Washington DC Drowns In Epic Monday Flash Flood

The now famous phot of the person in the pink Oxford shirt
stranded atop a flooded ar in the Washington DC area
on Monday. 

I'm sure you heard on the news that Washington DC, and parts of Maryland and Virginia had quite a flash flood on Monday.

Lots of people got stranded in cars, and many of those had to be rescued the water came up so fast.

Rainfall rates were incredible. As WTOP explained:

"Reagan National Airport reported 3.3 inches of rain in an hour, including a half inch of rain in 11 minutes, on Monday morning. Between three and six inches of rain had fallen in Montgomery County by 11 a.m."

For perspective, 3.3 inches of rain is very roughly how much rain we should expect around here in Vermont during a full month.

WTOP goes on: "National Weather Service meteorologiset Cody Ledbetter said the storm dumped about 6.3 inches of rain near Frederick, Maryland, about 4.5 inches near Arlington, Virginia."

Driving into flooded roads is a big no-no. But many people got trapped because they set off for their morning commute before it started raining, then became trapped as the downpours hit and water started rising around their cars.

The National Weather Service declared a flash flood emergency, which is meant to (rightly) scare people into getting serious about taking precautions, like staying put and not driving if you were in a safe place that wasn't flooding.

It seemed no place was completely safe. Water even seeped into the White House basement.

As meteorologist Marshall Shepherd noted in Forbes, something called precipitable water was at sky high levels in the DC area Monday morning. It's complicated, but precipitable water is one way of measuring how hard it can potentially rain in a given area.

Precipitable water in the atmosphere was at near record highs at the time of the storms, so all you needed was a trigger to unleash incredible downpours. A weak trough of low pressure in the area did the trick.

You always have to be nervous when they say precipitable water levels are at the highest 1 percent possible. This often leads to flash floods.

Now, climate scientists will tell us that these big flash flood events like the one yesterday are becoming more common as global warming takes hold. Warmer air can hold more water, increasing the chances of flooding downpours.

All this is true. But I think it's impossible to say whether the flood in DC, Maryland and Virginia Monday has a direct line to climate change. Floods like these have always happened, so it could be just chance that this happened. Whether climate change influenced this is right now, anybody's guess.

Of course there's videos.

Here's a compilation of images and clips from NBC:



Here's a clip from the Washington Post. I especially like the sudden waterfalls in the Metro station and in somebody's back yard:



This is, or was, Baker Park in Frederick, Maryland:

Wicked Fast Jet Stream Over Pacific Contributing To Our Changeable Weather

Jet stream forecaast for the Pacific Ocean between Asia and
North America for this coming Saturday The fast flow (in pink and orange)
denotes a fast west to east flow that is influencing the weather
across the United States, pushing repeated storms
into the West Coast, which turn into fast moving
disturbances racing generally west to east across the
United States. 

Lately, there's been a hugely fast west-to-east jet stream over the Pacific Ocean from Asia all the way to the North American west coast, and that's been influencing our weather here in Vermont.

This state of affairs began before Christmas and will continue at least into the middle of this month, if not beyond.

I'll get into how this affects Vermont in a bit. -

This jet stream has been sending a series of fast-moving storms into the West Coast from central California north into British Columbia, Canada.

These storms have been, and will continue to dump bursts of heavy rain and blinding mountain snow in these region

These have also brought damaging winds to California, Oregon, Washington and especially British Columbia over the past couple of weeks. Just over the weekend, Seattle had a gust to 60 mph, it's highest gust in 12 years. About 300,000 people were without power because of the storm.

The good news with this pattern is rain has been falling off and on through most of California, and a decent snowpack is building up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  That's great for the parched state's water supply.

Of course, a lot of those occasionally heavy rains are falling on massive areas scarred by last year's wildfires. Mudslides in one of these burn areas over the weekend closed the Pacific Coast Highway near Malibu. This is an area that was hit by a large wildfire late last year.

Several motorists, including rapper Soulja Boy, were trapped in the mud and debris on that highway. Everyone was rescued, nobody was hurt, but many of the cars were badly damaged or destroyed.

A couple video clips of the rough West Coast weather are at the bottom of this post.

THE OVERALL PATTERN

These storms have been zipping eastward across the United States, seemingly just on momentum alone. Most of the moisture from these storms get stripped off by the mountains in the West, so they become somewhat moisture-starved.

Some, but not all of the storms manage to pick up replacement moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, which helps explain why the Southeast has been so wet lately.

All this energy from had been those strong storms on the West Coast is still mixed up with all this. Pressure gradients between the storms and brief high pressure systems have caused frequent bouts of windy weather coast to coast, including here in New England and Vermont.

I noticed winds gusted to 40 mph in Burlington Sunday. The next system Tuesday morning will bring gusts of 45 mph to the Champlain Valley. More gusty winds are in the forecast for Thursday.

This seemingly endless parade of storms running east to west across the nation have been blocking any long-lasting cold waves from invading the country. Behind each storm, a bit of Arctic air does get stripped off and sucked southward from Canada, giving brief cold snaps to the northern tier of states, especially here in New England.

Notice that temperatures were in the single digits either side of zero here in Vermont this morning with subzero wind chills.

Then the next storm comes along, scooping a bit of mild air up from the south to give us a quick warm spell. Then the cycle repeats, over and over again. This is why the weather has been so changeable here in Vermont since Christmas: Warm to cold back to warm again.

The relatively flat east to west jet stream means most of the storms don't get a chance to become super strong. The last really substantial storm we had was on December 21 and 22, which caused flooding across Vermont. We've had six quickie storms since then, all of them pretty minor.

It's January, so it's not too hard for some pretty cold air to briefly bleed in between storms.

BOTTOM LINE FORECAST IN VERMONT

The first round of snow this week, late tonight and Tuesday
morning, will only amount to an inch or two for most
of us, with possibly even less than that in the Champlain Valley.

Here's how the next few days look The next one coming along tonight and Tuesday morning will bring some more relatively light snow, with patchy valley rain.

The strong winds, those 45 mph gusts in the Champlain Valley and 35 mph gusts elsewhere in Vermont, will peak late tonight and during the early and mid-morning hours on Tuesday.

Total snow accumulations with this initial burst will be one to three inches, with locally less than that in parts of the Champlain Valley.

There will be a lull in the action Tuesday afternoon and evening. No cold air will be able to sneak in during this time, so it will remain mild, with highs in the 30s to near 40 Tuesday and temperatures staying in the low 30s for most of us Tuesday night.

Another disturbance in this quick jet stream flow will come in late Tuesday and Wednesday. This one looks like it might be good enough to dump several inches of snow, perhaps two to six inches of powder, by Wednesday afternoon in much of Vermont.

The Champlain Valley might miss out again: It will be mild, so there, some of the precipitation, especially earlier on Wednesday might come down as a cold rain, which would minimize accumulations.

Overall, these frequent snows are great for winter sports prospects this month in the Green and White Mountains, and the Adirondacks.

After this relatively snowy period, the door will open for a piece of an Arctic high pressure system will break off and head south into New England, giving us the strongest, or nearly the strongest cold snap we've had all winter. This will hit next weekend, but don't worry too much about it.

Snow showers, mostly in the mountains, will continue amid the strong northwest wind gusts and falling temperatures Thursday, introducing a good three-day long cold snap.

It will be a run of the mill January cold snap, nothing we haven't seen before. We'll gethighs in the single numbers to near 10 and lows mostly in the 5 to 15 below range over the upcoming weekend. However, the west-to east race of storms will continue, though, so the cold snap won't last long.

It's possible, but not definite, that the next weather disturbance that originated in the Pacific Ocean could create a coastal storm that could dump some snow on us toward next Monday. That is highly uncertain but something to watch. One computer model gives us a substantial snowstorm, most of the others forecast not much of a storm and little or no snow for the region. We'll see.

Beyond that, the fast air flow across the nation will probably continue and our changeable, back and forth Vermont January weather will continue as it has since the start of the month.

Here are some of those weather video clips from the stormy West Coast.

First, a news clip about the mud slide along the Pacific Coast Highway:



Here's some footage of wind storm damage in Washington State from Saturday night and early Sunday morning:

Odd Midwest Tornado Outbreak Creates Havoc, Damage

Massive tornado approaching Taylerville, Illinois
Saturday evening. Photo by Robert Wolfe.

UPDATE: DECEMBER 4:

This proved to be the largest December Illinois on record. So far, they've counted 26 tornadoes in Illinois on December 1, beating the previous December record of 21 set in 1957. Shout out to Mike Bettes at the Weather Channel for pointing this out.

The National Weather Service in Springfield, Illinois said Saturday's outbreak was the third largest tornado outbreak for any month of the year.

Tornadoes in Illinois are much more of a springtime type of event. The largest Illinois tornado outbreak had 39 of them on April 16, 1996. There were 32 twisters in Illinois on April 2, 2006.

The worst tornado, the one I describe in my pre-updated post, below, was an EF3 with winds of up to 155 mph. It was up to a half mile wide and stay on the ground for nearly 13 miles.

It thankfully killed nobody, but left 22 injured, destroyed 34 homes, left 66 homes too damaged to inhabit, and left another 406 homes damaged but inhabitable. says the Springfield NWS.  

On Sunday, the severe weather continued, this time in the Southeast. One twister tore through King's Bay Naval Base in Georgia, causing relatively minor injuries to five people and leaving a trail of damage.

It surprisingly hasn't been a particularly busy end of year tornado period. There were 42 tornado reports in November in the United States, which isn't far from average. We're up to about 30 so far in this young December month. If we don't get many more twisters before the end of the year, December, too, will come out pretty close to normal in the tornado department.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Over the past two days, a rather out of season tornado outbreak has been causing big trouble from Oklahoma to Illinois to Georgia.

A strong, sprawling storm in the middle of the country is to blame.

Friday, the first day of the tornadoes wasn't much of a surprise. Forecasters had alerted people days in advance that eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri were under the gun. And these regions indeed got hit Friday.

One person died Friday night in a Missouri tornado, and another twister that might have tracked for as long as 60 miles through eastern Oklahoma caused a lot of damage, especially around Lake Tenkiller.

Saturday was more of a surprise. We knew there was the risk of severe storms and possible tornadoes in Illinois on Saturday. but things got out of control beyond what most people imagined.

So far there have been 22 reports of tornadoes in Illinois. Most of those tornadoes came from three or four supercell thunderstorms that kept dropping twister.

An especially strong one smashed the Illinois town of Taylorville, population approximately 11,000. Meteorologists watched in horror as radar indicated a strong tornado heading toward that town for as much as an hour before hitting. Everyone hoped it would weaken, but it didn't.

At least Taylorville residents got plenty of warning. The National Weather Service in Lincoln, Illinois  issued a tornado warning for the Taylorville area 42 minutes before the twister struck.

Another tornado spinning in Illinois yesterday.

Despite extensive damage to more than 100 homes, there were no deaths reported. About thirty people were injured.

Not necessarily fun fact: The high school sports teams in this town are the Taylorville Tornadoes.

The supercell responsible for this tornado lasted a long time, starting east of St. Louis and ending east of Bloomington, Illinois, a distance of 140 miles. As noted, this storm kept spitting out tornadoes along its path.

This morning, tornado warnings went up in parts of southern Georgia.

Tornado outbreaks do happen from time to time this time of year, if there's a strong enough parent storm system, as there was over the past couple of days.  It's a pretty odd to have such powerful tornadoes go as far north as central Illinois in early December, but it's not completely unprecedented.

Tornadoes have touched down as far north as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in past Decembers. However most twisters in the final month of the year are confined to near the Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi Valley.

One ingredient for tornadoes is warm, humid air, which is something of a rarity during the first month of winter.

Tornadoes are especially dangerous this time of year because people tend not to expect them. Plus, they're more likely to happen in darkness, since days are so short. People might not be aware of a twister approaching under cover of darkness.

After today, tornadoes seem unlikely in the United States until at least next Saturday, when a new storm along the Gulf Coast might create some Deep South severe weather.

Truth And Fiction: Assessing The Worst Wildfire In California History

Paradise gone" This neighborhood in Paradise, California was wiped
out along with most of the rest of the town by the Camp Fire. 

California firefighters have finally getting the upper hands on the wildfires plaguing the state, including the now-famous Camp Fire in northern California, which has become the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

Plus, it's been raining the past couple of days  That's great news, and greatly contributed to the fact the fire was declare 100 percent contained today.

But the rain has its own share of risks. More on that in a bit.

Now that the fires have abated, this gives us a chance to take stock and take a deep dive into this disaster. There has been some misinformation, confusion and doubts about the fires. It's always good to try and get the facts, because lessons need to be learned. What follows is not perfect, and reasonable people might disagree with me. But we really should have the discussion.

WORST CASE SCENARIO, FOR NOW

Just when people thought things couldn't possibly get any worse than the Tubbs Fire last year, which killed 22 people and destroyed 5,643 structures, we had this year's so-called Camp Fire.

This illustration is of the Peshtigo, Wisconsin wildfire of 1871 that killed
at least 1,200 people. It shows some people trying take refuge in
a nearby river. It's the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history.
Are deadly wildfires making a comeback?

As of this writing, the Camp Fire has killed a confirmed 85 people, the most deadly wildfire in California history and the nation's deadliest in more than a century.

They're still looking for hundreds of missing people. We don't know how many of those are just lost in the shuffle after the chaos of the evacuation, and how many were lost to the flames.

The fire destroyed some 13,000 buildings, including virtually the entire town of Paradise, California, with a pre-fire population of about 27,000.

This was America's worst wildfire in a century.  Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, there was a spate of even deadlier fires in the United States. An 1871 wildfire around Peshtigo, Wisconsin killed some 1,200 people in 1871. A 1918 wildfire in Minnesota killed roughly 1,000 people. Another Minnesota fire in 1894 claimed at least 418 lives, notes Jeff Masters in the Category 6 blog.

While the United States has always had wildfires, blazes that would kill scores or hundreds of people became rare in the 20th century.

Now, these horrible death fires seem to be on a comeback. I'm aware of just four wildfires that each killed 15 or more people in the era between 1930 and 1990.

There was an uptick in such fires beginning in the 1990s, and now they're even more frequent. Category 6 blog lists five fires that have killed at least 13 people just since 2003. (This includes the Camp Fire.)

Something seems to be going on. Too many people moving to forest lands? That's only a small part of the story. Poor forest management? We'll get into that in this post, but that's not the whole picture either. What about climate change?

 CLIMATE CHANGE DIDN'T "CAUSE" THIS FIRE

In the late summer and autumn, central and northern California are often plagued by something called Diablo winds.

Air circulates up from the deserts further south, so this air is very dry. The wind hits the eastern slopes of the mountains in northern California then heads westward, up and over these ridges.

Once over the tops of the mountains, the winds continue westward, gaining momentum as they head down hill. The gusts get stronger and stronger. As the air races downhill, it actually gets even drier.

A small spark can start a nasty wildfire under these conditions There are reports there was a problem with a PG&E high tension line near Paradise that might have sparked the fire. If that's the case, the Diablo winds took advantage of this situation and the conflagration was borne.

Most wildfires are caused by humans. They haven't really come up with a cause for the Tubbs Fire yet, but it also might have been a PG&E line failure.  Teenagers playing with matches might have caused the Gatlinburg, Tennessee wildfire in 2017, but arson charges against the teens have been dropped.

Once the fires have started though, a lot of them have become much more extreme than in the past 100 years. That finally brings us to climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE VERY LIKELY MADE THE FIRE MUCH WORSE.

Northern California was tinder dry (brown shades) on the days leading
up to and on the day of the Camp Fire 

Even though climate change did not cause the Camp Fire, it probably took what would have been a relatively ugly but manageable local situation and turned it into a calamity.

UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted:

"If Northern California had received anywhere near the typical amount of autumn precipitation this year (around 4-5 in. of rain near #CampFire point of origin). explosive fire behavior & stunning tragedy in #Paradise would almost certainly not have occurred."

Swain then went on in his very helpful Twitter thread:

"Rainy season has started late this year in California...again. While autumn precipitation isn't usually (a) huge fraction of overall annual average, it's hugely important to ecosystems & bringing fire season-ending moisture. This yr., autumn precip was <20-30% of avg."

Swain added on Twitter: "Objective indicators of vegetation dryness and potential fire intensity were are record high levels for the date this week in the vicinityh of #CampFire -- and would have been very high even for peak summer levels -- at a time of year when the rainy season is usually ramping up."

Droughts and late starts to rainy seasons happen, with or without global warming. But climate change seems to have made these conditions more likely in the western United States, which would make this type of fire more likely.

Strong downslope winds propelled the Camp Fire, but those winds often happen this time of year. Had moisture been close to normal the winds wouldn't have been a big deal in a damp forest.

In southern areas of California, things have really dried out in recent years, too. As Sierraclub.org points out:

"Unusually dry conditions have prevailed in the Santa Monicas during recent years. Based on rainfall totals since 1877, 11 out of the last 15 years have seen below average rains. During the 2006-2007 season, only 3.21 inches of rain fell, the lowest ever recorded."

Climate change tends to make things hotter and drier in areas like California. Scientists are also increasingly embracing one effect that climate change seems to be having: That of a "stuck" jet stream

I've mentioned this idea in this blog before, but to review: The jet stream, which is a river of high speed air, steers weather systems, mostly west to east across the Northern Hemisphere. A healthy jet stream thrives on a very cold Arctic contrasting with hot tropics.

The Arctic is warming up much faster than the rest of the world, so that contrast is diminishing. The result seems to be a slower and wavier jet stream that is more likely to get "stuck" in position.

Abnormally strong northward bulges in the jet stream, like California had most of this year and New England and eastern Canada had this summer, create long lasting heat waves and often, droughts. Abnormally deep southward dips bring repeated shots of cold air southward, keeping areas strangely frigid, kind of like we in the Northeast have been going through in recent weeks.

Even a weak dip in the jet stream can cause havoc if it get's stuck too long. This summer. such a weak, stuck dip contributed to record rains in the Mid-Atlantic states.  Bottom line: Stuck jet streams are bad, and could become even more likely as the planet warms. That could contribute to more and worse wildfires in some areas, epic floods in others.

TRUMP WAS (MOSTLY) WRONG WHEN HE BLAMED FOREST MANAGEMENT

Donald Trump surveying the fire destruction in Paradise, California.
He is mostly wrong when he attributes poor forest
management to the disaster. 

OK, I'll give Donald Trump a little credit here before I start criticizing. In some areas, there's been a buildup of small saplings, brush and other things on the forest floor that can make fires more intense and more likely.

That's why there's been an increase in "controlled burns" which are intentionally set and watched when there's little danger of them becoming catastrophes.

Trump's Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, blamed the wildfires out west on lefty environmentalists:

He said: "Every year we watch our forests burn, and every year there is a call for action. Yet, when action comes, and we try to thin forests of dead and dying timber, or we try to sustainably harvest timber from dense and fire-prone areas, we are attacked with frivolous litigation from radical environmentalists who would rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods."

First of all, that's insulting. I can't imagine even the most radical environmentalists experiencing any joy or satisfaction about the extreme loss of life and destruction from the recent wildfires.

Zinke is also on shaky factual ground. As the New York Times points out, Zinke is right that there are a lot of dead and dying trees in California. Drought and heat contributed to that. So did an influx of devastating insects that survive better in hotter climates. However, it's not the dead and dying trees that catch fire so easily. At least initially.

They're too big. When you start your fireplace, you don't hold a match to a big log and expect it burn. You start with small stuff, kindling, and work your way up. Forest fires work that way, too.

Besides, when you thin a forest, you risk creating an explosion of highly flammable weeds and shrubs on the forest floor. Fewer trees mean less shade, and these kinds of plants can thrive.

As the New York Times notes, thinning of forests in California leads to the growth of something called cheatgrass, which is highly flammable when it dries out.

On the edge of Paradise, California, which was destroyed in the wildfire, forest thinning happened about a decade ago. When the fires started earlier this month, there was plenty of cheatgrass there to burn.

And no, raking the forest like you would your lawn won't help. Finlanders don't spend their days raking forest, by the way, unless they do so to mock Trump.

The poor forest management argument really falls apart when we're talking about southern California.

The fires in southern California burned through chaparral, brush, grass and whatnot. There are no forests to speak of to burn around Malibu and Thousand Oaks. You can't mismanage a non-existent forest.

This lack of grace and knowledge by the President certainly ticked some people off

For instance, The Pasadena Fire Association tweeted this:

"Mr. President, with all due respect, you are wrong. the fires in So. Cal are urban interface fires and have NOTHING to do with forest management. Come to SoCal and learn the facts & help the victims Scott Austin, Pres IAFF 809."

Brush fires have always been a real risk in southern California during the autumn. The stuff that grew during the previous winter and early spring rain season has always dried out by autumm. You've heard the song "It Never Rains In Southern California." The song is right, at least until usually December of so.

COUGHING IN THE SMOKE, OR WORSE

Air quality was dangerously bad during the Camp Fire as smoke spread
through the San Francisco bay area and much of northern and
central California. Photo by Eric Rosberg/AP

There are plenty of victims dealing with the Camp Fire whose homes were untouched and who live dozens or even hundreds of miles from the wildfire zone.

Smoke from the fires have settled over much of California during the Camp Fire, before the rains came in.  The San Francisco Bay area, often a place where you could breathe fresh, clean Pacific Ocean air, had the worst air quality in the world in the days after the Camp Fire.

This air pollution is yet another example of how fires, likely made worse by climate change, can affect so many unsuspecting people.

The smoke is regarded as "particulate" pollution. The smoke consists of tiny particles that can embed themselves in people's lungs, causing current health problems in people exposed to the smoke. This mostly effects the elderly, children and people with existing respiratory ailments. People will continue to get sick a couple weeks after the smoke clears, but these immediate effects will wane.

However, the long term health effects of breathing all this thick smoke are not entirely known, says NBC News:

"Longer-term impacts of such exposure, meanwhile, are little understood. Few studies have been conducted to track the helath of people months, and years, after they have been exposed to high concentrations of 'particulate' pollution. The emissions are similar to toxic particles released with the burning of fossil fuels. But fire fumes could pose an additional risk, because they include chemicals released when homes and cars - and their attendant insulation, plastic and metal - burn."

Of course, the vast majority of the smoke consists of burned grass, trees and brush, not human-created chemicals, so that's vaguely a good thing, I suppose.

We do know that long term exposure from smoke from things like wildfires increased the rates of chronic bronchitis, reduced lung function, lung cancer and heart disease, but I don't exactly know how you define "long-term."

I'm guessing a few days of such pollution isn't all that bad in the long term, but if this kind of thing keeps happening, and people are repeatedly exposed to weeks of wildfire smoke, we might start to see some real long term effects. It won't be as bad as somebody who has smoked a pack of cigarettes each day for decades, but it still won't be great.

 WHY COULDN'T PEOPLE ESCAPE?

Desperate people fled on foot after cars became stuck on
congestion roads during the chaotic evacuation from the
Camp Fire in Paradise, California.
Photo by Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group.

As KQED reported, the town of Paradise had a detailed evacuation plan in case of a wildfire. In 2008, two wildfires burned right up to the edge of the community.

That prompted the municipal government to draft an evacutation plan. Some neighborhood residents fleeing a fire would drive down certain roads, others would drive out of danger using different routes.

The community even held a mock evacuation during the morning rush hour, to mimic crowded roads in the middle of an emergency.

In this case, the best laid plans failed to work. People who were trying to flee got stuck on gridlocked roads. Panicked people got out of their cars and tried to flee on foot. Most of those made it. Some didn't. A number of people burned to death in their cars.

You'd think a good plan in a fire-conscious community like Paradise would go better than this. The problem was, all 27,000 residents tried to flee at once. The fire came on so strong, so fast, so extensively, that everybody had to leave at once. It wasn't what was planned, what normally happens.

One neighborhood is threatened, so people there flee. The fire moves on, threatening another housing development, so those people go.

"I think their plan would have worked for the 97th percentile fire," Bill Stewart, co-directorof the Berkel Forests Program at UC Berkeleu told the Los Angeles Times. "It would have worked if they had six hours to move, instead of two."

Nobody planned on fires being this quick, this explosive, this fast-moving. It just wasn't within the realm of imagination. That had tragic results. This, perhaps is related to the climate change problem I discussed earlier.

Climate change is the present and future. But what happened in Paradise is also a legacy of history. The roads in the area were laid out by gold miners and railroads decades or a century or more ago. The roads were designed to weave their way through canyons, hills and ridges to access minerals, not evacuate lots of people in an emergency.

That said, there were plenty of heroes.

PEOPLE COME THROUGH, BIG TIME

Nurse Allyn Pierce drove through Paradise, California wildfires
repeatedly to evacuate people. The truck (left) was scorched and
melted after the fire. Toyota Motor Company heard about
Pierce's bravery and gave him a new truck (right).

As always in these mega disasters, real heroes emerged. There's too many to cite here, but I'll offer some examples.

There's the bus driver who somehow got 20 kids about of a Paradise elementary school and drove through the flames to get them out.


The kids were choking on the smoke, so he too, off his t-shirt. He and teachers aboard the bus tore the shirt into little pieces, soaked them in water and put the wet pieces of cloth over the kids' mouths to protect them from the smoke.

I also have to give props to a Paradise, California nurse named Allyn Pierce, who ferried people out by driving through flames, twice. The trips left his Toyota Tundra truck melted and scorched, pretty much destroyed.

The Toyota Motor Company got wind of this and will give Pierce a new truck, gratis. Small gesture in the grand scheme of the tragedy, but it makes me and everybody else feel good, so it's exactly what was needed.

People far from the fire zone stepped up, too, sometimes in surprising ways.

The other day, Peter Sagal (Host of "Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me! on NPR) tweeted, "People are strange, sometimes in delightful ways."

Sagal was referring to the actor James Woods.  Woods had basically turned himself in recent years into a particularly annoying pro-Trump Twitter troll.

Then the California fires flared up this month. Woods turned his Twitter account into this unending emergency response and relief effort. Woods tweeted day and night, forwarding pleas for help from fire victims and sending those who wanted to help in the right direction to the right people.

I was impressed. As were many others. As is I guess human nature during catastrophes, Woods rightly abandoned political ideology and just reached out to help. One of the people he helped was the actress Alyssa Milano.

Milano had been evacuated from her southern California home by the wildfires, but she needed help getting her horses out of harm's way.

Woods and Milano are polar opposites, politically, and I'm sure they've had negative things to say to one another. But the two cooperated, the horses are safe and everybody's that much happier.

THEN THERE ARE THE IDIOTS 

Of course, there are a few idiots that always make things worse. We got into it a little bit with Trump and his minions. But of course there are worse people.

Again, there are too many to do an exhaustive review, but on the bright side there seems to be far fewer villians than heroes.

One example would be Dave Johnson, the GOP chair of Columbiana County, Ohio. Earlier this  month,   he posted to social media images of the fire with the message "God's Punishment to Liberal California." Another message on the photo said: "Hell on Earth, brought to you by the liberals in California."

Frankly, as a gay guy, I'm a bit relieved by this. The "religious" right, if you can call them that, have long blamed the gays for every single disaster that has ever befallen the world. As if somebody like me had that much power.

Now, they've broaden the blame out, so it's anybody who's liberal who's to blame. Funny, I don't see any footage of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rampaging through California as evil arsonists, but what do I know?

Johnson deleted his posts after a public outcry.

NOW THE RAINS COME

The rain started in northern California this past week. As of today, one to two inches of rain has fallen on the fire area, and a lot more is on the way. The rain has cleared nuch of the smoke, tamped own remaining fire and is preventing new ones from starting.

With steep hillsides stripped bare by the fires and even underground tree roots incinerated, there's not much to hold the soil in place. We're at the start of the California rainy season, so for the next several months we'll have to worry about more devastation from mudslides and debris flows in areas where the fires burned over.

Especially in northern California, where it's cooler, little or no new vegetation will start growing until next spring. It's going to be a dangerous winter.

Now, some videos.

Here's a video tour of the Paradise area. Notice how hit and miss things were:



This is an intense video of a father and sons trying to get out of Paradise after the fire. They're trying to hold it together as they think they're out of danger, then they're back in danger, then out, then in.
You can hear the extreme relief at the end when they begin to emerge from the darkness
and see blue sky up ahead, meaning they were finally safe:



Here's an absolutely heartbreaking CBS Morning News report of a woman, a nurse at the local hospital, who didn't think she'd make it out alive, but somehow did. However, her father's house
is just ashes now, and that father is missing.

Will This Autumn's Baked Alaska Gives Us Vermonters A Frigid Winter?

Will a weird autumn Alaska heat wave give us Vermonters a frigid
winter? It's possible. This photo shows a frigid January day in 2015,
in St. Albans, Vermont, the last time a warm northeastern
Pacific Ocean influenced the weather, It was really cold here.. 

There are all sorts of predictions for what this winter will be like, ranging from warm and dry to frigid and snowy and everything in between.

It's always hard to forecast a winter. It's even tougher this year, with a weak El Nino possibly influencing things, and weather patterns in the Arctic still making up their minds

One intriguing clue to this winter is the return of "The Blob."  

No, it's not a horror movie. But for those who don't like frigid winters, it could be somewhat horrible.

Here's what I'm trying to explain: There's been a huge and persistent and warm ridge of high pressure over and near Alaska throughout this autumn. This has caused record warmth across that region. An autumn Baked Alaska.

Fairbanks, Alaska has yet to see so much as a flake of snow so far this year. That's by far a record for the latest first snow. Nome, Alaska should have had about 20 freezes so far this autumn. This year, they've had one. So far this month, Anchorage is running ten degrees warmer than normal.

This warm high pressure system has heated up the northeastern Pacific Ocean. This area of toasty water has come to be known as The Blob. As the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang points out, this can really chill us in the eastern United States.

The Blob last made an appearance in the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15. You remember the talk of "Polar Vortexes" those winters, and how cold it was over Vermont and the rest of the Northeast. The winter of 2015 was also when Boston had its epic snow siege. 

Those extreme winters were created in part by "The Blob."  The warm northeastern Pacific Ocean forced the jet stream over western North America northward. That caused a big dip in the jet stream downstream, over the eastern United States. That led to repeated Arctic outbreaks in the winters of 2014 and 2015.  It also led to the hottest year on record in the Pacific Northwest, under that warm ridge.

Snow siege in Boston, Massachusetts, 2015. Warm northeastern
Pacific Ocean water helped cause an intense winter in
the Northeast. Photo by Charles Krupa/AP

The Capital Weather Gang assures us The Blob might not hang on like it did in the winters of 2014 and 2015. In 2016, it looked like The Blob was reasserting itself, but it dissipated. This year, the huge warm high pressure ridge over Alaska is showing signs of breaking down.

If it does break down and stay broken down, that will open the door to big Pacific Ocean storms. The storms will mix up the water in The Blob zone, bringing cold water up from down below. The warm blob will disappear and no longer be a factor in our winter.

There's no way to tell for sure whether this will happen or not. It's just one piece of the puzzle for a complicated winter forecast.

For the next week here in Vermont, it will sure be wintry. Temperatures will stay 10 to 15 degrees below normal most days, and the threat of snow showers will be almost ever-present, especially in the high elevations.

Beyond that, who knows?

Back Here in Vermont, Weather News And Changes During Michael Disaster

A hosta that hasn't been nipped by frost yet shows its fall colors
in my St. Albans, Vermont garden. It'll shrivel up with the
upcoming cold weather.

While we were watching the jaw-dropping disaster that was Hurricane Michael, we here in Vermont had some interesting weather for this time of year. Next, big changes are on the way.

Of course, our interesting weather in the Green Mountain State is nothing  like the extremes of Hurricane Michael. Which I'm sure is fine with every one of us.

Here in Vermont, we had a couple more record highs this week.

On Tuesday, Burlington tied its record high of 80 degrees for the date. Then Wednesday, we broke the record high by reaching 82 degrees, besting the previous record by two degrees.

Massena, New York also broke a record high with 82 degrees and Plattsburgh tied its record high of 81 degrees.

The 80 degree weather this week in Burlington means we've had 84 days this year with temperatures of 80 degrees or more. I think that's the second most on record, behind last year. I'll have to double check.

We have a new trend it seems for 80 degree weather in October. Six of the past eight Octobers in Burlington have had temperatures at or above 80. Before that, such warm weather will hit in roughly one of every six or seven Octobers.

Thursday was cooler with all the rain, but still humid. Dew point, which tell you whether it's uncomfortably humid or not, were in the upper 60s. So yeah, it was uncomfortably humid.

Plus, we set a new record. Burlington had 1.46 inches of rain, a record for the date. The northern Vermont drought stubbornly continues to hang on, at least somewhat, despite some rainy weather in recent weeks. So this helped.

If you like warm weather, I hope you liked this week, because a long lasting, cold change is on the way. The weather pattern is shifting big time, and a cool regime looks to take over. This generally cooler than normal regime looks like it could last at least to the end of this month, if not beyond that. That is at least if some of the long range models are correct.

By next week, most daily high temperatures across Vermont will be in the 40s, which is about ten degrees below normal. The mountains will become snowcapped. For the first time this autumn, the National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont last evening mentioned snow in the forecast, even in the valleys.

Don't worry, if it snows, it won't amount to much. But much of northern Vermont, including the lowlands, face a chance of snow and rain showers Wednesday night and Thursday. There might even be a few wet snowflakes mixed with light rain showers tomorrow morning.

There will be no heavy precipitation, either in the form or rain or snow, is coming anytime soon. The northwesterly flow that is bringing in this colder regime blocks moisture from the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico, so we'll have to wait some time for another burst of decent precipitation.

Buzzsaw Hurricane Matthew Was LIke An Immense Tornado

In the eyewall of Hurricane Michael. Photo by Joe Randle/Getty Images

Imagine if you were in your house when a strong tornado hit it.  You would cower in the your basement as the twister pulled the house to pieces, but the good news it is all over in a minute or so.

Imagine having to endure that for an hour or more.  

That's basically what people in and around Panana City, Florida had to deal with as Hurricane Michael came onshore yesterday.

IT WAS BAD

Maximum sustained winds in Hurricane Michael were 155 mph - just shy of Category 5, which would be the worst hurricane possible.  Videos taken in the Florida Panhandle of the 100 to 130 mph gusts that were common in region were just like videos I've seen taken inside of tornadoes.

Roof went airborne. Debris swirled everywhere. Scary stuff, made worse by an immense storm surge that sent walls of watering crashing through seaside towns. Storm surges reached over ten feet high as predicted, washing many neighborhoods completely away.

One person said Panama Beach looks like it has been nuked. A major U.S. Air Force base is in ruins.

There are several videos of news reports, the storm in full progress and the terrible aftermath at the bottom of this post.

It's amazing that as of this writing, I'm aware of only two deaths associated with Michael. I'm sure teh death toll will rise, but still, the casuality list is so far mercifully short.  Damage photos from the area look like it was hit by a 10 or 20 mile wide EF-4 tornado.

We've had a lot of unusual, and unusually strong hurricanes lately. This one fit that bill. Forecasters had known right along since at least Sunday Hurricane Michael would strengthen pretty steadily as it worked its way north across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.

Wild close up satellite view of Hurricane Michael eye

The strengthening was stunning, however. The hope was that Michael would limit itself to a Category 2 storm. Instead, it was a much worse, high end Category 4 monster.

It was the third most powerful hurricane to hit the United States in centuries. Michael was the strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. since Camille in 1969.

Michael was yet another example of how forecasters have gotten much better at predicting the path of hurricanes, but we need work on predicting the strength.

The forecast was pretty good in this case, as the National Hurricane Center very early on caught on to the idea that Michael would strengthen.

They just had no idea it would get that bad. I'm sure researchers continue to study how to better forecast hurricane strength. If there's a tiny silver lining to Hurricane Michael, it is that it will probably provide more, valuable data to the researchers.

Nonetheless the National Hurricane Center, local National Weather Service meteorologists, broadcast meteorologists and emergency managers deserve a huge amount of credit. Their timely and increasingly strident warnings prompted a huge number of people to flee out of harm's way. That's why the death toll is so far surprisingly low.

Of course, we don't know to what extent, if any, climate change had to do with Hurricane Michael's strength. We do know the Gulf of Mexico water temperature was warmer than normal, which certainly fed Michael.  Was the water warm due to climate change, a normal cycle, a fluke or a combination?

From television station WFLA. Mexico Beach, Florida after Michael

As Scientific American points out, cold fronts usually start pressing in from the north and into the Gulf of Mexico by this time of year. These cold fronts stir up the atmosphere and increase upper level winds.

That disrupts hurricanes. The cold fronts add a bit of chill to the Gulf of Mexico waters, too. No cold fronts, no chill, no disruptive winds. Michael had a strangely perfect environment to strengthen. Which is weird for so late in the season.

Ocean water temperatures have risen all around the globe due to climate change, so we can suspect that had an influence on Michael. And why haven't the autumn cold fronts reached the Gulf of Mexico yet? Global warming or a fluke or both?  

Generally speaking, hurricanes that are relatively small in size have a greater chance of intensifying rapidly than big, sprawling storms. Michael was kind of small in area, so it was better able to take advantage of perfect atmospheric conditions to strengthen.

Michael actually reminded me a lot of Hurricane Charley, which behaved very much like Michael as it blasted into southwestern Florida in 2004.

Contrarians will say that climate change is not having an influence on hurricanes, or they'll say that climate change doesn't exist. They'll point to the fact there has been no real trendline in the number of hurricanes that pop up every year. True, but it does seem like many of the stronger ones are even more intense than they were previously.  

These contrarians will also say there have been plenty of tropical storms and hurricanes this year and previously that didn't amount to much, and behaved pretty much the way all tropical systems have in the past. That's all very true. But is something weird going on with these particularly strong ones?

Other hurricanes, like Harvey last year and Florence this year stalled an meandered, dumping incredible rains on Houston in 2017 and the Carolinas this year. There has been some research and more than some speculation that these stalls are influence by changes in the the jet stream. Which in turn have been influenced by global warming.

Some of our contrarians will point out, quite accurately, that Hurricane Michael moved right along. No stalls, no meanders, no loop de loops. It just plowed ashore and kept right on going to the Carolinas, where it was this morning as a tropical storm. Michael is still racing forward, and will move off the East Coast tonight.

If hurricanes are stalling, why didn't Michael? our contrarians will ask. Climate change doesn't nullify basic physics. Not all hurricanes will stall and meander. Most, like Michael, get picked up by upper level winds and steered briskly toward their destinations.

By the way, there is currently an aimlessly meandering hurricane out there. Hurricane Leslie, out in the central Atlantic Ocean, has been moving to and fro and not making much headway in any particular direction for more than a week now.  It's now moving back toward Africa, where it came front. Forecasters say it will weaken, and do another U-turn in a couple days.

Michael is still quite a danger, despite the fact that its 155 mph sustained winds are long gone. (Top sustained winds were 50 mph as of 8 a.m. today. Michael is still unleashing torrential rain and causing renewed flooding in the Carolinas.

Plus, as many dying tropical systems do when they're inland, there's a high potential that Michael will spin off tornadoes today in North Carolina and Virginia.

Now, some videos:

This video shows large masses of debris from wrecked homes  floating around in the storm surge:



The Washington Post gives a great overview of what it was like. Even the satellite image of Hurricane Michael's eye coming ashore is scary as hell:



ABC meteorologist Ginger Zee rode out the storm in a concrete condominium that held - barely.  Her report is fraught to say the least. Especially the part where she describes the blue house across the street just rolling away:



The following video is often blurry, but it's an aerial view of Mexico Beach, Florida. Utter devastation:

Perfect Storm: Botched Severe Weather Forecast; But Rain Pours Down

The sky looked volatile enough over South Burlington, Vermont on
Wednesday but the expected severe thunderstorms never developed
This post explains why the forecast was wrong and why you
should be happy it was.

If you want to botch a weather forecast, Wednesday in Vermont was how to do it.

Most forecasters and weather weenies and pundits, including yours truely, warned everyone that Vermont and surrounding areas were in for some severe weather on Wednesday.  

Oh, we were going to have thunderstorms with strong damaging wind gusts! There was even the possibility of a tornado! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!!

And then, we got........rain.

Yep, rain. Just a September downpour for a lot of us.

Oh, sure, it rained really hard under some of those showers. Winds did gust to a whopping 30-35 mph in a few spots. But this was nothing compared to some of our dire forecasts.

Here's what went wrong: A lot of the ingredients were there for severe weather. There were strong winds just a few thousand feet above us. Winds changed in direction and speed with height. That's a recipe of severe storms.

One thing that turned out to be especially crucial for severe storms on Wednesday proved to lack, big time. That was sunshine.

Sunshine would have heated the lower levels of the atmosphere a lot more than they were heated Wednesday. That would have created some nice updrafts. Those updrafts would have grabbed some of those high winds a few thousand feet above us and brought them to the surface as damaging gusts.

The instability created by sunshine would have allowed thunderstorms to hold together. To give them time to strengthen and start rotating. A rotating storm has the potential to create tornadoes.

Everybody knew in advance there wouldn't be much sun, but the figuring was there would be enough. But the situation called for more breaks in the clouds than what forecasters thought would be sufficient.

The clouds won. There was precious little sunshine anywhere in and near Vermont on Wednesday. The overcast was persistent. That limited the instability.

The dynamic atmosphere, combined with high humidity, was certainly able to generate lots of showers. Several lines of them passed through Vermont. There were many downpours. Just not the excitement many were expecting.

The closest thing to Vermont with any damage of note was a single tree that toppled over in Saratoga Springs, New York. Yawn.

You might be mad at forecasters for what you might think was over-hyping the situation. But these things happen. Meteorology is still inexact. Scientists don't know everything that goes on with the atmosphere. Weather forecasts have gotten better in recent years, but meteorologists still don't at 1,000 when it comes to predictions.

And now I'm going to turn the tables and lecture you.

You should be happy there was no severe weather. You should be happy there were all kinds of downpours.  We needed it. Did you really want people to suffer property damage? That this kind of thing didn't happen is a good thing.

Northern Vermont continues to be in a drought. Yes, we had some beneficial rains last Friday. But dig a couple inches into the ground, as I did in my St. Albans yard Tuesday and you hit dust. These downpours were another chip in the armor of that drought.

More showers like Wednesday's over the course of the next several weeks would erase any drought conditions we might still have.  Bless the rain!

Today, Thursday, it's back to autumn. The forecast is easier today, so I'm pretty sure it's accurate. First off: No severe weather. No rain to speak of. Just partly sunny skies and afternoon temperatures at pleasantly cool levels - in the low 60s. Skies will probably trend cloudier during the course of the afternoon. But there's nothing exciting in the forecast for today.

Be happy with that, too, my dears.

Severe Storm Threat Definitely On Today In Vermont, Surrounding Areas

We here in Vermont are in the middle of a severe
thunderstorm risk today. Strong straight line winds are
the big

When I got up this morning and looks up at the clouds, they were screaming by, north to south. If Vermont State Police could catch them, they would issue speeding tickets for sure.

Those speeding clouds are a sign that we are in for severe weather. I was looking up at something called a low level jet. It's essentially a package or river of fast moving air just a few thousand feet overhead.

Under the right conditions, thunderstorms can "grab" this high speed air and bringing to the surface in the form of very damaging wind gusts.

We have most of those right conditions today.

A cold front is approaching from the west. If you've been outside, you noticed it has turned humid again. And we have that low level jet.

The only thing missing is a lot of sunshine. That would destabilize the air even more, making severe thunderstorms more likely. Watch the skies between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. today: If there's a lot of sun, the severe thunderstorms goes up.

The main risk in today's storms is those strong, damaging wind gusts. Of course, not everybody will get that, but a few to several places probably will. The current thinking is the  thunderstorms coming in today will probably in the form of a broken line heading east.

Watch out in particular for sections of this line of storms that form something that looks like  a backwards "C" on radar. Those are called bowing echoes. The apex of the backwards "C" is an area that will be especially dangerous for destructive winds.

While not a high threat, there is a slight chance of a tornado or two. A tornado would be most likely if a storm forms ahead of the main line of rough weather and starts to rotate. We could get a supercell or two out of this, anywhere in eastern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and perhaps points south.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center is giving us a
very slight, but non-zero chance of a couple
tornadoes today. 

Of course the chances of seeing a twister are low. Vermont and New Hampshire are in a 5 percent chance zone for a tornado. That means if you are in these two states, there's a 5 percent chance a tornado will touch down within 25 miles of you.

You see, a slim chance, but not a zero chance. Already, there were brief tornado warnings earlier this morning in western New York and western Pennsylvania.

By the way, southern Quebec, including Montreal is under the gun for all this potential severe weather, too. The Ottawa area, which saw devastating tornadoes last Friday, is under a much lesser threat today.

The biggest threat for severe storms today will be between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.

The National Weather Service in South Burlington,  ermont is thinking the main line of storms will form in northern New York between 1 and 3 p.m this afternoon, then reach the Champlain Valley around 4 p.m., give or take, then be out of Vermont and into New Hampshire by 8 p.m. or so.

If you've got lawn furniture and loose objects outside, I'd bring them inside or tie them down this morning in case strong thunderstorm winds hit.

If you have plans to go boating or hiking today, cancel those plans. Go tomorrow instead. The weather will be gorgeous by then. Trust me.

Also, today's the wrong day to park your car under an old, rotting tree.

There is a decent chance National Weather Service will issue a severe thunderstorm watch or even, possibly, a tornado watch later this morning or early this afternoon. That would be a signal to go about your business as usual, but keep your ear perked up for potential warnings.

If you get a severe thunderstorm warning, get inside a sturdy building and stay away from windows. (In a worse case scenario, flying debris in strong winds could break the glass.)  In the off chance you get a tornado warning, just go to the basement in a sturdy building. If there's no basement, get into an a room with no windows closest to the middle of the building.

Some of these storms will also have torrential, blinding rain. The storms will move fast and not linger over any one place for a long time. That means that there will be no substantial flooding. But the rain will be so intense that street flooding can occur in an instant. Drainage ditches and small streams could turn pretty wild pretty fast, too.

It all clears out this evening, and it's back to delightfully crisp, sunny fall weather Thursday.

Don't Wear A Hat: Vermont's First Fall Season Wind Storm Today

Strong winds today in the Champlain Valley will break a few branches,
but it won't be anything like last year's epic October windstorm that
caused widespread damage, including to this Milton, Vermont home.

UPDATE, 11 AM:

The warm front that is coming through Vermont this morning has a lot more oomph to it than I thought it would, and that's a great thing.

Rainfall, accompanied by a few lightning strikes and thunder booms, has been heavier than I anticipated.

Burlington, Vermont is up to more than a half inch of rain. Much of the rest of droughty northwest Vermont got similar amounts.

The rain will soon end as the warm front goes by. This afternoon, and evening, we're still under the gun for strong winds.

The wind advisory has been upgraded to a high wind warning in Grand Isle County, Vermont and elsewhere right along the immediate shores of Lake Champlain. Wind gusts between 2 and 8 p.m. today in this area could reach or exceed 60 mph, which would cause a fair number of power outages.

The previous wind advisory for the rest of the region remains on.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

Hang on to your hat! Today in Vermont is going to be quite a windy one, especially if you're in the Champlain Valley.

It all started this morning with a warm front, which managed to bring some gusty winds and downpours to northern Vermont.

Which is OK, we needed the rain. The wind and downpours I encountered on the way to work this morning reminded me of a tropical storm, though of course today's weather has nothing to do with a tropical storm.

And if the rain hasn't tapered off and ended where you are, it will soon. .

The weather pattern almost every autumn features storms heading northeastward across the Great Lakes or up the St. Lawrence Valley of New York.

Once summer is over,  low pressure systems tend to get stronger and you get wind.

If a storm goes to our west, the wind comes from the south, at least until the storm's cold front swings through. The Champlain Valley of Vermont and New York, and the St. Lawrence Valley of New York, tend to channel these winds, and you get a lot of strong gusts as a result.

Today, we're going to get the first of these windstorms of the fall season.

A wind advisory is up for the Champlain and St. Lawrence Valley. The peak of the wind will come this afternoon and evening, when gust on exposed areas right along Lake Champlain could reach 55 mph. Otherwise, gusts will reach the 45 to 50 mph range.

Winds were already increasing before dawn at my house in St. Albans, Vermont, but I'd say peak gusts at around 6 a.m. were only about 20 mph. The real show starts later.

The expected winds will be strong enough to take down some branches, maybe a couple of trees and some power lines. There will likely be power failures here and there this evening.

This type of wind storm, as I said, is pretty common in the Champlain Valley during the autumn and early winter. But the first ones of the season, like this one, tend to cause more problems than the later ones.

That's because right now, most of the leaves are still on the trees. Each leaf acts like a little sail, and the leaves tug harder on the branches in the wind than when the trees are leafless. You tug harder on a branch, and it's more likely to snap off.

Which means your lawn is more likely to be littered by twigs and branches by Saturday morning than it would if the same storm came through in November. Leafless trees don't have those little "sails" so the branches don't get tugged and broken as much later in the year.

Though I'm talking about scattered power failures and broken branches later today, this storm will not be nearly as bad as the epic wind storm that swept through toward the end of last October. Unlike last year's storm, I don't expect widespread, long lasting power outages. I don't imagine people's roof shingles will blow off and I don't expect zillions of trees to come down

But if you thinking of wearing that fancy, dancy but loose fitting hat, today is not your day.

You should also cancel any plans to be out on Lake Champlain today. With winds gusting to 55 mph and waves of five to seven feet tall, it's dangerous out there. Though I suspect some wind surfers might go out there anyway.

Some forecasters were toying with the idea of severe thunderstorms this evening as the storms's cold front comes in. It does seem as if there's a decent chance of severe weather, maybe eve a tornado or two in western New York later today.

But those storms will weaken after dark as they move into Vermont. Some of those weakening storms might have enough punch left to pull down some even stronger winds aloftt and bring them down to the surface tonight. Which means one or two spots could get a particularly strong gust as the showers come through.

These showers don't look all that impressive in terms of rainfall amounts, despite this morning's downpojurs, so there won't be much relief from the drought over northern Vermont. Southern Vermont is not in a drought and got additional rain the other day, so they're not in trouble.

The good news is it looks like we're falling, at least for now into a somewhat cooler and wetter weather pattern. While the drought won't instantly disappear in northern Vermont, there's hope that it will gradually wane over the next couple of months.

Heat Waves Likely Being Powered By Global Warming

Blame it on climate change.

Punishing heat and drought this year wrecked this German
sunflower field

The heat waves that have been plaguing much of the Northern Hemisphere this month really do seem to have been boosted by climate change.

The sheer number of heat waves, and the fact that so many records are being broken, is evidence that we might be in a "new normal" of summer temperatures.  

Of course, heat waves occur every summer. The past is full of humdingers, too.

For example, in the Dust Bowl 1930s often saw temperatures in the 110 to 120 degree range through vast areas of the Great Plains.  Just like this year, punishing heat waves hit both New England and Old England (Great Britain) in July, 1911.

This year, however, the heat has been popping up with unusual frequency and intensity throughout much of the Northern Hermisphere. (This is not a global heat wave, as some would have it. The Southern Hemisphere is in winter, so no heat there to speak of. Plus, some places in the North have escaped the worst of the heat.)

Still, the record heat waves have hopscotched the Northern Hemisphere at a dizzying pace this summer. England, Scandinavia, Quebec, Japan, North and South Korea, Texas, California, Siberia, Germany, and yes, here in Vermont.

Today will be the 13th day this summer with temperatures in the 90s in Burlington, Vermont. That in itself is not a record in this record breaking summer, but it's more tha double the average number of 90s per summer. And the season isn't even over yet.

ATTRIBUTION

Although it's hard to pin a single weather event on climate change, scientists are starting to get better at making that determination. For instance, the Guardian recently had this reporting on the European heat wave:

"The heatwave searing northern Europe was made more than twice as likely by climate change, according to rapid assessments by scientists.

The result is preliminary but they say the signal of climate change is 'unambiguous'. Scientists have long predicted that global warming is ramping up hte number and intensity of heat waves, with events even worse than the current one set to strike every other year by the 2040s."

The Guardian had this money quote: "Serious climate change is 'unfolding before our eyes,' said Professor Rowan Sutton, director of climate research at the University of Reading. 'No one should be in the slightest surprised that we are seeing very serious heat waves and associated impacts in many parts of the world.'"

In the past, I've talked about how a warming Arctic might be messing with the jet stream, causing it to move more slowly, and get stuck in patterns that leave certain regions trapped under the same weather regime for months.

Evidence is mounting that this jet stream problem is related to climate change. The jet stream is fueled by the contrast between a cold Arctic and hot tropics. The Arctic is warming up faster than everywhere else, so the contrast between hot and cold is lessening. Less contrast means a weaker jet stream.

"Heat waves over northern hemisphere continents in recent years fit the hypothesis that rapid Arctic warming is playing a role," Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University told New Scientist. 

 This summer has left many scientists stunned at how many hot temperature records have fallen. According to Axios:

"Climate scientists told Axios that while they are not surprised by the simultaneous extremes observed so far this summer - reports have warned about this for years - they are taken aback by the severity and number of extreme events.

'Even for somebody who understands extreme weather and how climate change affects extreme weather, what's happening this summer is incredible,' said Bernadette Woods, chief meteorologist and climate matters program director at Climate Central, a non-partisan climate science research and communiciations group."

ECONOMIC PAIN

The worst part about heat waves is obviously the fact that they kill. Heat is often the deadliest weather disaster possible. Wildfires are another deadly and destructive side effect of climate driven heat waves.

But even if you lucked out this summer and live in a place that stayed relatively cool (Hello Upper Michigan!) you are still probably going to suffer from the heat.

As Bloomberg noted recently, some commodity prices are rising because of the hemispheric heat. Grain prices are rising, in large part because heat and drought in places like Texas, Russia and other parts of Europe.

In some places, the hot, stagnant conditions mean river water is too warm to cool electric generating plants. And the lack of breezes brings wind turbines to a standstill.

Anyone who works outside knows that higher temperatures affect productivity. I know from my gardening business that I'm not working as hard as I'd like during this long, hot summer.

Even people who work in air conditioned offices are less productive during heat waves, NBC News reports.

Suicide rates rise in heat waves. Heat waves make us dumber, too, often slowing the brain by 13 percent.

Nothing good can come from these heat waves. But we are stuck with them. And they're going to get worse in coming years and decades.