vermont this morning were pretty small.

But they were still disheartening.

I kind of expected it, but it was a shame to see the daffodils and other plants and flowers that had been coming up likely ruined by the intense cold from last night.

If any of them survived, they won't tonight as temperatures are likely to be in even colder tonight. I'll know at the end of the week what, if anything, survived. I have a feeling I won't even get to enjoy lilacs this year. Those buds could be damaged, too.  

Who knows? Maybe most of the plants will recover.  But I'm not optimistic at this point.

Amid everything that has been going on, it was nice to get some peace in my gardens from the early season blooms. Now those are gone, at least for now. So that was taken from me.  Everything had been coming up, so I don't know what kind of flowers and blooms I get later in the spring or summer.

Well, there's always next year.

As if to add insult to injury, as I started to write this, snow began to briefly fall pretty heavily. The sickening winter sound of a snow plow scraping by bothered me, too. There's not much snow, but it's blowing around and making the roads slick. It's not the usual April wet snow. It's powdery. Roads are frozen. Like January. Ugh.

At last check it was 18 degrees up in Saranac Lake, New York. The "warmest" parts of Vermont were in the upper 20s early this morning.  Snow covered the ground across most of northern Vermont, and I'm sure gardeners statewide found the same depressing sight out their doors that I did this morning.

Tonight, Vermont is in for record or near record cold. The record low tomorrow morning in Burlington is 23 degrees and in Montpelier it's 21 degrees. Those records are in jeopardy. Some areas of the Northeast Kingdom will probably be in the mid-teens tonight. A few places up there might not even get above freezing today.

Again, my "suffering" isn't that at all. Just a little disappointment. But you can't help but think the weather has gotten pretty mean-spirited.

I can't attribute today's weather to climate change.  It could be random, and you really can't take one weather event in one little spot on the globe and point at climate change.

However,  in a perverse way, it's consistent with it. We've been warned by scientist - as I recall since the late 1980s at least - we were heading toward a future that was generally warmer, but with a higher risk of sharp day to day jolts in temperatures and weather conditions. We were warned of warmer temperatures interrupted by sharp, damaging cold spells. That future is here.

Like what has been happening in lots of places, increasingly in recent years, things get going early in the spring due to oddly warm temperatures. Then an old fashioned quick freeze comes and ruins everything.

For me this year, it was just a bummer. For many agricultural interests in much of the eastern United States, this will be a disaster at a time they really don't need anothe disaster.

Freeze warnings are up for a broad area of the Middle Atlantic States, with temperatures likely to reach the 20s as far south as Virginia. Orchards and early crops in this region are in big trouble.

SEVERE STORMS

Gigantic hailstones came down overnight near
Devol, Oklahoma. Photo via Twitter/KOCO

And, as I've mentioned practically every day this month, severe storms keep rolling on.  Here's the latest update.

Those severe storms in the Middle Atlantic States certainly materialized.  Though tornadoes were not expected, one might have hit Toms River, on the Jersey shore. There's a lot of damage to trees and some houses, there, so the weather folks will probably investigate that today.

There was a tornado warning at one point for pretty intense rotation on the Bronx/Yonkers border yesterday afternoon, ut I don't know if anything actually touched down.

Yesterday, overnight and this morning, large hail, sometimes baseball sized, pelted parts of Oklahoma.

Tornadoes are in the forecast today for a broad area centered on where Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana meet. The tornado threat will spread into much of the rest of the Southeast tomorrow.

Back up here in Vermont, we're not expecting any severe weather. The frigid weather is enough, thank you. Although it will warm up somewhat starting tomorrow afternoon, it looks like it's going to stay colder than normal into early May.

If any of our garden plants can grow back, they'll have to wait awhile.

The Severe Weather Train Rolls On In The United States.

A tornado touched down near Sanford, Florida Monday. 

Right on schedule, around 11 a.m. this Tuesday morning, the wind abruptly began to howl outside my windows in St. Albans, Vermont.  Winds appeared to be gusting to over 40 mph, and I've already seen a few twigs and small branches come down, as of 11:30 a.m.

The strongest winds here won't last much longer, and the pale in comparison to some of the violent weather parts of the nation have seen this spring, as I've noted a few times before.

Vermont is getting hit by a dynamic, fast moving storm system coming in from the west. The worst of the trouble with this storm, though, will go by to the south for the rest of the day.

A pretty good squall line was in the beginning stages of forming in central New York and Pennsylvania late this morning, and it will sweep east, scattering a few pockests of damaging wind with thunderstorms from southern New England down to the Washington DC area.

This outbreak of bad weather won't be nearly as bad as what's been going on in the south, but you will hear news today of fallen trees, power outages and a few trees through house roofs and crushing cars today from Connecticut and Massachusetts to Virginia.

It's a continuation on a really active weather pattern this spring that has featured a fast flow of air across the United States jam packed with a variety of storms.  As we well know, these storms have left a series of snowstorms, floods and especially tornadoes behind.

The one affecting the Northeast today is unlikely to produce any tornadoes. But it is ushering in a blast of unseasonable cold air from Canada that will probably do damage in its own right. Freeze warnings are up for much of the Middle Atlantic States and areas in and around Ohio tomorrow night.

A lot of orchards are already blooming in that area - prematurely due to warmer than normal winter and early spring weather - so this could cause a lot of damage.

Up here in Vermont, things aren't that far along, so there won't be widespread crop damage, but as I noted yesterday, you might lose some of your daffodil and forsythia blooms.

THEN, MORE SEVERE

The next severe weather threat is already getting going near Colorado. Today, the first round of this system will likely create a few spots with gigantic hailstones in and near Oklahoma today.  A few towns might get some baseball sized hail, which really stings.

The storm will push east, and cause a risk of some severe storms and a couple tornadoes in eastern Texas and the southern Mississippi Valley on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, like the trend line we've seen so many times this year, the threat of severe storms and tornadoes on Thursday now appears to be greater than originally expected in parts of the Southeast.

The parent storm system looks like it will move a little more slowly than originally forecast, allowing more very humid air to infiltrate the Southeast than earlier thought. It also will allow the parent storm to strengthen more before moving off the East Coast.  Together, that helps increase the tornado threat, especially in Alabama, Georgia, and northern Florida, as it looks now.

There's even a chance, once again - sigh - of some long tracked, strong tornadoes down there.

They don't catch a break, do they? Just yesterday, some dramatic looking tornadoes crossed Florida freeways, damaging buildings and trees on their way through, but thankfully causing no serious injuries and deaths.

Unfortunately, the strong Mississippi tornado I mentioned yesterday did kill one person. It was another EF-4, the second strongest catagory you can get, within a 30 mile radius with a week.  It's rare for the United States to get much more thank ten EF-4's per year, so having that many within a small area in just a week is something else.

Severe storm researcher Tony Lyza (@tlyazawx on Twitter) posted on that social media platform that shows at least 14 EF-2 or stronger have hit a narrow, roughly 150-mile wide corridor of Mississippi beween Interstates 10 and 20 since mid-December. That's an incredible density of relatively strong tornadoes for such a small area.  So yes, this is odd!

It still looks like severe weather might temporarily settle down for a time until early May, but that's not guaranteed. Just remember that May is typically the most active and dangerous month for tornadoes in the United States.

Video: Tornado crosses Interstate 75 near Marion Florida Monday:


Turn up the sound on this one. A tornadic supercell was passing near the viewers. That rumbling was either a tornado going by or constant thunder from the incredible amount of lightning you see in the video, or both.  I bet the people shooting the video are glad the storm didn't hit them full on:

Wintry Blast Heading To New England; Southern Tornadoes

Daffodil blooming in my St. Albans, Vermont this morning.
Let's hope this little fella survives temperatures in the low to
mid 20s Wednesday night! 

As expected tornadoes and severe weather rocked the South yesterday, though thankfully this one wasn't as bad as the outbreak a week earlier.

There were several tornadoes, and reports of one particularly large, strong one in Mississippi.

It appears that tornado mostly went through rural and pretty unpopulated areas, so not too many houses got wrecked this time. And thankfully, so far, no deaths have been reported.

It looks like there will be one more threat of some severe weather in the South, midweek, and then there will be a brief break lasting several days, in which there will be relatively few reports of severe weather and tornadoes.  At least that's the way it looks at the moment.

Up here in Vermont, we don't expect anything dramatic like tornadoes, of course. But after an early spring, winter still wants to regain control.  Watch out for wind gusts, and then a hard freeze.

We have another system coming in similar to what we've seen a few times this month already: A very dynamic, energetic disturbance will come in from the west and northwest.  Like the previous systems, recipitation amounts won't be overwhelming at all. Still,  you'll notice the weather on Tuesday.

Out ahead of the storm's strong cold front, gusty south winds will blow Tuesday morning, especiall in the Champlain Valley, where winds could go over 40 mph at times.

Crocuses like these blooming in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens
look fragile, but they're pretty tough. We'll see how well they do in
a really hard freeze expected Wednesday night. 

A band of showers, and maybe some thunderstorms will accompany the cold front, which at this point  looks like it will enter western Vermont in the early afternoon and then sweep east.

The front might be energetic enough to set off a few thunderstorms, especially in southern Vermont.  NOAA's Storm Prediction  Center has much of the Northeast in a marginal risk zone for severe thunderstorms and that zone extends into the southern half of Vermont.

There might be a few isolated thunderstorms that manage to create damaging wind gusts. In Vermont, if this happens at all, the damaging gusts will be few and far between.

The real story will be the intense cold behind the cold front, at least by April standards. After snow showers dust a few areas Tuesday night, high temperatures Wednesday will stay in the 30s in many northern areas, with a stiff northwest wind. The Champlain Valley and southern Vermont could squeak into the low 40s, but that's a far cry from the mid and upper 50s that are normal for this time of year.

Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to lose some of the early blooms that are out there right now.  Temperatures Wednesday night will bottom out between 15 and 25 degrees, with the teens up in the mountains and colder hollows.

Early flowers like daffodils and crocuses are pretty tough, but early varieties that are blooming now might not fare that well in that level of cold.  The plants themselves will be fine, but the some of the blooming daffodils and other flowers could wilt and die in those temperatures.

It depends upon how hardy yours are, but the prospect of even losing a few is a bit depressing.

Temperatures will kind of, sort of warm up later in the week and into the weekend, but still remain below normal, unfortunately.

No, All These Tornado Outbreaks In The South Are Not Normal

A tornado safety closet that a family huddled in is the only thing
left of a home swept away by a tornado last week in Mississippi.
The family survived. More dangerous tornadoes are expected
today in the same region.

Another outbreak of tornadoes appears likely in the Deep South today, continuing a terrible winter and spring down there of heartbreaking twisters, severe storms and repeated, devastating flooding, all amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Today looks especially bad across the northern half of Louisiana and the southern halves of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has this area on level 4 of 5 in terms of risk level today.  So it's pretty serious.

Already, as of mid-morning, a tornado watch was up for eastern Texas and western Louisiana, including the Houston metro area. Some straight line wind and hail damage had already been reported in parts of the South as of 10 a.m. It will get worse as we go through the day.

Many of these areas are just coming off a terrible tornado outbreak exactly a week ago, so this is definitely bad news.

A few tornadoes today in this region might once again be especially strong, especially if supercell thunderstorms get going without interference from larger clusters of thunderstorms moving in from the west.

Even that larger cluster of storms from the west wil cause trouble with their own batch of tornadoes, strong winds, hail and flooding rains.

We obviously won't completely know until tomorrow how many tornadoes will form, how big they will be and whether they hit any heavily populated areas. But once again, people in the Deep South are hunkering down and praying the tornadoes miss their houses.

We are heading into the peak of tornado seasons and April tornadoes are rather normal, especially in the southeastern quarter of the United States.  Yes, tornadoes are normal, but the number of them this year, and the deaths they are causing, is anything but normal.

It turns out the tornado outbreak last Sunday and Monday yielded 132 twisters, which is a huge number for two days of severe weather.  Preliminary research indicates this is tied for the fifth-most numher of tornadoes in a two day outbreak on record in the United States.

The tie is with an April 15-16, 2011 southeastern United States outbreak. The record biggest outbreak for two days was 271 on April 26-27, 2011. So you can see 2011 was the benchmark for a horrendous tornado season, and one we don't want to repeat.

In addition to the tornado risk, flooding is a big concern in the Deep South, as it has been frequently for months now. Potentially life threatening areas of flash flooding are expected today in the same areas with the greatest tornado risk.

Not good.

The weather pattern will remain bad in the South in the upcoming week or more. Severe weather threats look like they will ramp up again Wednesday, then after, that, probably next weekend.

Want Hot Weather? Go To Miami. It's Extreme Down There

I definitely complained about this April snow shower in St. Albans,
Vermont on Friday. Maybe I should have been counting my blessings,
given the trouble and potential trouble record warm air
and water is creating in and near Florida, Cuba and
the Gulf of Mexico 

As I've been mentioning the past few days, Ma Nature has hit the pause button on spring in many areas over the past few days.

A snowstorms swept across the nation, originating in Colorado and going all the way to southern and central New England this morning. Freeze warnings were up yet again in much of the nations middle.

Here in Vermont, temperatures are expected to stay mostly below normal for the next week or so.  It snowed at my St. Albans, Vermont home yesterday for the third day in a row.

Want an antidote to the chill? Head to southern Florida. Well, virtually, anyway, I don't recommend unnecessary travel in this coronavirus pandemic.

Those cold fronts that have been sweeping through the eastern two thirds of the nation keep getting hung up in northern Florida, and never creeping any more south than that.  The result is hot times, really hot times, in places like Miami.

Miami isn't exactly an ice box to start with. The  normal high temperature in Miami this time of year is in the low 80s, with a normal ovenight temperature in the upper 60s.  That's what we would consider a stuffy, rather uncomfortably humid July day here in Vermont.

But to Miamians, normal weather this time of year really isn't that bad. What's been going on so far this month is bad, by their standards.

Six days so far this month have topped 90 degrees. Nights have been brutal. Only one night so far this month got below 70 degrees, and nine days had "low" temperatures of 75 degrees or more. April as a whole is running about seven degrees warmer than normal this  month. This after a March that was 4.6 degrees on the hot side and featured three days up in the 90s.

Climate researcher Brian McNoldy said the first of April was the warmest on record by a full two degrees, and the area is experiencing weather this month more typical of early June. McNoldy said via Twitter that the four consecutive nights recently that stayed at 78 above in Miami broke the record for earliest occurence of that happening by two weeks. "The climate system is broken," he opined.

Well, there's lots of evidence around the globe for that idea, despite the recent relatively brief spell of cool weather well north of Florida.

Miami has gotten no relief from the heat in recent years. In records dating back to 1896, there is a three-way tie for hottest year on record: 2015, 2017 and 2019.  Six of the top 10 hottest years there have been in the past decade.

People in Miami traditionally look forward to winter cold fronts that sweep through the state and off the coast toward Cuba. That's happening with less and less frequency.  For instance this past winter, there was only one brief spell of chilly weather in Miami - back in mid-January when temperatures fell to near 40 degrees. That's cold for South Florida, but certainly not record breaking.

Speaking of Cuba, that nation has been sharing in the extreme heat  On April 13, Cuba reported its hottest temperature on record for the whole nation. It was 102.74 degrees in Veguitas.  That broke the national record set just last year, reports Radio Havana Cuba.

Surrounding water has warmed up a lot, which has possible implications for the weeks and months ahead. The whole Gulf Coast of the United States, and presumably much of the Gulf of Mexico itself, are just coming off the warmest winter on record, or at least one of the warmest on record.

Gulf of Mexico water temperatures are well above normal as a result.  I can't help but wonder if those warm waters are contributing to the terrible start to the tornado season in the South.

The main reasons for these severe storms has been a series of storms coming across the nation from California to the East Coast.  Each of those storms pulls toasty, humid air northward from the Gulf, which is one critical ingredient for tornado formation.

I can't help but wonder if the air is even warmer, even more humid than it would otherwise be if Gulf of Mexico temperatures were closer to normal.  The warmer and more humid the air, the more juice for severe storms and flooding rains.

Oh, and by the way, more severe storms, flooding and possible tornadoes are expected this Sunday in the Gulf Coast States.

If the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast of the United States remains warmer than normal, as it is now, that could also add more fuel to the fire for hurricanes later this summer and autumn.

It's even possible a tropical or subtropical system or two could form in this unusually warm Gulf of Mexico before the "official" start of hurricane season on June 1.  Tropical systems need nice hot water to form, and the Gulf has plenty of that. It all depends on whether other overall weather patterns can help trigger early tropical systems, and it's too early now to figure that one out.

With all this warm air and water trouble in the South, maybe I shouldn't be complaining about our April Vermont snow showers so much.

In Some Respects, Vermont's April Snow Shower Siege Has Been Pretty

Snow showers over the Northeast and southern Quebec created a very
pretty, tectured look to this visible satellite photo taken Thursday
afternoon. Vermont is somewhere in the middle of this photo. 

For two days now, us Vermonters have endured cold, windy weather, with scattered, unwelcome snow showers.

I haven't heard much enthusiasm for this snow, but in some respects, it's been pretty, if you look in the right places.

For example:

This strange patterned photo here  is a true color, visible satellite photo of the northeastern United States and far southeastern Canada. It's hard to pick out the geographic boundaries, but Vermont is roughly in the middle of the photo.

(You can click on the photo to make it bigger and easier to see).

The strong April sun worked with a pool of very chilly air aloft to form a whole bunch of snow showers. Each one was small in area, and mostly surrounded by narrow gaps of sunshine. They were pretty evenly spaced, so you get this beautiful pattern, as seen from space.

More to the south, down toward southern New England and New Jersey, where the dynamics weren't quite as good, you can see the size of these snow or rain showers was smaller.

Up here in Vermont, the brisk northwest flow meant that nobody was under any particular snow shower for very long. You'd get a burst of snow, or a flurry, then it would clear, and the process would start all over again.

One of the skinniest of the narrow snow shower clouds that erupted
over St. Albans, Vermont and much of the rest of the state Thursday.

This pattern created a very changeable day. If you were under a snow shower, cold air brought down from aloft would bring the temperature quickly into the low to mid 30s, making it feel like winter.

Then the sun would come out, and the temperature within minutes would poke up into the 40s. With the sun, it actually felt nice. Then, minutes later, it would be in the 30s and snowing again. Go figure.

Today will feature more of the same, but there likely won't be as many snow showers around as yesterday.

However, southern Vermont, along with parts of New York State and central New England, are in for a snowy treat tonight, let me tell ya!  

The southernmost two counties of Vermont - Bennington and Windham - can expect three to seven inches of snow tonight and Saturday morning. The heaviest snow will pile up in the mountains.

Snow will get as far north as central Vermont overnight, but won't amount to much. There might be an inch or two in and near Rutland and White River Junction, with perhaps a bit more than that on some mountains. Once you start approaching Middlebury and Montpelier, there will be little or no snow at all.

We'll be in a chilly pattern for another week or so, which means there will be an occasional chance of a little snow (or a little rain) through the middle of next week.

Rinse And Repeat: Wintry Threats Continue North, Severe Weather South

A snow shower is seen dumping a quick burst of snow west
of St. Albans, Vermont last evening. Similar conditions are
expected today in Vermont 

As if there isn't enough out there to keep most of us unhappy, the weather pattern is also stuck in a way that gives many of us little to cheer about.

A winter storm is creating a narrow stripe of rather heavy snow from Wyoming to Illinois, and that stripe of snow will eventually extend all the way to southern and central New England by Friday night and Saturday morning.  

Meanwhile, in the South, another severe weather and tornado risk looks like it will appear Sunday, and chnces are high that there will be couple more severe weather threats afrer that in the same region after that.

Up here in Vermont, there was still a dusting of snow on the ground in my yard in St. Albans from last evening and it was definitely cold out, with frost adding more winter to that bit of snow.]

That evening snow was caused by a reinforcing shot of cold air from Canada.  The band of snow was in far southern Vermont and northwestern Massachusetts this morning, causing slick roads in a few spots down there

Today in Vermont will look a lot like yesterday, especially in the northern half of the state. We'll have what I call self-destructing sunshine this morning. That sun will warm the atmosphere, but there's a pool of very cold air aloft.

The warm sun will cause updrafts, causing clouds to form and pile up, obscuring the sun for the most part. Between remaining breaks of sun this afternoon and early evening, those clouds will produce another round of snow showers.

Luckily, the air near the Earth's surface is dry, so much of the snow will evaporate on the way down. Still, many of those snow showers will have enough oomph to give many of us another dusting of snow. Nothing consequential, but also nothing you want to see this time of year.

Meanwhile, a pretty compact but vigorous storm is starting to zip west to east across the middle of the country,  laying down that stripe of snow in the Midwest. Southern Iowa not far from the Missouri border, is expected up to a foot of snow out of this.

That's an awful lot for that area of the nation for mid-April.

The storm will weaken a little, temporarily, but still have enough power to dump a few inches of snow Friday night and early Saturday in southern and central New England away from the coast.

In Vermont, up to three or four inches of snow could pile up Friday night in the mountains east of Bennington.  Further north toward Rutland, at this point it looks like a dusting to an inch, with little or nothing further north

After a brief sorta, kinda warmup on Sunday, it'll go back down to below normal temperatures in New England next week. The Midwest will warm up, but nope, not us!

SOUTHERN STORMS

The South is still reeling from those tornadoes and severe storms Sunday and Monday.  According to the National Weather Service eastern region, a total of 105 tornadoes from April 12-13 have been confired.

Tornadoes touched down in ten states, and if you added up the miles each one traveled, you'd get a total of 771.86 miles. If you combined all those tornadoes into one tornado track, it would extend from about Louisville, Kentucky to Burlington, Vermont.

The weekend tornadoes killed perhaps 30 people, and more than 60 Americans have lost their lives to tornadoes so far this year. If nobody else dies in a tornado this year, (which would be nice) this would still be the deadliest tornado year since 2012, notes the Weather Channel.

There might well be more tornadoes, severe storms and flooding on the way to the South this Sunday.  The expected rough weather won't be as extreme, or cover as big an area as last weekend, but people from Texas to Georgia better watch it on Sunday,  and toward the east on Monday.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center is already forecasting a few tornadoes and severe storms for that tie period.

The weather pattern is favoring pretty strong storms riding east from California through the South or south-central United States.  Two more storms are forecast to take relatively similar paths next week, which could again threaten the South with more tornadoes.

Spring On Temporary Pause In Much Of Nation, Including Vermont

Chilly winds, and even a few morning snow showers kept me bundled up Tuesday in St. Albans, Vermont as the weather here in Vermont turned a little more March-like again.

Get used to it.  The weather gods have pressed the "pause" button on spring.

All that dark blue in a huge aera of the nation's middle was
freeze warnings this morning. The lighter blue to the south
were frost advisories. We've hit a temporary halt to
our rather early spring. 

A persistent dip in the jet stream will keep us Vermonters kind of shivering most of the time, probably through the end of the month at. There might be a few warm days thrown in, but generally speaking, the spring green up is about to slow quite a bit.

I have a couple hundred daffodils in my yard that are this close to blooming. They might stay in that budding stage for awhile.

At least it's not record cold, and at least so far, not much snow is in the forecast.

The initial blast of cold air contributed to a stripe of snow Easter Sunday from Colorado, through the central Plains and up into the Great Lakes. Record cold followed, with temperatures dipping into the teens in cities like Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Denver, Colorado, among many others places in the middle of the nation.

Actually, Denver has had three consecutive mornings in the teens, the lowest being 11 degrees. The "high" temperature in Denver Tuesday was a wintry 25 degrees. Normal high this time of year there is around 60 degrees.

The Texas panhandle also had a few inches of snow this week.  Snow flurries dusted Nashville, Tennessee Tuesday at a time of year when daytime temperatures there should be around 70 degrees.

Even worse, in Chicago this morning, snow led to a 50-car pileup on an expressway, injuring something like 15 people.

Spring had come very early to much of the eastern two thirds of the nation, and earlier this year, I posted here on this blog thingy that I feared there's be a late season freeze do damage fruit crops and other agriculture later in the spring. Sure enough, freeze warnings were up this morning for a vast part of the United States from Texas to Tennessee

Frost advisories extended southward into northern Alabama and Mississippi.

For us here in Vermont, so far at least, I don't see extreme cold coming, though a real nasty, damaging to early plants blast is not entirely out of the question from now until early May. Snow is certainly not out of the question through the end of the month, especially in the higher elevations.  Right now, there's no signs of any kind of big winter storm, though.

Of course, as noted, we could easily get a few brief squirts of mild air thrown in, just to remind you it is still spring, in case you forgot.

As we enter into this cool period, we have one other sign of spring to warm your heart.  The famous Joe's Pond ice out contest ended this morning.  Whoever guessed closest to 6:07 a.m. this morning when the block on the ice fell through, stopping a clock attached to it by a cord, was the big winner.

A quick scan of Joe's Pond ice out dates suggests this year's was the fourth earliest on record.

That Tornado Outbreak Killed 30 People; Major, Sometimes Weird Destruction

Just a slab is left of this house in Mississippi after this weekend's tornadoes,
and nobody is sure where it or its debris ended up. Photo by
Steven Macleroy, @SMacleroy on Twitter.

The weather system that caused all those tornadoes across the South has largely moved on, but people will still be picking up the pieces of this for a long time.

At last count, at least 30 people died in these tornadoes in the past couple of days.

There are at least 70 preliminary reports of tornadoes from this outbreak, and some of them were exceptionally strong. That accounts for the high death toll.

As in all major tornadoes, the damage can be extreme and very weird.  Three people were killed in a Mississippi cafe, where the only thing left was a concrete slab and debris piled up against fallen trees a few dozen feet away.

Another Mississippi house was also gone, with just a foundation and some floor boards. Drone footage taken at the scene appeared to show almost no debris around the house. I asked photographer Steven Macleroy, @SMacleroy on Twitter what he saw:

"We are not sure where any of that house ended up. There was very little that the homeowner's brother could find. The homeowner actually lives in Louisiana. Thankfully he and his family were not there."

Thankfully, indeed.  My guess is the house just got bodily sucked up into the tornado, pulverized in the air and rained down as small pieces of debris miles away.  Radar did show debris from this tornado nearly 30,000 feet in the air.

And Alabama meteorologist James Spann said a photograph that landed near Tuscaloosa, Alabama came from a tornado-destroyed house 120 miles away in Mississippi.  Another house in Mississippi had its house and most of its walls torn down, but a freshly baked cake in a glass container sat untouched on an island counter in the middle of what was left of the kitchen.

Some severe thunderstorms will linger in northern Florida today and perhaps tomorrow, but there are no new big tornado outbreaks in the immediate forecast.

Still, there has already been more than 60 tornado deaths in the United States, just a smidge under average for an entire year.  This is shaping up to be the worst yeaer for tornadoes since the epic year of 2011, which saw more than 500 tornado deaths.

We are still in the early parts of tornado season, with May usually being the worst month. Which means more outbreaks are likely.  We just don't know when, where and how bad.  You want tornadoes to hit open areas with little population, but as we saw in the South over the past couple days, that's more often than not impossible.

Videos:

Many of the areas hit by the strong tornadoes on Easter have a lot of mobile homes, which are especially dangerous in twisters. This aerial view includes some shots of just brown rectangles in the landscape. That's where mobile homes were. In some cases, where they are now is anybody's guess:



This video by Gage Shaw demonstrates one of many reasons why tornadoes in the Deep South are often more dangerous than a lot of twisters in the Great Plains.

In this video, the mile-wide EF-4, powerful tornado is in there. You have to know what you're looking for. Look carefully and you can see the back edge of the massive tornado in the video.

Around 2:00 into the video, the tornado is relatively apparent, but is barely visible, but just as strong, a minute later:





Here, a house in Georgia was bodily moved from its perch atop a small hill, perhaps 100 feet to a spot in the middle of the road:

Death Toll Rising In Latest Tornado Outbreak

Huge tornado near Soso, Mississippi Sunday. Photo via
Twitter, @ConnorWx

As of early this morning, at least 18 people have died in that long anticipated tornado outbreak in the South, and things were still very rough as dawn broke Monday.

As of around 7 a.m. this morning, a destructive, very long squall line stretching from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and the Florida panhandle was unleashing dangerous thunderstorrms with embedded tornadoes.

That risk will continue there until the squall line moves off the coast later this morning.  Another line of severe thunderstorms, and maybe a few tornadoes, might form toward noon or early afternoon, we'll see.

The death toll was rising this morning and I worry it will continue to do so. The 18 deaths would mean 51 people have died in tornadoes in the United States so far this year, and we haven't even hit the peak of the severe weather season yet.  On average 69 peopl lose their lives to U.S. tornadoes annually.

Just looking at the radar images yesterday last evening was terrifying enough. Judging from those images, two strong tornadoes, one following the other by less than an hour, too parallel paths through the Soso, Mississippi area.

Those radar images showed pieces of debris thrown 30,000 feet into the air, then raining down over a 60-mile radius. Soso appears to have been in the path of a monstrous supercell thunderstorm that dropped a string of tornadoes across southeastern Mississippi.

Other destructive tornadoes caused lots of damage around Monroe, Louisiana and near Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Weather Channel said five people were killed when a tornado struck a mobile home park near the Tennessee-Georgia border.

The storms then continued into northern Georgia. Radar picked up what appeared to be a tornado passing within about a mile of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

The orange stripe  uo usee on this map is from
early this morning. The orange stripe is all
severe thunderstorm warnings. The red
spots are tornado warnings. 

Flooding was widespread as well, with all of northern Alabama under a flood warning this morning. Flash flooding was occuring across the central and southern Appalachians, with reports of downtown Roanoke, Virginia under water.

Once that squall line goes offshore, the action shifts to the Great Lakes and Northeast during the day today. No tornadoes are expected up in places like New England,   but forecasts for strong winds still hold.

High wind warnings and wind advisories cover most of the nation east of the Mississippi River except for parts of Florida, northern and central Vermont, and parts of New Hampshire. Even in those areas without advisories, winds will be strong enough to knock over a few trees and power lines.

As you can tell, this powerful storm behaved as expected, which is too bad.  I think every meteorologist out there would have preferred a forecast bust.

However, I'm sure days of alerts and warnings leading right up to the severe weather saved lives, since people were made aware of the danger before it hit.

Weather will always throw a few curves and surprises at us, but forecasting continues ot improve. This storm was a great example of some spot-on predictions.

Video:

An overview news report helps capture the extent of at least part of this outbreak: