Weird Storms, Just Not Here

Turns out this probably WAS a tornado in Wilton, New York which
is in Saratoga County, not too far from the Vermont border. 

That strong weather system that affected New York and New England did create at least one tornado, and meanwhile, new storms are brewing that could cause trouble in parts of the eastern United States. Just not in Vermont.

Let's get into Friday's storm damage, then we'll get into the new storms that are pretty interesting.

In yesterday's post, I showed a photo that might have been a tornado in Wilton, New York. I wondered if it might have actually been a microburst or a hail shaft.

Nope. Looks as if that Saratoga County storm DID produce a tornado.

The National Weather  Service office in Albany, New York said the EF-1 tornado had top wind speeds of between 85 and 90 mph, traveled 1.8 miles and was about 50 yards wide. It damaged the roof of a warehouse, and toppled many trees, some onto houses.

The National Weather Service in Albany also reported something called a macroburst caused damage in an international sounding section of Herkimer County, New York, particularly affecting the towns of Russia, Norway and Ohio.

A macroburst is a burst of wind from a strong downdraft reaching the surface. As the name implies, it's bigger than a microburst, which cover much smaller of an area, but still causes a lot of damage.

The New York microburst had winds of 80 to 100 mph and covered an area 10 miles wide and 25 miles long.

Now that those storms are long gone, we have others to deal with. And they're a little strange.

First, there's Tropical Storm Arthur off the northeast coast of Florida. I'm calling this one weird because it formed pretty early in the year.  You usually don't start seeing the first purely tropical storms unti July.

Arthur is going to remain weak as it heads north. It'll brush the North Carolina coast with gusty winds and heavy showers on Monday, Top winds with Arthur are expected to stay at 60 mph or less, and most if not all of those winds will remain offshore.

Early season tropical storms aren't as weird as they used to be, though.  There has been one before July 1 every year since 2014.  In 2014, the first tropical storm didn't form until July 1. Coincidentally, its name was Arthur.

The second weird storm is something that will meander around the Midwest and East through the week.  It's a cut off low, meaning it has removed itself from the flow of the jet stream. There's nothing to push it along.

So it will sit and spin, spreading heavy, slow moving rains around the Great Lakes today and tomorrow. That's bad news, because the Great Lakes are already at near record high levels, so they don't need more runoff.

The heavy rains will shift to the Mid-Atlantic later in the week, especially around Virginia and North Carolina, raising the risking of flooding there.

This isn't cast in stone, because cut off lows are notoriously hard to forecast. The heavy rains might set up in different locations than currently forecast.

However, depending upon your outlook, this cut off is either great news or somewhat bad news for us here in Vermont.

It's good news in that it will allow that high pressure system in Quebec to sink south over us during the week, creating a long stretch of at least partly sunny and mild weather.

It's bad news in a way for northern Vermont. We finally got some good rains Friday, and could use a little more. It looks like it's going to be a dry week, though southern Vermont could get some rain early in the week.