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| Powerful Tropical Cyclone Harold smashed into parts of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Sunday and Monday |
TROPICAL CYCLONE HAROLD
The nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific comprises about 80 islands stretched out over 800 miles. Part of that island chain was hit by an immense hurricane named Tropical Cyclone Harold.
Hurricanes are called tropical cyclones in that part of the world and this was an extreme one.
Tropical storm Harold hit Vanuatu's largest island with winds estimated at 145 mph. According to the Category 6 blog, the island has about 40,000 residents, mostly scattered in small villages across the island.
Harold had earlier killed 27 people in the Solomon Islands, the Weather Channel reports.
The coronavirus pandemic is going to complicate relief efforts in Vanuatu. The island nation had not yet reported any cases of Covid-19, thanks in large part to restrictions at international borders and on tourism.
However, relief workers won't be allowed to come to Vanuatu to assist, unless they do a 14-day quarantine first, notes the Weather Channel. The economic and social toll of the pandemic will probably also interfere with relief efforts.
Harold is still out there, and is threatening the island nations of Fiji and Tongo.
BLIZZARDY MAINE?
A winter storm watch is up for western and central, and parts of northern Maine Thursday into Friday for what could be a doozy of a storm.
A storm system and cold front will move through New England Thursday, including here in Vermont. The good dynamics with this storm will create plenty of showers, gusty winds, maybe a rumble of thunder and then some snow showers here in the Green Mountain State Thursday and Friday.
Once the storm gets to the Maine coast, Pow! It looks like it will blow up rapidly into a late blooming nor'easter. Even the normally staid meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Caribou, Maine are wowed with the storm's potential.
"This is an impressive winter storm for any winter month, let along mid-April," they wrote in this morning's forecast discussion.
The storm will be pretty compact, at least at first, so the big storminess will focus mostly on Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the far southeastern corner of Quebec.
Maine and adjacent Quebec will be on the colder northwest side of the storm. Current forecasts call for a good seven to 10 inches of heavy, wet snow, along with strong winds. If that comes to pass, there will certainly be some nasty power outages in that neck of the woods. Luckily the storm won't hang around for a long time, so conditions in Maine will start to improve later Friday.
Even so such a nasty winter storm is a bit of a shock to the system in April, even by Maine standards.
SOGGY S. CALIFORNIA
The winter rainy season in southern California is usually ending by now, but don't tell that to residents down there now. Flood watches are up for southern and southeasternn California, mostly south and east of Los Angeles.
A slow moving storm will dump heavy showers and thunderstorms, mainly in the usually dry deserts inland from the southern California coast. Those storms could easily cause some flash flooding.
Los Angeles got into the act yesterday with 1.22 inches of rain, the most for that date on record. It's a cold storm, so winter storm warnings are up for the mountains east of the city.
Forecasters are carefully watching what this storm does once it ejects out into the southern Plains of the United States toward Saturday. If conditions come together right, the storm could produce a nasty tornado outbreak in the Southeast.
However, forecasting models are all over the place with this system, so nobody yet knows if the storm will turn into a monster or a nothing burger once it gets out into the south and middle of the nation.
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