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.