Snow Update, And Humdinger Severe Weather Risk In South

Snow accumulating this morning on this soon to be blooming daffodil
in my St. Albans, Vermont yard makes it look like an
elaborate but disgruntled bird. 

I woke up at dawn in St. Albans, Vermont this morning and was delighted to see it didn't snow overnight at my place.

That was short lived when I checked the radar and a swirl of moisture, in the form of a band of snow, was on my doorstep and heading toward me.  Sure enough, a half hour later, it was snowing.

At least at my place, the snow will only briefly accumulate for a few hours this morning, then melt, probably amounting to an inch or less. But we'll see.  

However, again, sure enough, forecasts were right. It appears several inches of snow fell across many towns in north central Vermont and the Northeast Kingdom. It was still snowing in these spots as of 7 a.m.

As April snowfalls go, this really isn't so unusual for Vermont. But until now, spring was running early, so it's a little disheartening to see the snow. In the valleys, most snow showers will change to, or at least mix with rain this afternoon.  By Saturday, the snow will be forgotten, except in parts of northern Vermont where there will still be some on the grouid.

Us Green Mountain Boys and Girls should thank our lucky stars that today's weather is merely unpleasant. And that the next storm coming along Sunday night and Monday looks merely inconvenient, and not super dangerous.

We can't say the same for Maine, which is buried in snow this morning, as expected. We also can't say the same for the Deep South, where ingredients are really coming together for a bunch of tornadoes on Easter Sunday. Some of those tornadoes could be biggies.

More on that in a moment, but first, Maine.

SNOWY MAINE MESS

Heavy snow and tree damage in Bangor, Maine this morning. Photo via
Twitter by Ben Sprague @bensprague. 

It was still snowing up there early this morning, but a lot of places already had more than a foot of snow.  Wellington, Maine reported 20 inches so far. Carmel, Maine, both towns in the north, by the way, had already picked up 18 inches of new snow.

Some places, especially in and near Baxter State Park, can expect more than two feet of snow by the time this tapers off. This is just an incredible storm, even by Maine standards.

Maine's heavy, wet snow has caused some terrible power failures, according to television station WMTW in Portland. More thank 200,000 homes and businesses in the state had no power this morning.  That's almost a third of Maine without power.

The coronavirus is hampering power restoration.  Utility workers are arriving at power outage sites separately, so they're not too close together, and they need to practice social distancing on site to reduce the risk of virus transmission. So yeah, it's complicated.

New power failures will surely develop as snow and gusty continue this morning. Fortunately, the snow will taper off later today.  The trouble going forward is that Monday storm I talked about will be warm in Maine. So warmth, melting snow and pretty heavy rain expected Monday is a bad combination if you don't want flooding.

SOUTHERN TORNADO ALERT

Ingredients definitely seem to be coming together for a nasty outbreak of tornadoes in the Deep South. If things develop as forecasters think they will (no guarantees, thankfully), this could be one of the worst, or the worst, tornado outbreaks of the year. We've already had a couple terrible ones, too.

The atmosphere in the Deep South Sunday will feature very humid air from the Gulf of Mexico near the surface. Strongs winds will scream a few thousand feet overhead, and those winds will change directions with height. The air will be highly unstable, making it easy for towering thunderstorm clouds to form.  Dry air coming in from the west high overhead would also help trigger storms.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center says there's a real risk of strong, long lasting tornadoes in the Deep South on Easter Sunday, and people ought to be thinking now of where they would take shelter if a tornado is approaching.

Granted, this hopefully won't be as bad as the Super Outbreak of April 25-28, 2011, which hit mostly in the South. That outbreak spawned 362 tornadoes causing 321 deaths.  This weekend won't be nearly that bad, thank goodness, but bad enough.  Possibly very dangerous.

I suppose there could be an Easter miracle in which some storm ingredient gets fouled up and makes things not as bad as predicted. But that could be just wishful thinking. We'll see.