Hot Times Go On: Worldwide, May Was Hottest, Or At Least Tied For It

Extreme warmth, relative to average, in Siberia was a big contributor to
make May, 2020 the warmest on record for the globe. Eastern North
America was one of the few coolish spots. 

Last week, the numbers came out on how the world fared climate wise in May.

To almost nobody's surprise, we're #1 again.

May was the hottest on record for the world as a whole, according to several monitoring agencies, including NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information.

It's been a hot decade, too.  Each of the seven warmest Mays have occured in the past seven year, according to NCEI.

Siberia basically pushed the world over the top in terms of May heat.  Relative to average, that part of the world was off the charts warm.

The only relatively cool spots were eastern Canada, eastern United States, Australia and parts of eastern Europe.

If anything, the trend in global warming has accelerated in the past several year. Each of the past 12 months have either been the hottest or second hottest on record on a global basis.

According to Jeff Masters, writing for Yale Climate Connection:

"The year-to-date period January-May ranks as the second warmest such period on record, just 0.06 (degrees Celcius) behind the record set in 2016.  According to NCEI's annual temperature outlook, the year 2020 has more than a 99.9 percent chance to rank among the five warmest years on record, and a 49 percent chance of being the warmest year on record. If so, calendar 2020 would mean each of the past seven years would be among the seven warmest on record."

As noted last month, global economic lockdowns to slow the spread of the coronavirus will probably reduce carbon emissions by 5 to 8 percent from the record highs of 2019. Even with that reduction, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to grow.

Plus, the coronavirus crisis might only last another year or two.  That's way too long for us humans, who hate to see these tragc deaths and illnesses from the virus. In the grand scheme of things, though, the coronovirus problems won't last long enough to cause any dent at all in atmospheric carbon concentrations.

According to USA Today, Kennth Gillingham, a climate economist at Yale University was pretty clear on this, saying, "The only reason emissions dropped is that we're all stuck at home....As soon as the lockdowns lift, they are likely to rise again."

For those of you keeping track, May, 2020 was the 425th consecutive month with above normal global temperatuires.

Why Vermont Winter Fans Shouldn't Be Too Upset With Weekend Rain

It looks like some enormous snow flakes landed outside my
front door in St. Albans, Vermont overnight at the tail end
of that rainy, sleety, icy mess of a storm. 

As expected, it rained yesterday and last night in Vermont, mixing with sleet and freezing rain in many places. Even a bit of snow fell here and there.

While winter sports types are probably not happy the mixed precipitation wrecked some nice powder out there, I don't think everybody should be super upset with this.

No, snow conditions aren't ideal out there. And the snow cover is not nearly as thick as it is during some winters in the North Country.

But look at where we stand.

Unlike the mega thaw and record warmth we saw back on January 11, which erased pretty much all of the snow cover,  this time it was too cold for much snow melt.

Temperatures stayed near or under 40 degrees, so in most of the state, there is still some snow cover and it still looks like winter. There's still enough snow left in quite a few places for cross country skiing.

The rain really did hardened up and compact the snow that remains out there. If it snows again that hard packed snow will create a decent base, which will also be a little harder to melt due to its high water content.

Downhill slopes at ski resorts will be groomed out today to become acceptable for skiers and riders. Granted, this is certainly no power day, but it's, well, passable.

We are in a weather regime today through Tuesday morning in which the mountains could easily get several inches of snow.  Moist west winds and upper level disturbances are creating lift. That means lots of snow showers, especially in places where winds need to go up and over mountain ranges.

Most Vermont valleys will have only light snow showers, and it will be a little too warm today and Monday to see any real accumulation there. But with at least a few inches of new snow due along pretty much the entire Green Mountain ridge line, that'll keep things in winter mode.

Starting Monday night and continuing at least into Friday, it will turn colder in Vermont.  Not frigid, mind you, but colder. It will be plenty cold for ski resorts to make snow, but warm enough (highs in the 20s) to still get outdoors and enjoy the season.

One last thing: I"m going to dangle another potential storm before your eyes.  It's still too soon to say if a storm next weekend will actually hit, and whether it will dump some snow on the Green Mountain  State. But at least there's the possibility that it might, so it's worth watching.

Vermont Snow Behaved. Wild Newfoundland Blizzard REALLY Did Not

A post-blizzard doorway in St. John's Newfoundland
Not enough snow in Vermont for anytbing like
that at the moment. 

The snowfall late yesterday and overnight in and around Vermont pretty much behaved as expected, with the usual spotty exceptions.

It was interesting to note that a fast south to southwesterly flow aloft during the height of the snow would use the Adirondacks to "shadow" parts of the Champlain Valley and yield less snow there.

That shadow seemed centered around Burlington, where at last check, the National Weather Service office reported 2.9 inches of new snow.  

As you travel north up the Champlain Valley, the shadowing effect of the Adirondacks lessened. Milton, several miles north of Burlington had 4.3 inches.  Here at my place in St. Albans, north of Milton, I measured 5.4 inches.  And Swanton, even further north than me, reported 6.3 inches.

The big winners were in northern Vermont, as opposed to southern Vermont as first surmised a couple days ago. Montgomery reported 11 inches of fresh powder and Hyde Park reported 10 inches.  There are many reports of five to eight inches of new snow across much of central and northern Vermont, away from the Champlain Valley.

Meanwhile, as of late last night, high elevation Readsboro in far southern Vermont only got a so-so 4.3 inches of new snow.

In the valleys, this storm is pretty much over. As temperatures slowly fall during the rest of the day, there will be snow showers and flurries and blowing snow in gusty winds to harass valley dwellers. There could be spots with new snow of around one inch during the day today.

In the central and northern Green Mountains, and parts of New York's Adirondacks and New Hampshire's White Mountains, winds rising up the slopes of these mountains will wring out more moisture, and provide a few more inches of snow today.

NEWFOUNDLAND BLIZZARD

A neighborhood in St. John's Newfoundland this weekend.
Photo by Ryan Crocker. 

An earlier midsized snow, similar to the one we got last night, went through Vermont Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

That Thursday storm blew up once it got off the coast of Maine and started heading up through the Atlantic Provinces of Canada.

By the time the storm got up to Newfoundland, it was a beast to say the least.

To begin with, the area around St. John's Newfoundland isn't exactly known for its lovely winter weather.

Way up there north on the frigid Atlantic Coast, it's stormy, dark and cold all winter. The relatively warm waters of the Atlantic keep St. John's relatively warm in the winter, for a location so far north.  Normal highs up there this time of year are near 30 and lows are usually in the teens.

But St. John's, a picturesque city with a population of about 114,000, in the winter is a terribly stormy place. People there are used to it. But this week's blizzard was beyond the pale.

The blizzard dumped around 30 inches of snow on St. John's, which is a record deep snowfall or that city. Winds gusted to 80 mph or so, and 100 mph right along the coast, causing enormous drifts. Some of those drifts reached second story windows. Countless cars in the city were completely buried.

Canadian armed forces were ordered to enter the St. John's area to begin digging them out.

In one neighborhood that clings to a steep hill in St. John's an avalanche slammed into a house, filling the kitchen and living room with snow, Luckily, nobody was hurt.

Unfortunately, one person is missing in the blizzard.

The storm that came through Vermont last night will also affect St. John's, but it won't be as bad as the last one. Environment Canada predicts about four inches of new snow coming up in St. John's, and also a a little blowing snow, then a little rain and drizzle, with winds gusting as high as 45 to 50 mph.

Some Newfoundland/St John's videos:

The first half of this news cast is something:



Here's the progress of the blizzard in one neighborhood:



Here's quite a time lapse:

Annoying, Hard-To-Forecast Storm Leaving, Cold Pours In

It was still snowing at mid morning in Montpelier, as  this
snowy web came view of the State Capitol indicates.

The snow in Vermont and surrounding areas is slowly tapering off as we head into this mid-morning Thursday as a storm that was frustrating for meteorologists and weather geeks begins to depart.

Although the broad outlines of the forecasts ahead of the storm were right, the system's dynamics and its stage of development had meteorologists pulling out their hair.

It quickly became apparent later on Tuesday - almost at the last minute - that this wouldn't be the minor system we anticipated a couple days earlier. Then, forecasting where the heaviest snow would come down, the temperatures, the risk of mixed precipitation near the onset, were all difficult.

Winter storm warnings and advisories seemed to change by the hour as forecasters caught up with the storm.  Parts of the Champlain Valley and southeastern Vermont got more snow than anticipated, while other areas got a bit less.

In the end, the storm did, and is dumping more snow in the mountains than in the valleys, as expected.

What maded this storm difficult is that it was just in its initial developing phase as it formed over roughly Ohio Tuesday, then made its way across Pennsylvania and New York, and then into New England Wednesday.

When a storm is just beginning to gather steam, as this one was, my opinion is they're harder to figure out, and small differences in anticipated air temperatures, air flow and the like can make things especially tricky to forecast.

Usually, by the time a storm reaches New England, or the coast, or the Great Lakes and starts affecting us, the storm is mature. By then, it's more likely to follow "the rules" and thus is a bit easier to forecast, although these things can still surprise.

This week's storm wasn't mature when it got to us, and it confounded us a bit.

By today, the storm IS mature, and is "behaving" more like a storm ought to as it spins its way into the Canadian Maritimes.  So,  unlike on Tuesday and the first half of Wednesday the weather late last night and this morning turned out just about as expected, for once.

Forecasters knew a spoke of energy rotating around the back side of the storm early this morning would enhance snowfall over northern Vermont, and that indeed happened. That spoke of energy is departing, and now we're transitioning into a very normal post-storm pattern.

Northwest winds around the back side of the storm are focusing the snow on the Adirondacks, the west slopes and summits of the Green Mountains, the higher elevations of the Northeast Kingdom, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

I don't think areas outside the zones I just described will get much more snow. Maybe another inch or two, three at the very, very most.

In those mountain locations, the snow should keep going the rest of the day and probably into this evening, so several more inches of fluff will come down there.

So far, central Vermont is the big winner in the snow accumulation derby. They're closing in on a foot of new snow in Waterbury and Waitsfield. Morgan in the Northeast Kingdom reports 10 inches of new snow, and there are mulitple reports of 9 inches along the western slopes from South Lincoln to Jeffersonville and Fairfax and beyond. They'll get some more before this ends.

Cold air was delayed in coming in yesterday. It was still in the low 30s last evening across most of the North Country.

Now, normalitiy is back. The cold air is gushing in on gusty northwest winds. It's still not too bad out there this morning, with temperatures mostly in the 20s. But temperatures will fall this afternoon, and that bitter cold air we've been talking about will establish itself. Winds are already gusting past 30 mph in many locations. This will blow the snow around and add a lot of bite to the air for the rest of the day.

Wind chill advisories are up for late tonight and most of Friday morning for the Adirondacks and a good chunk of north central and northeastern Vermont, as those wind chills sink into 20s below zero.

High temperatures for many of us won't crack 10 degrees Friday and possibly Saturday. We have a couple nights at least of subzero readings ahead of us before temperatures moderate early next week.

As far as storms go, we're temporarily entering a very quiet period. One storm will scoot by far to our south Sunday and Monday and not have any effect on us.

Really the only thing I see coming through between now and about January 19 or so is another cold front during the middle of next week, which would throw a few snow showers our way, with light accumulations at best.

How Rare Is To Have East Coast Tornadoes In February?

Tornado damage in Waverly, Virginia Thursday.
Photo from AP.  

It definitely seemed incredible strange, amid the tragedy, to have so many tornadoes sweep up and down the East Coast in the past week.

On Wednesday and early Thursday. tornadoes along the East Coast struck as far north as Pennsylvania, and severe thunderstorms with winds as high as 83 mph crept all the way north into Massachusetts.

Overall, and sadly, the tornadoes a few days ago killed nine people nationwide. 

This kind of thing happens every once in awhile on the East Coast in the late spring and summer, But February? Isn't that the season for nor'easter blizzards, not East Coast tornadoes?

Yep, and you're right if you think the East Coast tornado outbreak a few days ago was really rare for the season. But generally speaking, it's not unheard of for February.

There were of course some records set.  Pennsylvania has gotten a few rare, rather weak February tornadoes before. But a destructive EF-2 tornado in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Wednesday was the most intense (125 mph) widest (400 yards) and longest tracked (4.7 miles) of any recorded February tornado in Pennsylania.

This tornado also trashed about 50 buildings and caused about $8 million in damage, which surely is the most destructive February tornado in Pennsylvania.

The EF-3 tornado around Appomattox, Virginia Wednesday was that state's first EF-3 tornado since the epic twister outbreak of April, 2011. It was also likely the first EF-3 tornado to strike the state in February.

The tornado in Appomattox, and a separate one in Waverly, Virginia unfortunately killed four people. These are the first recorded deaths from February tornadoes in Virginia. 

You can see the huge Appomattox tornado and here its scary roar in the video at the bottom of this post

I'm batting around all those "EF" category tornado figures. It's known as the Enhanced Fujita scale and is metric for how strong tornadoes are. They range from EF-0 twister, which have winds of "only" 65-85 mph to EF-5 monster tornadoes that have winds in excess of 200 mph.

Up in New England, the National Weather Service felt compelled to issue severe thunderstorm watches late Wednesday. For good reason, as they did eventually develop. The National Weather Service says severe thunderstorm watches in southern New England are. on average, a once in 25 year event.

The New England storm watches were not the earliest in the season on record. There were severe storm watches on January 14, 1992 and January 19, 1996, says the Boston regional office of the National Weather Service.

Yellow, orange and dark green shades on ths map indicate
where NOAA's Storm Predicton Center expected
severe weather Wednesday and early Thursday. Black
dots represent actual reports of severe storms andt
tornadoes. Definitely an accurate forecast.  

Still, this was likely the most widespread severe thunderstorm event on record in southern New England for February, given the multitude of storm damage reports.

The very destructive tornado that hit Pensacola, Florida was an EF3. It was the second EF3 to hit Escambia County in northwestern Florida within an eight day period. Previous to that, there had only been three EF3s in that county since 1950.

EF-3 tornadoes have winds of 135 to 165 mph, so they're pretty nasty.

I have to give kudos to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center. The areas they said would be under the highest risk of severe storms and tornadoes Tuesday and Wednesday ended up having the bulk of the worst storms.

As you can see by the map in this post, the areas the Storm Prediction Center predicted would be the most impacted were, in fact the hardest hit.

This year, tornado activity, and unfortunately, tornado deaths are off to a quick start. Winter is normally a relative lull in United States tornado activity, then things start to ramp up in March and get really busy in April, May and June.

As of February 25, the Storm Prediction Center has logged 125 reports of tornadoes, which is above average.

There's no way to tell if the busy start of the year for tornadoes portends a busy year. But we've had three slower than normal tornado seasons in a row through 2015, so it's just a matter of time before we get a destructive tornado year.

In the short term, there's a least some potential for a couple more tornadoes in the South Tuesday, but that forecast is definitely uncertain right now.

Here's the Appomattox, Virginia tornado on Wednesday:


Here's a time lapse of a severe storm sweeping into downtown Charlotte, North Carolina Wednesday:

The Blizzard of 2016 Really IS One For The Record Books

Near record coastal flooding in Sea Isle,
New Jersey this morning.

UPDATE, 2:15 p.m. Saturday

Boy, given the dramatic forecasts ahead of what has turned out to be the Blizzard of 2016, I didn't think this storm would overperform, but it has.

It's still snowing hard in parts of Maryland. Many forecasters said snowfall accumulation would be up to three feet in the most extreme parts of the storm.

Already, Frederick, Maryland is up to three feet or so, and it's still snowing there. (Hi, John and Laura and the kids in Frederick! Sorry/Not Sorry I'm not there to dig you out!

Other areas are over 30 inches. Maybe some places will go over 40 inches by the time this is over.

One already had as of 3 p.m. A town in West Virginia measured 40 inches of new snow, but the storm is almost over there.

As meteorologists told us well in advance, the most dangerous and overlooked by the media feature of this storm would be the coastal flooding

Those forecasts sure were right. Record and near record coastal flooding was reported along the southern half of the Jersey Shore and in Delaware. Many homes and streets were under water this morning.

There was severe flooding in places like Cape May, and Barnegat, where mandatory evacuations were under way. People were rescued from flooded houses in Ocean City.

In southern New Jersey, the flooding was worse than in Superstorm Sandy in 2012, though Sandy's flooding was worse in northern New Jersey than further south anyway. 

Renewed flooding might cause added damage this evening along the East Coast.  

The biggest surprise of the storm was New York City. We knew the forecast for that region was problematic, because different computer models had widely varying estimates for how much the city would get. 



Bus crash amid the snow in Greenwich, Ct. this morning.

The National Weather Service in New York and area meteorologists played it smart. They predicted 6 to 12 inches for the New York metro area, but made it VERY clear in their forecasts that the potential was there for much more than that.

Sure enough, New York had 14 to 16 inches of new snow by 1 p.m. today, and heavy snow will continue the rest of the day. It now looks like 24 to 30 inches is likely in the Big Apple.

All flights at Newark JFK and LaGuardia are canceled through Sunday. Not surprisingly, a travel ban has been instituted in New York. today.

The heavy snow has expanded into far southern and eastern New England, but won't make it into central and northern New England..

It's also beginning to look like eastern Pennsylvania, and not Virginia and Maryland, might end up with the highest snow totals out of this storm. I'm guessing a few spots there might go over three feet of accumulation.

More updates to follow later today and/or tomorrow, so watch back here!


PREVIOUS DISCUSSION, from 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning

As I started writing this before dawn in northwestern Vermont this morning, the sky was clear.


Storm surge flooding in Lewes, Delaware

It was a seasonably cold, calm Saturday morning in January, about zero degrees, and I can see a beautiful full moon sunset over the Adirondacks out my office window. 

Quite a contrast compared to the Blizzard of 2016 smashing the Mid-Atlantic region.

The storm is still playing out as expected. Bands of incredibly heavy snow have pushed in off the Atlantic ocean through Virginia, the Washington DC area, and on into New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

So far, nine deaths have been blamed on the storm.

As dawn broke, Washington DC had already received more than a foot of snow. Just after 6 a.m, thundersnow rattled the Nation's Capital. 

Amounts ranged up to 18 inches in some areas of North Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky.  And it was still snowing hard. I'm still expecting some reports of up to three feet of snow.

In Kentucky, thousands of motorists were trapped on a snow snarled Interstate 75 overnight. Many spent 10 hours or more in their cars.

It also seems the question of whether New York City would get blasted by heavy snow has been answered. It was snowing like hell there early this morning. Three inches of snow fell at LaGuardia airport in just an hour

The National Weather Service there has upped expected accumulation to 15 to 20 inches. Earlier forecasts indicated a foot or less. The storm has clearly nudged a bit further north than many had predicted.



Snow rapidly piling up on Washington DC streets early
Saturday morning via @salbal9 on Twitter

The storm is affecting points way to the south, too.  Light snow showers fell all the way south to Mobile, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. A little sleet fell in Lake City, Florida.

Tides are rising fast for the first high tide of the storm, expected around dawn today.

It will be the first of three storm surges that are sure to cause serious damage from Long Island to Virginia. Winds have already gusted as high as 85 mph on the Delmarva Penisula.

At coastal Lewes, Deleware, early this morning, winds were sustained at 59 mph, gusting to 72 mph, and there was a four-foot storm surge.

Later the tide at Lewes was up to nine feet, just under the record for the location, and still rising. The storm surge at Cape May, New Jersey was entering major flood stage by 7:30 a.m. this morning.

Many images on social media have popped up showing terrible shoreline flooding in New Jersey and Delaware.

Pretty scary! Lots of destruction.  And a sign of an awfully intense, big storm.

I'm going to take a hit from people who deride anybody who even hints global warming exists, and they will laugh at how anybody could suggest a raging blizzard could be a sign of climate change.

It's pretty much impossible to definitively blame this blizzard on global warming or say it influenced the storm. But it really is plausible global warming might have been one factor in this storm. Not the main factor, surely, but it might have given this nor'easter a boost.

An energized jet stream, linked to El Nino, and a powerful disturbance in the atmosphere the oversimplified and main reasons this storm happened.

But water temperatures just off the East Coast are warmer than normal. This nor'easter is feeding off that. Warmer water can supply more moisture to a storm than colder water, and this storm is taking full advantage of that fact.

The warm water is possibly warm in part because of global warming, so we have a wetter storm that can produce more precipitation.

You ask, but it's snowing! Snow isn't warm!

Well, yes, but global warming doesn't repeal winter. It obviously still gets cold in the winter obviously. Pretty much always will. If the warm moisture feeding off the Atlantic runs into that normal winter cold air, as it's doing now, you get these epic storms.

Again, I'll stress that a single event like a blizzard does not prove or disprove global warming. But it could well have been a factor in this mess. There would have been a big snowstorm with or without global warming, but perhaps the snow is a bit deeper because of it.

We'll argue more about that later, I'm sure. For now, we'll spend the day watching this truly epic storm.

More Video On That Big Illinois Tornado

A destroyed house in Rochelle, Illinois after Thursday's
large tornado. Photo from Getty Images.  

As always in these situations, we've got interesting perspectives on that giant tornado that ripped across northern Illinois on Thursday, killing two people, injuring 22 others and destroying a pretty sizeable number of homes and businesses.  

The National Weather Service gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF4 on a scale of zero to 5, five being the strongest.

The Illinois tornado traveled for nearly 20 miles across northern Illinois, sometimes reaching up to a half mile wide. It had peak winds of between 180 and 200 mph.

Below, you'll see a video shot from a plane Friday, retracing the tornado's path. You can see how it widened and strengthened as it plowed across open fields, hitting some farm complexes, and narrowly missing others.

You can see the randomness of the damage. One farm trashed, the other literally steps away seeming unscathed. You can see how it tore through the village of Fairdale, turning one side of the tiny village to mincemeat, and pretty much leaving the other side alone.

Near the end of the tornado's path, you can see it narrowing. It sliced a skinny line of damage through an industrial complex, causing a narrow area of roof damage on one huge building.

Then, the tornado damaged one more farm, then, apparently, lifted. Watch:



Here's another video, this one from Severe Studios, a time lapse as tornado chasers followed the tornado, with part at the end a fairly close of view of the twister:

While New England Freezes, Most Of The Rest Of The World Bakes

NASA's assessment of global temperatures in
Janaury show much warmer than normal temperatures
in most of the Arctic and Siberia. Eastern
 Canada in particular was chilly. Add caption

Much of New England is likely to have its coldest February on record, this after a January that was colder than average.

But today, we get confirmation that the rest of the world continues to bake.

The first flurry of monthly reports on the Earth's climate came out today, and we've learned that on a global basis, January was either the warmest or second warmest first month of the year on record.

NASA says January, 2015 on a global basis was the second warmest on record, while the Japan Meteorological Agency says January was the warmest on record.

Each of those two agencies have slightly different methods of taking the Earth's temperature, so the results vary a bit. But the actual temperatures the two agencies measured are extremely close to one another, which is pretty much always the case.

The closely watched National Climate Data Center January assessment of the world's climate is due out later this week.

While New England has been extremely cold in
February, the Intermountain West has been extremely warm.  

It's obviously too soon to tell how warm February is going to be compared to past years, because the month isn't over yet.

But New Englanders shouldn't think this February negates global warming. Even in the hottest months on a global basis a few pockets of the Earth are cooler than normal.

New England will very likely end up being the spot on the Earth that will end the month the coolest on the planet, relative to normal.

Other parts of the planet have so far been extremely warm so far in February compared to normal.

In fact, just in the United States, while parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts have so far been running as much as 16 degrees colder than normal in February, a large chunk of the Intermountain West has been about 16 degrees warmer than normal.

In the last 30 days, cities and towns across the nation tied or set 3,742 daily record high temperatures, says the National Climate Data Center. In that same period, only 222 daily record lows were set, mostly in the Northeast.

Although the number of daily record lows will climb in the next few days and the record highs probably won't change too much, the highs are still handily exceeding the low, at least in the United States.

Vermont Climate Assessment Offers Surprisingly Detailed Look At A Warm, Changed Future..

One of the shortcomings of the predictions regarding what will happen as the earth's climate warms due to our burning of fossil fuel is what will happen precisely where we live.

This Vermont home was destroyed in floods from
Tropical Storm Irene. A new climate assessment says
floods like this in Vermont will keep getting
worse and more frequent. 

That's understandable, given the uncertainty of warming's local effects and especially the sheer effort needed to examine what will happen in each specific spot on Earth.

But we're starting to get a picture now, starting with the state I live in, Vermont.

Vermont has become the first state to piggy back on the National Climate Assessment released by the White House last month.

Here in the Green Mountain State, climatologists, University of Vermont scientists, state government officials, and local business owners, farmers and others collaborated to create a Vermont-specific assessment.

The bottom line: Trends we've seen in Vermont will continue and get worse.

Having lived in Vermont all of my 51 years so far, I've seen the changes outlined in the report, which says the changes will get more intense.

We seem to be getting heavier, stronger storms, and especially more frequent and damaging floods. That's the biggest negative to climate change highlighted in the Vermont report. This trend toward intense storms and floods will continue to worsen in the Green Mountain State.

Of course, the increased risk of floods have the biggest implications: Extreme floods are of course life threatening. Since many of Vermont's towns, and many of our main highways follow the state's flood plains, we're really prone to damage and disruption to floods.

Just look to the devastating inundation from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 if you want an example. Or if you want a look at the constant disruption from stronger, wetter storms, just look to June and July of 2013, when repeated intense thunderstorms caused lots of flash flooding, power failures and other disruptions.

According to the report, the increased precipitation might lead to one short-term boon: It's snowing more in the winter, and the snow will continue to really slam us in the next couple of decades as the storms become more intense. That's good for the ski industry.

However, winter thaws are becoming more frequent, and as warming continues, these big snowstorms will become big winter rainstorms, so that doesn't exactly help the winter sports industry.

Another nice thing from global warming in Vermont is the growing season is getting longer, which could help farmers and other sectors of the agriculture industry. On the other hand, these longer, warmer growing seasons could also increase problems with pests and invasive species.

The state's famed fall foliage season might suffer some global warming consequences, too. Oak and hickory might find a more hospitable environment in Vermont as things warm up, while sugar maples might have a harder time.

Fall colors are more intense on sugar maples than on oak and hickory so the annual fall display might get a little dulled in the future.

The report says that the state's tourism industry could actually benefit from climate change, as longer, warmer summers keep tourists here for a greater part of the year. And since Vermont, being this far north, won't be as hot as the South, we might get more tourists coming to Vermont to escape the deadly heat in places like Atlanta, Houston, Washington DC and other southern hot spots.

The entire report is available by clicking on THIS LINK