More On Dorian: Canada Is Next Target, Believe It Or Not

The western eyewall of Hurricane Dorian was brushing the Outer Banks of North Carolina this morning.

Complete destruction in the Bahamas from Hurricane Dorian.
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

It's unclear whether the eye of Dorian will actually hit land, but conditions were still really rough out there this morning. One town reported a gust of 96 mph.

The National Hurricane Center reported at 7 a.m. Orcacoke, North Carolina had a sustained wind of 69 mph with gusts to 89 mph. 

So more damage is certainly occurring out there on the Outer Banks.

As if Dorian needed to cause more damage.

Four United States deaths have been reported with Dorian. The Associated Press said those deaths were attributed to falls or electrocution as people prepared for the storm. The death toll in Bermuda rose to 30, and will go higher. Survivors have told harrowing stories of people swept away and of houses disintegrating with families inside.

Dorian is now accelerating toward the northeast.  The hurricane, as we know, was notably slow moving, even stalling over the northern Bahamas for a day.

Once hurricanes get as far north as Dorian is now - near North Carolina - mid-latitude westerlies usually pick them up and sweep them northeastward very, very quickly. This will happen with Dorian.

When hurricanes accelerate northward like this, their wind fields expand. Dorian will pass well east of New England, but with its larger size, it will come close enough to prompt a tropical storm warning for Cape Cod and the islands. Winds there could gust to 60 mph late tonight and early Saturday

Dorian looks like it's also going to hit Nova Scotia, Canada on Saturday, and a hurricane warning is in effect there. Strong winds and heavy rain are sure to cause quite a bit of damage in the Canadian province. Environment Canada says winds could reach hurricane force and rainfall might reach six inches.

By tomorrow, Dorian will begin to lose its tropical characteristics, but will still be a powerful storm as it hits Newfoundland on Sunday.

Here in Vermont, we don't expect any effects from Dorian other than clouds and a chance of a few showers east.

Dorian will help drive a couple of cold fronts southward through us, so expect some showers, especially Saturday night with these cold fronts and some cooler than normal weather through at least Monday.

Flooding Caused Havoc In Many Areas Over The Weekend

It seemed like the theme in weather news the past several days has shifted a bit from heat to flood.

Severe flooding striking India in recent days. 

Sure, heat waves are going on at a brisk pace, if I dare use the word "brisk." Here in Vermont, Burlington on Sunday had its 25th consecutive day of 80 degree weather, which ties the record for the longest such spell.

It's likely to reach 80 degrees in Burlington today.

It got cloudy in Vermont Sunday, sort of a side effect of that aforementioned flooding. Those were the outer clouds of storms that caused flooding in parts of southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic states Sunday.

I'll get to that in a moment, but I should lead with flooding that was worse and deadlier than anything that happened in the United States.

Monsoon flooding happens most years in India, but at least in one section of that nation, the flooding in recent days was described as "unprecedented."

At least 37 people died and about 40,000 people were evacuated from the tourist area called the Malabar Coast, reports CNN.

Elsewhere, severe flooding also hit the Philippines. One viral video shows a wedding NOT canceled in a flooded church as the bride and her family waded through the murky water to the alter. The show must go on.

In Texas, eight or nine inches of rain fell in just three hours west of San Antonio. More than two dozen people had to be rescued via helicopter. No serious injuries were reported.

Mud on this car shows how high the water got in Little Falls, New Jersey.
Photo by Amy Newman. 

In Massachusetts, a torrential storm flooded some areas.

The hardest hit area was around Lynn, where a thunderstorm stalled Sunday, dumping eight inches of rain on that community. Many if not most streets in Lynn were closed by high water and many homes flooded.

In New Jersey, where yesterday I showed you that viral video of cars floating down a river, flood damage in some areas was the worst since Hurricane Floyd in 1999, says NorthJersey.com

The inside of some houses in Little Falls were flooded to a depth of up to four feet. In Bogota, New Jersey, a bride in her wedding dress and the groom were rescued from a flooded car. Seems like the flooding liked to attack weddings. I see a theme going on in this report.

The flooding goes on. Flash flooding was ongoing this morning in eastern Pennsylvania and, again, New Jersey. The heavy rain is expected to go on all day, and the flooding will become more widespread.

Here in Vermont, it looks like there will be increasing areas of rain as we get into Tuesday and Tuesday night. Some of the rain might be heavy in some spots in the Green Mountain State, but no widespread flooding is in the forecast.

This Hawk Knows How To Handle A Hot Summer

This hawk stayed with a backyard sprinkler to cool off during a
record heat wave in Massachusetts a month ago.

The video in this post was taken in early July, Pittsfield, in western Massachusetts. The region was in the throes of a record heat wave at that time.

Everyone was headed to the beach, the water, anywhere cool. I turned on the sprinklers in my gardens and weeded the vegetables in the "rain."  

The Pittsfield hawk in the video below had the same idea. Pretty cool!

One bit of good new for those tired of the heat and humidity is we're in for a brief break. Today will be vaguely less humid than the past couple of days, and a cold front coming in this evening is going to put us in patch of cooler, dry air.

Temperatures in many parts of northern New England won't get out of the 70s Friday, and temperatures amid the lower humidity Friday night will get down into the 50s, with 40s in the cold spots.

The warmth and humidity will gradually return over the weekend, though Saturday and Sunday won't be too, too bad. But signs point to more humidity next week.

The hawk might have to go back to the sprinkler. Watch this wild, awesome video:

New England Remains Weird Tornado Alley, And The Secret Queens, New York Twister

Extensive tornado damage in Webster, Massachusetts Saturday.

More tornadoes hit New England Saturday morning, continuing an incredible year of severe weather in the region. Meanwhile, the nation as a whole is having a quiet, relatively calm tornado year.

Here's a statistic that's pretty wild: New England has had 12 tornadoes so far this year. Oklahoma, the  heart of tornado alley, has also had a total of 12 tornadoes this year. There have been years in which Oklahoma has had more than 12 tornadoes in a week.

Small sized Connecticut is really tornado ground zero this year. They've had six twisters. There have been three tornadoes in Massachusetts and three in New Hampshire. So far, Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont have had no tornadoes, but they've had close misses

Here in Vermont, on two occasions, on May 4 and possibly on Friday, tornadoes touched down in western New Hampshire near the Vermont border from storms that were already rotating as they passed over the Green Mountain State.

The yellow and red streaks in this map show where there were
rotating thunderstorms in New England Friday and Saturday.
Most of the time, the rotation does not result in tornadoes,
but occasionally it happens. Notice the streaks of rotation
in far southern Vermont. No tornado reports, there though. 

Another May 4 storm showed significant rotation and seemed ready to drop a twister in far northern Vermont. But the circulation passed near the high hills and mountains around Jay Peak, and the rotation was disrupted. Thankfully, no tornado.

SATURDAY TWISTERS, MAYBE FRIDAY, TOO?

Two tornadoes hit New England Saturday. The first, in Woodstock, Connecticut, was weak, short lived and caused little damage. However, the supercell that caused the Connecticut tornado dropped a stronger one on the towns of Webster and Dudley, Massachusetts. 

A pair of buildings in Webster were so damaged by the EF-1 tornado that they had to be torn down. Other homes and businesses also suffered damage. It was almost an EF-2 tornado, as the National Weather Service office in Boston, Massachusetts said it had 100 to 110 mph winds. EF-2 tornadoes have winds of 111 to 135 mph.

Friday, a funnel cloud was spotted not far from Keene, New Hampshire. A photo that looks like a funnel touching the ground near Troy, New Hampshire circulated on social media. If it was indeed a funnel that landed, it would be New Hampshire's fourth tornado this year, and New England's thirteenth.

The rotating storm that prompted the New Hampshire funnel earlier very briefly had a particularly strong circulation in a remote area west of Putney, Vermont. If a tornado touched ground in that spot, it's likely nobody would know about it since no-oe was around and the spot is likely not easily accessible. Some tree damage was reported in southeastern Vermont Friday,  but that damage looks like it was caused by straight line winds, not a tornado.

MORE SEVERE WEATHER?

More severe storms are possible in far northern New England Monday, and in much of the region Tuesday and possibly Wednesday. Nobody is talking tornadoes at this point, but the way this year is going, who knows?

Monday's possible storms will be created by a weak weather disturbance brushing past the Canadian border. With very hot, humid air in place, isolated strong to locally severe storms could erupt late in the afternoon or evening north of Route 2 in Vermont, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and northwestern Maine.

Possible funnel cloud or brief tornado near Troy, New Hampshire Friday.

A cold front approaching from the west will start to run into the hot, humid air Tuesday. Depending on when the front makes its approach, that could trigger additional strong storms. But if the cold front holds off more until Wednesday, the storms are less likely.

On Wednesday, the cold front will still be drifting through eastern New England, possibly triggering strong storms there.

QUEENS, NY SECRET TORNADO

Another tornado touched down late Thursday night in Queens, New York. I'm calling it secret, though the National Weather Service did its due diligence. They issued a tornado warning for that area before the twister touched down.

Mystifyingly, for such a populated area, no TV station that I know of in the New York metro area cut into regular programming to announce the warning. That lack of action is dangerous, since people would be out and about in such a populated area.

I know people get annoyed with severe weather warnings interrupting television programming, especially when the storms aren't particularly close to the person watching the tube. But there's no technology for television stations to limit their warning broadcasts to a small specific area. And I'd rather people be warned about incoming danger, even if I don't immediately learn who won the latest episode of "America's Got Talent."

The lack of broadcast warnings in New York might be due to the fact there was no time for hyping the oncoming bad weather. There was no tornado watch issued hours beforehand, because forecasters knew any severe weather would be brief and localized.

In the end, the Queens tornado was rather weak, an EF-0 with 70 to 85 mph winds, says the National Weather Service in New York. It caused some siding and roof damage on a few buildings, and knocked down dozens of trees, especially in a local park. No injuries were reported.

The Frigid Blast Has Arrived; Snow, Blowing Snow, Too, But Hope On Horizon?

The scene in Boston during storm surge
flooding on Thursday. 

The epic nor'easter from yesterday has pulled away into Atlantic Canada, but here in Vermont, we're still going to have that hangover of snow, lots of blowing snow, wind, and frigid temperatures.

We've been advertising this for days, of course, and now it's here. Moisture wrapping around from the Atlantic Ocean down toward us will keep the snow falling today, especially in the north and mountains.

The snow won't be all that heavy, but it will continue to pile up.  Which means this storm is overachieving in northern Vermont. The Champlain Valley can expect storm totals in the six to nine inch range, with most of northern Vermont getting a grand total of six to 12 inches out of this. A moderate size snowfall, yes. But that wind and cold!

It's a really fluffy snow, so gusts to 40 mph or even more will really whip that stuff around. It's going to be tough driving to work or school or wherever today with all the snow, black ice, drifting snow, poor visibility in blowing snow and those low temperatures.  A lot of schools will close or have delayed openings today anyway.

But think about it: We're almost through this long, nasty cold spell, which began on Christmas. Seems like ages ago. Yes, there's wind chill warnings here in Vermont through Saturday night for air that will feel like it's 40 below or so.

Yes, the wind and blowing snow are miserable. And temperatures still expected in the 20s to low 30s below zero Sunday morning are nothing to embrace, that's for sure.

The end of this cold siege is at hand, however. Sunday afternoon will still be quite chilly, but not nearly as bad. By Monday and Tuesday, practically all will be forgotten as temperatures rise to the 20s to around 30. There might be a little snow those days, but we can handle that.

Traffic backed up on the Arctic wasteland, namely Interstate
89 in Milton, Vermont this morning. Lots of black ice.

Forecasting models have also pretty much abandoned the idea of another Arctic blast for the middle of next week. YAY!!!  It's even quite possible a January thaw of sorts could come in for a couple days toward the end of next week.

Meanwhile, they're picking up the pieces in places like Massachusetts and Maine, where this intense nor'easter caused a lot of storm surge flooding along the coast on Thursday.

At least 75 homes in Suffolk County, Massachusetts had water on their first floors. Water surged onto the streets of downtown Boston.

Other homes flooded on Cape Cod. Throughout the coastline, motorists were caught by surprise by the flooding, and had to be rescued. Quite the memorable storm to say the least. You can see videos of it all at the bottom of this post.

The Weather Channel said more than 4,000 airline flights were canceled on Thursday, and it will take awhile to work through that backlog.

In Canada, up to 100,000 residents lost power in the places like Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Deep snow engulfed New Brunswick, while heavy rain, hurricane force wind gusts and destructive storm surges assailed Halifax. On coastal location in Nova Scotia reported a wind gust of 105 mph. It gusted to 72 mph in Halifax.

As of this morning the intense cold that's beginning to affect us here in Vermont is also surging into the Maritime Provinces in Canada.

The storm might have also set a record, at least for the western Atlantic. To qualify for the now-famous "bomb" status, the storm had to get stronger by 24 millibars (an air pressure measurement) within 24 hours. Preliminary estimates indicate the storm strengthened by 59 millibars within 24 hours.

At least we got through it all. So far anyway.

Below are some videos from the Massachusetts coastal storm surge yesterday:

Storm surge in Marshfield, Mass:



Chaos in the Seaport district of Boston:

1 p.m. Nor'easter Update: Major Massachusetts Coastal Flood Disaster Now Unfolding

Storm chaser Simon Brewer captured this chaotic cene of brutal
crashing waves, storm surge flooding and blizzard conditions
today in Scituate, Massachuaetts. (Click photo to make
it bigger and easier to see.)

It's even worse than expected in coastal Massachusetts. It looks to me like a severe disaster is unfolding.  

Storm surges and tides with the big nor'easter are even worse than dire earlier forecasts. There is some pretty major flooding in many coastal towns, including Boston, Scitutate, Duxbury, Quincy, Marshfield, Nantucket and Plymouth.

The tide in Boston looks like it will be even higher than that during the epic Blizzard of 1978. Social media is showing cars inundated on Winthrop, Massachusetts streets, waves slamming into homes in Scituate. It looks like there was at least two feet of water on Easy Street in Nantucket.

NECN reports numerous cars stuck in the flooding in Quincy, and rescue operations are under way. Also in Quincy, water is entering homes.

The National Weather Service in Taunton, Massachusetts says this is some of the worst coastal flooding in Boston area history. Water in Chatham, on Cape Cod, cut through a barrier island and water is now up to condominium doors, at last report.

As you can gather by all these tidbits, this is a breaking story and I'll have more info as reports come in later this afternoon.

From Twitter. @charlesorloff captured this storm surge
flooding in Barnstable, Massachusetts today.

Elsewhere, bands of heavy snow set up in various places so far today, including the Jersey Shore, New York City and eastern Massachusetts, including Boston. White out and blizzard conditions were reported there, as you might expect.

Here in Vermont, it's more mellow, which is of course a good thing. Light to at times moderate snow is falling across the state.

The wind is just beginning to pick up, and will get much worse as we go through the afternoon and evening. Blowing and drifting and bad visibility will become a major issue.

Parts of eastern Vermont are now under a wind advisory, with gusts to 50 mph expected tonight. Elsewhere in Vermont, gusts will top 40 mph in a lot of places.

The new snow will be difficult to measure. It's also difficult to forecast. On the one hand, very dry Arctic air is coming in from the northwest, which would tend evaporate incoming snow. On the other hand, bands of heavier snow are pivoting westward from the storm toward Vermont. Which wil win?

The Vermont forecast still seems pretty accurate in my opinion with three or four inches west and up to ten inches east and south.

Weird Little Storm Creates Problems This Morning, Then Frost?

Snow falling before dawn today atop Mount Washington,
New Hampshire. It's getting to be that season, folks. 

For most of us, the weather early this Saturday morning is pretty benign. There's lots of clouds around and a few showers, especially in central and southern New York and New England.

But a few pockets are having weirdness, mostly because of a strange little compact storm moving through. It's heading southeastward from New York State into southern New England.

The storm, mostly in the upper levels of the atmosphere, is small in area but fairly mighty. There were thunderstorms in parts of New York State near the Great Lakes last night. Snow fell atop Mount Washington, and probably the high peaks of the Adirondacks.

There were reports of severe, damaging thunderstorms in southern Ontario.

It didn't rain at my house in St. Albans, Vermont, unfortunately, but a paltry few hundreds of a inch, barely wetting the ground, hit Burlington, ending a long 18 day stretch of rain-free weather.

The showers and storms were in southern New England this morning, too. One very weird piece was a nearly stationary, strong thunderstorm northeast of Boston, over the Lynn and Salem areas. While most of the showers and storms were moving northeastward, something was causing this storm to stay locked over these North Shore communities.

A flash flood warning and severe thunderstorm warning for the Lynn and Salem areas was in effect early today. The storm was even starting to rotate, a bit like a supercell at one point, although it didn't develop enough to create a tornado threat.

This was an intense storm, with 1.91 inches of rain in just 40 minutes. There were reports of cars stuck in high water as of 6:45 p.m. It's just a small area. Most of southern New England is just fine.

I don't know why the storm was nearly stationary.  And why one intense storm targeted a small area northeast of Boston while the rest of the region was relatively quiet. I'm sure there will be analysis eventually that I'll want to read. It's just odd.

Strong storms over Boston Harbor at dawn today. The storms
caused flash flooding in Lynn and other Massachusetts
communities. Photo by Mark Garfinkel/Picture Boston

This compact storm is bringing in a reenforcing shot of chilly air, and frost is going to be a problem tonight in some areas of New England. Talk about a contrast from the 90 degree heat just two days ago!

Freeze warnings are up for parts of the Adirondacks, the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, parts of northern New Hampshire and parts of western and northern Maine.

Frost advisories cover a much larger area, including much of northern New York, pretty much all of Vermont outside the Champlain Valley, much of New Hampshire, and much of New York away from the lakes and north of the mid-Hudson Valley.

All this is not at all odd for the very end of September, but again, after that extreme, unprecedented heat earlier this week, it's a shock to the system.

If you manage to keep your garden plants alive after tonight, we're going to gradually get into another spell of warmer than normal weather that will last at least through the week. It won't be anything like the past week. No more 90 degree weather for you, thank you.

But most of us by midweek will be up in the 70s which is at least 10 degrees warmer than normal. Several spots will flirt with 80 degrees.  A cold front is due at the end of the week, but there won't be all that much cold air behind the front, so endless summer continues. We just have to get through a weird, then possibly frosty interruption today and tonight.

Strange Tornadoes: Way North This Past Weekend And More Due

Metal and debris is wrapped around trees near a
tornado-damaged church in Conway, Massachusetts
Sunday. Photo by David Molnar/The Republican

Amid the incredible record heat on Saturday where some rare tornadoes that struck parts of the Northeast.

By the way, more severe weather and possible tornadoes are coming this week from Arkansas to the Middle Atlantic coast.

Also, another squirt of strange late winter heat. More on that in a minute.

I've already remarked at how wild it was to have tornadoes this far north in February. One in Massachusetts was truly remarkable.

A confirmed tornado touched down in Goshen and Conway, in western Massachusetts at around 7:15 p.m. Saturday.  This is only about 15 miles south of the Vermont border.

The National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. gave the tornado a high-end EF-1 rating, with winds up to 110 mph. This is almost an EF-2 in the srength scale that ranges from zero to five.

This Massachusetts tornado was no brief spin up that we most often see in New England, the kind that just takes down a few trees and rips some siding off a barn.

This one severely damaged several houses on a path that extended for five miles and grew to a width of 200 years. One injury was reported. Hundreds of trees came down. Residents of Conway reported hearing the tell-tale freight train-like roar of a tornado as it approached, and thus had the sense to run to their basements

NWS meteorologists from Taunton said it was extremely fortunate that nobody was killed.

A tornado on the ground in York County,
Pennsylvania Saturday. 

This is an impressive tornado for New England for any time of year. (Most New England tornadoes strike between Memorial and Labor days.)

This was the first recorded February tornado in New England, and that it was so strong is quite something.

Elsewhere,  the confirmed tornado in Pennsylvania came on the exact one-year anniversary of another tornado in the same Pennsylvania county. Plus, as we know, tornadoes in Pennsylvania during February are quite rare.

That 2016 storm spawned widespread tornadoes and severe thunderstorms from the Carolinas to New England.

In Maryland, an EF-1 tornado extended along an 8.4 mile long path through LaPlata and Waldorf. This is only the seventh tornado reported in either January or February in Maryland since 1950, says the Natonal Weather Service in Baltimore/Washington.

More tornado trouble - or at least severe thunderstorm trouble - appears to be on the horizon.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center says a severe weather outbreak will begin Tuesday, stretching from northeastern Texas into parts of the Ohio Valley.

The area of greatest concern at the moment is in Arkansas and southern Missouri. Details of how the storms will play out, and how many tornadoes form, and how strong they might be, are yet to be worked out.  

A menacing shelf cloud with a severe thunderstorm in
Pennsylvania Saturday. Photo by Marta Poulen.

The severe thunderstorms will move east for Wednesday, affecting a broad area from Louisiana to southern Pennsylvania, and down the coast to about South Carolina.

Strong straight line winds and hail are the biggest threats Wednesday, though there's a good chance there could be a few tornadoes in this broad zone.

This storm will generate another blast of very warm air for late winter in the eastern United States, but it won't be quite as strong and won't last as long as the heat wave last week.

Highs Wednesday will reach the upper 70s in the Washington DC area, around 70 in New York City, and as high as 60 degrees in Vermont.

Sharply colder weather will hit by the end of the week.

New England's Worst Tornado On Record Struck On This Date In 1953

Worcester, County, Massachusett tornado, Jume 9, 1953  

Let's face it.

New England isn't exactly tornado alley.

Oh, sure we get tornadoes. Quite a few of them, in fact. On average, there's a handful every year.

Almost all of them are brief and small, and only cause relatively minor damage.

On this date in 1953 though, New England had a major and tragic exception to our relative lack of deadly tornadoes.

The Worcester County tornado killed 94 people, injured 1,000 or so people and damaged or destroyed a good 4,000 buildings.

It was a classic Midwestern style wedge shaped tornado, wide and powerful. It was as much as a mile wide and left scenes of destruction familiar to people now used to news video of entire neighborhoods leveled by this type of storm.

It estimated that under current tornado classifications, the Worcester County Tornado would have been a strong EF4 twister which would have packed winds of close to 200 mph.  

Debris from the Worcester Tornado was found as far east as Cape Cod and adjoining waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Wrecked house in Worcester, Massachusetts after
New England's deadliest tornado on record, June 9, 1953  

The Worcester County tornado came a day after an even worse tornado in and near Flint, Michigan.  That tornado, which would have been an EF5 with winds of at least 250 mph, killed 116 people.

Another devastating tornado hit Waco, Texas earlier in 1953, smashing through the city's downtown during the afteroon rush hour and killing 114 people.

Interestingly, arguably New England's second worst tornado on record hit the Springfield, Monson and Brimfield areas of Massachusetts on June 1, 2011.

The year 2011 was also among the worst tornado years in American history. That was the year that mega-tornadoes destroyed large swaths of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Joplin, Missouri, among many other cities.

The Ever Reliable Scituate, Massachusetts Gets Pounded Again

Storm chaser Simon Brewer posted this photo
of waves crashing into Scituate, Mass on Monday.  

People flock to Scituate, Massachusetts every time there's a nasty nor'easter.

The way the town is oriented, the waves and high tides tend to crash dramatically onto the heavily developed Scituate shoreline.

So it was on Monday that Scituate took another pounding.

This wasn't the worst ever. Not by a long shot. Go back to the Blizzard of '78 if you really want to see some Scituate drama and destruction.

Editor's Note: I don't. What's the fun in seeing somebody's house destroyed.

But Moday  was pretty dramatic, as these videos show.

Storm Chasing Video always has somebody in the thick of it. No matter what the storm is.

So here's Storm Chasing Video's view of Scituate:

Here's Why You Should Clean All The Snow And Ice Off Your Car

A big chunk of ice flew off an SUV on a Massachusetts
highway and here, is about to hit the windshield of
this car, which was equipped with a dashcam.

It's snowing again here where I live in Vermont. It won't amount to much, at least here in the Champlain Valley.

Maybe we'll get a couple inches.

But I'll be damn sure I clean the snow off my truck before the next time I drive anywhere.

Snow blowing off your car can blind other drivers or reduce your own visibility through icy windows.

Worse, think about what could happen if the snow on your car turns to ice.

Recently, Massachucetts got a nasty mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain. It was only a couple inches of the stuff, but it was heavy and it froze.

Watch this news report about what happens when that ice flew off an SUV and onto another car behind it on Route 495 in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Lesson learned: Scrape the snow and ice off your car.

 

All Hail Boston! And Other Cities That Got Pounded By Wild Storms

A main tries to flee through the large
hail falling on Boston yesterday.  

Yesterday was indeed a wild day in Massachusetts, and in New Hampshire. And Maine. And Rhode Island.

Waves of severe storms rolled through the region all day. Tornado warnings were rampant across Massachusetts in the afternoon. There was a waterspout in Boston Harbor, but no confirmations yet of tornadoes.

However, meteorologists will surely go out today to look at damage paths in southern and eastern New England to find any evidence of tornadoes.

The real story was the hail, which hit many eastern New England communities hard. Lots of reports of golf ball sized hail or even bigger. I wonder how many thousands of cars are dented this morning.

Probably many thousands.

There will be far fewer severe storms in New England today, but some areas will get some hail. A cold pool of air aloft will encourage storms, and since it's so cool upstairs, hail won't melt as much as usual for August on the way down.

Here are a few cool videos: A couple from Boston, and at least one from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which had its own problems with hail, flooding and storms on Tuesday.

Television station WCVB in Boston has this great time lapse of the city getting swallowed up by the severe storm:



Next, somebody took a video of large hail hitting a Boston roof. The first few seconds show it falling in normal time, then they go into a really cool slow motion video of the falling hail:




Up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the hailstorm there looked like this:




And oh, hell, I'll throw in a video of a small tornado passing over a house in Florida this week:

Tuesday Evening Blizzard Update

From last night: Nightime satellite view
of the nor'easter. Click on the image to make it bigger
and easier to see.  

There's been such  hue and cry today about how many of the forecasts for New York City incorrectly called for a record or near record deep snowstorm. 

What's being ignored, it seems, is the forecast for New England was almost flawless.

But the media center of the world is New York, not Boston. If it didn't happen in New York, it didn't happen anywhere, despite what you might see out your Havahd Yahd window.

However, the forecast for the eastern half of Massachusetts was for 24 to 36 inches with locally higher amounts. and they GOT 24 to 36 inches. Westford, Mass. has so far reported the most - 35.8 inches.

With snow continuing to fall this evening, there might be a few spots that get more than 36 inches.

The National Weather Service office in Taunton, Mass., near Boston, also said peak wind gusts on Cape Cod and the Islands would be between 70 and 80 mph. The peak gust in this storm was 78 mph in Nantucket.

The NWS also said there would be significant storm surge and coastal flooding today, and indeed there was.

I'm sure other forecasting offices will refine how they make forecasts. The National Weather Service office in the New York City area knew there would be a sharp cutoff of snow amounts as you head west from the Hudson Valley.

They misjudged by only about 30 miles where that cutoff would be, which is actually a good forecast. I just don't think they conveyed to the public ahead of the storm how much uncertainty there was in the forecast

Nor'easter always confound. Up here in Vermont, the forecast was basically right in southern and eastern Vermont was basically right, although snow totals were a little lighter than expected.

Then this afternoon, one of the intense snow bands from the nor'easter broke away, and traveled westward across Vermont, and held together remarkably well, despite having to cross the Green Mountains.  

An unexpectedly heavy snow band on the outer edges
of the big nor'easter passes through St. Albans, in
northwestern Vermont this afternoon.  

The snow band slowed down to a near stall in the Champlain Valley, dumping an unexpected three to five inches of fluffy, windblown snow in just three hours or so.

What are ya going to do, right?

Anticipate more snow. It likes the northeastern United States has an active weather pattern coming up.

A weaker storm coming in from the west could drop another two to five inches of snow, mostly in northern New England.

There's the chance of another nor'easter Monday, but I'm going to hold off on more details with that because things are really, REALLY uncertain as to how that's going to develop, if at all.

And it's going to be wicked cold. Especially early next week, where 30 below zero readings in cold mountain valleys of northern New England is a possibility.

That Weird, Huge Wind Storm That Hit Easthampton,Mass. This Morning Was A Microburst

Aerial view of microburst damage
near Easthampton, Mass. Photo by Patrick Brough.  

Some incredible photos are coming out of the Easthampton/Mount Tom area of western Massachusetts of a huge swath of forest blown down completely by a wind storm.

A lot of people thought it was a tornado, but the National Weather Service officer in Taunton, Mass., went out to the site for a look-see, and determined the storm was a microburst. 

An especially powerful one.

The National Weather Service meteorologists estimated wind speeds in the microburst of 100 mph or so. It covered an area a quarter mile wide and a mile long. That's more or less about the typical size of a damage area from a microburst.

A microburst is a nasty downdraft from a thunderstorm. The air blasts down toward the ground, and when it hits the ground, causes a big wind gust. Microbursts only last five minutes or less, but as anybody in Easthampton, Mass. can tell you, they cause a lot of damage.

That the wind blew at 100 mph and knocked down a whole forest on Mount Tom proves my point, once again, that the term "microburst" might sound wimpy, but microbursts can be just as dangerous as tornadoes.

Trees in a yard, Easthampton, Mass. toppled
by Wednesday morning's microburst.  

I also see a stroke of luck in some of the photos. It looks like the strongest winds with the Mt. Tom/Easthampton microburst hit on a mountain slope at around 4:45 a.m. today,  and the worst of the winds just missed some nearby populated neighborhoods.

No serious injuries were reported, but CBS 3 in Springfield, Mass. is reporting that the storm did manage to damage several homes and cars, two people were trapped in a car when wires fell around them, and a state of emergency has been declared in Easthampton.

A pretty dynamic storm system was passing through New England when the Easthampton microburst occurred. Usually, thunderstorms are their strongest in the late afternoon, not before dawn like in this case. But sometimes, the atmosphere is so primed for bad thunderstorms that they happen at a time of day that isn't so typical.

Storm damage from wind was reported elsewhere in western Massachusetts, and in central and northern New Hampshire. Center Harbor, NH reported a wind gust of 77 mph.

The storm that caused the rough weather in New England is now long gone, so don't expect any more microbursts for awhile.