Tropical Vermont In February Continues For (Part Of) Today

Here's something I thought I'd never see. A forecast
map issued by the National Weather Service office in
South Burlington, Vermont forecasting high
temperatures today - in mid- February - in the
low 70s across western Vermont. 

Just a quick update this morning as I've got an early meeting.  

That strange February heat wave has arrived and records are already falling. It was more than a little bizarre this morning to take the dogs outside this morning in far northern Vermont comfortably wearing shorts and a t-shirt. In Vermont! In February!

Before midnight, Burlington, Vermont had a record high for the date of 59 degrees.

Before dawn this morning, it was already 61 degrees in Burlington, a record high for today, and the temperature will keep rising before a cold front comes in this afternoon.

It's actually too bad the front is coming when it is. Had it held off until evening, the temperatures would really climb. Still, this heat wave is unprecedented, in an era when we're having unprecedented heat waves now once every few months or more. (Examples: Remember the four days of 90 degree heat in late September, during the autumn? and the 70 degree heat at the end of February last year?)

By the way 61 degrees at 5 a.m. in Burlington is exactly normal for that time of day in mid-July, the peak of summer. Today's forecast highs, in the 60s, with a few low 70s possible in southwestern Vermont, are normal for late May.

If it reaches 70 degrees in Vermont today, this will be the third winter in a row that the Green Mountain State has seen 70 degree readings during both the winter.  That's never happened before.

The flood watch is still in effect for today for most of Vermont and northern New York as the snow is rapidly melting, rivers are rising and ice jams are holding in place. As of dawn, I haven't seen many flood warnings in the region yet, but I have a feeling that will change soon. There was an ice jam on the Ausable River in New York that prompted flood warnings for awhile overnight.

The only good news regarding the flood watch is that although there will be showers around with the cold front this afternoon, those rains won't be particularly heavy and they won't last all that long in any particular spot.

After today, it's back to winter reality in Vermont with temperatures tonight bottoming out near 20 degrees by dawn and rising to only the low 30s Thursday afternoon. Which is normal for this time of year.

Beyond that, we're still in a weather pattern in which there's a strong ridge of warm high pressure to out southeast and cold air over the continent. That will drive a few  modest storm systems by us through the weekend.

It'll be warm enough so that most of the precipitation will be rain, but snow will mix in at times. There will be some light accumulations in the mountains, but not remotely enough to replace what was lost in this heat wave.

While we Vermonters are basking in summer warmth for at least part of today, freezing rain in the middle of the country extends as far south as central Texas.  

A conveyor belt of deep moisture and heavy rain that started a couple days ago continues to run from northeast Texas to the Great Lakes.

Flood warnings and watches continue to extend from Texas to Michigan. Some areas have had up to five inches of rain already. Another six or seven inches of rain or locally more is forecast over the next several days in and near Arkansas, so flooding will continue to spread and get worse.

This Could Be Vermont's Four Really Off The Rails Weather February In A Row

Day lillies bizarrely begin to sprout during all time
record February warmth last year. 

Forecasts for midweek in Vermont tell us  we'll be seeing temperatures in the 60s to around 70 by Wednesday in most of the state, which is really incredible for February. In fact, it would be unprecedented if not for last year.

If the forecast comes true, it'll make if the fourth February in a row that has rewritten, or at least altered, record books. One of those Februarys, 2015, was very cold. The other three are seeing record heat.

Let's get 2015 out of the way. It was a brutal February, the third coldest on record with a mean temperature of 7.6 degrees. That's nearly 14 degrees below normal. There were no extremely cold nights that month, nothing in the 20s to near 30 below zero.

But the cold was grindingly consistent. In Burlington, 17 of the 28 days that month had temperatures below zero.

Subsequent Februarys turn hot. The first week of February, 2016 saw record highs in the 50s. That week is normally the depth of winter, but I recall working in my garden, digging completely unfrozen ground as I prepared new perennial beds.  I'm so far north that I can literally see Canada from my house.  So that was a new experience.

February, 2016 ended up being the 9th warmest on record. It would have averaged even higher if not for a brief Valentine's weekend cold snap that brought temperatures into the teens below zero before readings quickly recovered.

February, 2016 brought heavy rains, too. Places like Hardwick and Springfield Vermont saw several buildings and businesses damaged by flooding. Rainfall in one storm that month amounted to as much as 2.8 inches in just over 24 hours. That's nearly double the amount of precipitation that usually falls in an entire February.

Garden work in far northern Vermont in umfrozen ground
early February 2016. At that time of year, the earth should
have been frozen rock hard with snow covering it, but
record heat changed that scenario. 

Then there was the piece de resistance, February, 2017, which really, really went off the rails. By the 23rd of the month, Burlington reached 63 degrees, breaking the old all-time record high for February of 62.

But we were just warming up. Literally. On the 25th, Burlington reached 72 degrees, shattering the monthly record. It was also 72 in Bennington during that hot spell, so both figures now stand as the warmest readings on record for anywhere in Vermont.

The warmth was so extreme that severe weather came all the way north into New England. It was so weird the first February tornado on record in Massachusetts damaged homes in the western part of the state.

Now we're waiting to see how weird this week gets. We'll keep an eye on it for sure!

Extreme Weather Pattern Is About To Create Lots Of Extreme Weather

As of Sunday afternoon, the map on the home
page of the National Weather Service was lit up
with lots of colors. That signifies lots of weather
watches, warnings and alerts, meaning there will
be a lot to talk about in the weather over the coming days.
The dark green you see in Vermont is a flood watch.

The jet stream and the weather is going haywire again, which means we here in Vermont, and a lot of people throughout Earth's Northern Hemisphere are going to have plenty of extreme and bizarre weather over the next week or so.

THE PATTERN:

The polar vortex, that whirlpool of very cold air that pretty much always wanders around the Arctic, or at least near it, all the time has split into two pieces. That's rare, but it does happen occasionally.

One piece is ending up roughly over central and northwestern Canada, while the other piece is somewhere around Siberia. That means western North America and parts of Europe and interior Asia are turning quite cold.

The split in the polar vortex means another big squirt of warm air will enter the far northern Arctic, including around the North Pole. (This has been going on a lot lately.)

That's bad, because it's been very warm (for them) across much of the Arctic most of this winter. Sea ice extent is running at record lows.

That burst of above freezing air coming in for the high Arctic will just make things worse.

UNITED STATES SCREWED, TOO

Meanwhile, down here in the United States, a big, strong ridge of high pressure - basically an out of season Bermuda High, is about to pump record warm temperatures into the eastern third of the nation.

Out west, the position of one piece of the polar vortex means it's going to be quite cold over the next several days in the western third of the United States. Again, that's bad. It's been incredibly warm in California all winter. Plants and crops are blooming much earlier than normal as a result.

This cold air is going to nip lots of agricultural crops, especially in California's Central Valley. Hard freeze warnings are up, and it looks like the too-early blooming plants are going to get nailed. I expect millions of dollars in agricultural losses because of this. There also might be some shortages of produce in your supermarket.

More inland, winter storm warnings, watches and advisories are up for wide areas of the Rockies and northwestern Plains state.

Big chunks of The eastern half of the country is in trouble with this weather pattern, too. The orientation of this Bermuda high will help draw massive amounts of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, leading to repeated rounds of torrential rains in a broad band from Texas to Michigan.

Many - but not all -  of these areas have had quite a lot of rain this month already. Some areas from northeastern Texas through Arkansas and into southern Ilinois could get seven or more inches of rain over the next week. There is a high chance of flooding, as you'd imagine.

VERMONT EFFECTS:

We barely got clipped by that storm that zipped by to our south last night. Most of us got one to three inches of snow, with a little less around Burlington and up to six inches and southern and eastern parts of the state.

It's kind of mild today, and some of the snow is starting to melt. But you haven't seen anything yet!

After the 30s today, it'll get into the 40s Monday and 50s to low 60s Tuesday and Wednesday. That's definitely record territory.  This will be an unusually humid warm spell for this time of year. When the air is moist, snow tends to melt much faster than when the air is dry.

The start of a thaw. Snow sliding off my St. Albans, Vermont
roof today clings to the eaves in foot-long sheets. With
forecasts for highs near 60 by Tuesday and Wednesday,
this snow will be gone soon. 

Also, partly because of the humidity, temperatures will remain extremely warm Tuesday might.

Lows early Wednesday will probably stay above 50 degrees in the Champlain Valley. That's normal for late May, not February! That'll keep the snow melt going at a fast clip.

Also, there will be a fair bit of rain during this, especially over northern areas, which will be closer to a stalled front.

The combination of melting snow and the rain could lead to flooding. Most of Vermont and northern New York is now under a flood watch Monday through Wednesday.

The biggest problem here is the ice jams left behind from that other mega-thaw in January. They're still there, and this thaw and rain will either dam up water behind the ice jams, make the ice jams even bigger, or move them into more populated areas.

As we found out in towns like Swanton and Johnson back in January, this can quickly lead to destructive flooding.

So yeah, we'll probably have quite a bit to talk about in the weather department over the next several days.

Videos Of The Extreme Storms Last Weekend

Tornado damage in Canton, Texas last weekend.

As you might have noticed from reading this here blog thingy, the weather has been pretty extreme across much of the United States over the past week to ten days.

There's been destructive tornadoes, even more destructive flooding, even a blizzard out on the High Plains.

As always when you get big time weather, there's lots of videos floating around of all the wild weather we've gotten.

I'll share a couple of them.

In the first one, I'll give you a bit of a trigger warning first. It's a terrifying video.

The video was taken by a couple whose Texas farmstand is being ravaged by a tornado. At first we see the barn disintegrating, but the screen goes dark as the house they're in blows apart. You can hear the calling to each other.

Miraculously, they survived, although the house was apparently reduced to a concrete slab. Here's one thing that got me worked up and almost as upset as I was for the couple.. Before the screen goes dark, you see some pet ducks cowering in the corner.

I'm sure they died, and that bothered me a lot though there was nothng the couple could do to save them. They're lucky they saved themselves and each other:



Here's some tornado footage and drama from the tornado aftermath from my favorite tornado chaser,  Pecos Hank. Toward the end we hear him as he is rushing an injured woman he found to the hospital in  his car



In Missouri, up to 10 inches of rain falling on saturated soil caused record flooding last weekend. Now, it's raining hard in Missouri again, and renewed, dangerous flooding is happening today. Flood and flash flood warnings are in effect.

Here's an aerial view taken a couple days ago.



In Kansas, it was extreme snow, where a blizzard ravaged the western part of the state. The worst part of this blizzard is that the wheat crop out there was going great, but the blizzard destroyed most of it.

Here's some video of the blizzard. As you can see the trees had already leafed out.

Sadly, Extreme Weather Just Killed A 600 Year Old Tree In New Jersey

This 600 year old oak tree in Basking Ridge, New Jersey
died this summer, in part because of extreme weather

There's been an ancient oak tree in Basking Ridge, New Jersey for as long as anyone can remember.

Judging from its size, experts estimated it was about 600 years old. George Washington is said to have rested under the then nearly 250 year old or so tree during the Revolutionary War.

The tree, however, finally died this summer amid some pretty bad weather.

A spate of extreme summer weather killed the tree. Like people, older trees are more likely to succumb to extremes and injuries than the spry young fellas and gals.

In Basking Ridge this July, there was two weeks worth of extreme 90 degree heat. It was one of the hottest stretches on record, and was accompanied by very little rain.

As the New York Times notes, trees compensate for such weather. According to The Times:

"(Arborist Rob) Gillies said the tree responded to the initial 'heat stress' by closing off the pores in the rings deep inside, behind the bark. 'These shut down, so it doesn't transpire,' he said. 'Then it was inundated' by almost 12 hours of heavy rain. 'The roots were soaking because it couldn't process the water,' he said."

In other words, if the heat wave weren't quite so intense, and had it ended in light to moderate rains, things might have gone OK. But the weather whiplash - heat and drought to deluge - was too much for this iconic oak.

People in Basking Ridge and in particular the Presbyterian church where the tree is are devastated by the death. When new of the tree's death broke, people who had grown up in Basking Ridge and moved away called the church and town officials, offering condolences.

The church is actually holding a community memorial service for the tree on November 6.

Crews have already removed dead branches from the tree that threaten historic gravestones and nearby old buildings. But the bulk of the tree will come down in the spring. The church will use the wood for an as yet unspecified use.

While some outlets were quick to blame climate change for the tree's death, it probably isn't that simple. True, the odds and frequency of having long torrid hot spells in New Jersey and elsewhere have increased. And extreme rainfall events have also gotten more frequent, and all this is likely due to climate change.

However, the tree was old, and eventually, a inevitable confluence of adverse weather that might have come with or without climate change  killed the tree. The tree had clearly been in decline for several years before it finally succumbed this year.

We'll never know if climate change caused its demise earlier than it would have.

Are We "Weather Porn" Addicts? And Is That A Bad Thing?

There's nothing inherently wrong with viewing
images like this tornado in Moore, OK, but..... 

Lately, if you really want to create a storm in the meteorological  community, just bring up the term "weather porn."  

And this storm has nothing to do with wind, rain, snow or destruction. But maybe it does have a little to do with hot air.  Or not. You decide.

What precipitated (ha!) this latest kerfuffle among weather geeks was a recent article by David Bauder, a television writer for the Associated Press.

He noted that the evening news, and lots of other news sources are loaded up with weather stories.

This, Bauder seemed to argue, had as much to do with ratings as news value. After all, people are attracted to dramatic images of extreme weather. Weather porn, if you will.

I've always freely admitted that some of what I post on this here weather and climate blog thingy is weather porn.

Hey, I'm just as much a fan of weather porn as the next guy or gal, even as I know I also have a responsibility to offer sober stuff, non-hyped stuff, not sensationalism

I really don't see the harm in weather porn, at least in moderation.

What really drew a negative reaction, and I can see why, is a source for Bauder's story characterized ABC News meteorologist Ginger Zee as a "pornographer."

Here's news consultant Andrew Tyndall, quoted in Bauder's piece:

"If Ginger Zee reported in the role of climatologist rather than meteorologist, I would praise ABC's 'World News Tonight's' decision as a daring intervention into a crucial national and global debate.....Instead, she is more like a pornographer."

I, as a weather geek and journalist, and many outspoken meteorologists, have real problems with Tyndall's quote.

First of all, Ginger Zee has proven herself to be a highly capable, accurate and good meteorologist and journalist.

Also, implicit in the Tyndall quote is an assumption that maybe every news story that even touches on weather ought to be sounding alarms on global warming.

.....when we're done watching the dramatic tornado video,
it's time to help people like this. (Photo by Sue Ogrocki, AP)   

It's true journalists really have a duty to spread as much accurate information on climate change as possible.

But not every news story, not every weather story warrants an exhaustive examination of global warming.

If a storm is an immediate threat, if a tornado, hurricane, flood, blizzard, snow storm, ice storm, cold snap or heat wave is threatening a city, a region or a country, those potentially affected want to know what's up with this particular crisis. And how to protect themselves.

One the storm passes, that would be a good time to examine whether global warming had a role in the disaster or really bad weather.

Additionally, it's a necessary public service when people like Ginger Zee describe for us the implications and hazards of a storm or extreme weather.

That said, it's also true that TV networks and other media outlets love, LOVE showing footage of extreme weather. Frankly so do I.

I openly refer to wild, dramatic videos and photos of tornadoes, hurricanes and the like as "weather porn." People get off on it. I do, too.

Of course, this enthusiasm for "weather porn" gives me some serious pangs of guilt, and should for everyone who enjoys weather porn.

The people who were killed in that storm left behind grieving loved ones. The houses that were destroyed belonged to someone. The lives that were uprooted by the severe weather will never be the same.

I like to think our addiction to weather porn has a good side. That maybe it inspires us to help those who were victimized by dangerous weather. That it makes us lobby for better structural standards, and zoning to keep people from building in hazardous places.

I'd also like to think all these images of severe weather prompts us to become activists against climate change.

That's the hope, anyway.

The power of nature is thrilling, awe-inspiring, deadly, tragic and incredibly vivid.  I will continue to be a fan of weather porn, and I'm sure a lot of other people will, too.  

I just hope we don't sit back and do nothing once we've finished watching that video of an EF-5 tornado destroy a pleasant Great Plains small town.

Why It's Hard To Plan How To Dress For The Weather In Rapid City

The front entrance of the National Weather Service office
in Rapid City, South Dakota during an extreme
blizzard in October, 2013. An analysis shows the city
has the most extreme weather of any in the U.S.  n

Where I live here in Vermont, there's the old saying, "If you don't like the weather in Vermont, wait a minute and it will change."

I believe they use that phrase in many other parts of the country, too.

But where that cliche fits best is in Rapid City, South Dakota, it turns out.

At  fivethirtyeight.com, they've done an analysis ranking the relative unpredictability of the weather.

The word they should have used is volatility of the weather, but we'll get to that in a bit.

The analysis by fivethirtyeight compares weather patterns in every part of the country against long term averages. The more the weather typically deviates from the "normal" the more "unpredictable" the weather is, in the eyes of Nate Silver and Reuben Fischer-Baum, who wrote the article.

The pair looked at 120 American cities, each representative of the 120 National Weather Service forecast offices in the United States.

Silver and Fischer-Baum looked at temperature, precipitation, snowfall, wind, severe weather and other phenomenon to determine their scale of unpredictable, or predictable weather.

Rapid City turned out to have the most unpredictable, or volatile weather. Honolulu, Hawaii had the most predictable weather.

The cities with the most volatile weather were mostly in the upper Great Plains. Cities with the most settled weather tended to be near coastlines.

That makes sense. Oceans tend to have a modifying influence on local climates, tamping down on extreme high and low temperatures and often discouraging severe thunderstorms. Yes, coastlines tend to have storms, but they're not as frequent as day to day variations in temperatures and conditions as inland.

The Pacific Coast has more predictable weather than the East Coast. Weather systems tend to come from the west, so the Pacific Coast gets a lot of influence from the ocean.

Weather systems from inland, the west, tend to affect the East Coast often, so the weather there is more volatile than the other side of the country.

The cities with the most volatile weather tend not to be very big. The fivethirtyeight analysis says the top 23 most volatile weather cities are not within the metropolitan areas of the nation's 50 biggest cities.

Of the top 50 biggest metro areas of the United States, Kansas City is the most "unpredictable," according to the fivethirtyeight analysis.

I'm a little disappointed my region is not the most volatile. (Weather geeks like me like extremes, I guess.)

Burlington, Vermont, the city closest to my home, ranks as the 38th most unpredictable weather city out of the 120 listed.

I've been batting around the words "unpredictable" and "volatile" in this post to describe what's going on with this analysis.

I agree with the Capital Weather Gang that maybe Silver and Fischer-Baum are mistaken in calling cities with more extreme weather "unpredictable."

To rank the predictability, they should have analyzed National Weather Service forecasts, or those from other forecasting firms, to compare how many of the forecasts turned out to be correct in each city.

So the term we should use in the fivethirtyeight analysis is a ranking of how variable a city's weather is, not its unpredictability.

Here's how the Capital Weather Gang put it:

"...volatility isn't always the best indicator of unpredictability. Big fronts which cause big swings in the weather are actually pretty easy to forecast, whereas more subtle variations can be much more difficult to detect."

For instance, a cold front a couple weeks ago caused temperatures to drop by some 60 degrees overnight in the Great Plains. That's highly variable weather, but the temperature change was very accurately forecast ahead of time.

A couple days later a storm on the East Coast produced rain and snow. Some cities had much more snow than forecast, others had less. Only a subtle change in temperature by one or two degrees from say, 32 to 34, made all the difference.

Not a big change in temperature, but the subtle change made it super hard to forecast the effect of teh storm in any given area.

Speaking of extremes, another interesting statistic came out this week. In November, the United States had, technically, the most extreme weather on earth, based on temperature.

The analysis looked at how far above and below normal temperatures for the month of November were everywhere.

A spot near Cable, Wisconsin had temperatures the most below normal for November, about six degrees lower than average.

Meanwhile, a spot just off the northern Alaska coast in the Beaufort Sea had the biggest warm departure from normal in November, more than nine degrees.

Once again, I missed out in the extremes. Temperatures in Burlington, Vermont in November, 2014 turned out to be exactly normal.

Oh well, better than freezing or roasting, I guess.

New York Lake Effect Storm Is Beyond Incredible. Five Or More Feet?!?!

Just try driving down this section of the New York State
Thruway near Buffalo, N.Y. today.  

This is one for the record books out in western New York.

Snow in narrow lake effect bands is piling up to ridiculous levels as the weather pattern is just perfect to cause extreme lake effect snow.

How extreme? Some of the hardest hit areas just south of Buffalo has more than four feet of new snow since last evening, and are expecting total accumulations of up to five or even six feet by later tonight.

As of 4:30 p.m, the highest snow total from the lake effect storm is 51 inches near Cheektowaga, N.Y. 

That's just one part of Cheektowaga. Another section of the same community has only had about two inches of snow. So depending upon where you are in one town, you had somewhere between two inches and four feet. Unbelievable.

Via Twitter, Tara Schwab took this photo
of a dog who is going to have a
challenging walk in Lancaster, N.Y.  n

I wouldn't even be totally surprised if somebody exceeds the 82 inches of snow in a town south of Buffalo in December, 2001, considered the deepest lake effect snow on record for the Buffalo area

According to The Buffalo News, travel in these areas is impossible, cars are stranded. The New York State Thruway near Lackawanna is closed, and even firefighters and ambulances are having trouble getting to people in need of help.

The winds set up just right so that they blew from southwest to northeast along the entire length of Lake Erie. That allowed the air keep collecting and collecting moisture on a long journey across the lake.

Lake Erie water temperatures are well into the 40s. Not swimming conditions, but relatively warm. The air a few thousand feet above the lake is near 0 degrees.

The contrast allows for a lot of instability, helping to focus all the lake moisture into clouds and snow, which gets dumped onto the shore near and south of Buffalo.

Via Twitter, Mike Schnorr gives us a
photo of a car that's not going anywhere
anytime soon.  

The winds also blew almost in tandem with the length of Lake Ontario, but not quite as perfectly, giving areas near Watertown more than three feet of snow.

These lake effect bands are only maybe five miles wide. The trouble is, they largely stayed in one spot, not varying much north or south.

Areas just north of Buffalo pretty much missed out on the action. While chaos was happening amid several feet of snow in the southern metro areas, municipalities a little to the north of Buffalo were out collected autumn leaves, because there was no snow in the way.

Just reading statements and forecasts from the National Weather Service office in Buffalo gives you a sense of the total chaos:

"Intense Lake Effect Snow Will Continue To Impact the Southern Half of the Buffal Metro Area:

At 3:29 p.m EST, National Weather Service doppler radar indicated a lake effect snow band capable of producing snowfall rates of 4 inches per hour or more...and visibility near zero at times. The sharp northern edge of this lake effect snow band extends from South Buffalo to Depew and eastward towards Darien and Alexander.

The southern edge of the band is hugging the Chautauqua County shoreline then extending inland across far northern Chautauqua County, the Boston Hills and Wyoming County.

Travel within the most intense portion of this band from South Buffalo into the nearby southern and eastern suburbs is impossible. Local officials report all roads are impassable and clogged with snow and stuck vehicles. Do not venture out within this area. If you live north or south of the band of snow do not attempt to drive into the affected area. You will become trapped."

But wait! There's more! The lake effect snow is expected to continue into tonight, then redevelop Wednesday night and Thursday. Here's more nightmarish verbiage from the National Weather Service in Buffalo:  

From The Buffalo News: Visibility isn't so great
in the intense lake effect snow bands. Add caption

"Accumulations: Snowfall rates of 2 to 4 inches per hour in the most intense portion of the band. Storm totals will reach three to four feet in many areas south of a line from South Buffalo to Batavia. Local amounts of five to six feet from Lackawanna to Lancaster to Elma from the first storm ending on Wednesday.

Additional accumulations of up to two feet in the second storm late Wednesday night through Thursday night in persistent bands. The heaviest amounts may again focus on the Buffalo southtowns."

Yep. That's right. After this lake effect monster is done, they get another one Thursday. And just for fun, here's what the Tuesday afternoon forecast for a town south of Buffalo looked like. I like how nonchalant the "total daytime snow accumulation of 27 to 33 inches" reads:

"Snow with areas of blowing snow. The snow could be heavy at times. Some thunder is also possible. High near 23. Breezy, with a west wind around 24 mph, with gusts as high as 36 mph. Chance of precipitation 100 percent. Total daytime snow accumulation 27 to 33 inches possible.

They just get around to the 33 inches at the end of the forecast? The snow could be heavy at times. Ya think?!?!

Here's a stunning time lapse video of the snow band as seen from just north of where it was burying towns under feet of snow. Looks like a solid curtain of snow:




Here's a homeowner showing us the scene outside his West Seneca, N.Y. home:

Update: Scenes From A Record Early Southern Snow. And Maine's Still Screwed.

Snow on palm trees in Lexington, SC
Saturday. Photo by Lisa Grise via Twitter.

Today was an incredible day in the Carolinas.  

They had their first snow of the season, and in many cases, it broke the record for earliest snowfall by many days or even a couple weeks.

More incredibly, some areas got several inches of snow. A few places in the higher elevations were closing in on two feet as of late Saturday afternoon.

Up to 22 inches of snow as reported near the North Carolina/Tennessee border. Columbia and Greenville, South Carolina had by far their earliest snowfall on record.

This is one of the most extreme, bizarre storms I've ever seen.

The snow around Greenville and Columbia is particularly incredible because the South Carolina cities are at low elevations. It's only snowed a couple times in those cities in November since the 1880s, and those cases were much later in the month.

Both of these South Carolina cities had their first snowfall of the winter earlier than cold northern wintry cities as Bismarck, North Dakota, Buffalo, New York and Burlington, Vermont.

Snow and foliage in the southeastern U.S.
Photo by Ted Overbay via Twitter

This storm isn't done. The snow in the Carolinas was caused by an incredibly strong upper level disturbance that dove due south from the Arctic, through the Great Lakes and into the Carolinas.

On it's way through the Great Lakes, the disturbance unleashed very strong winds on Chicago, causing high waves and flooding along the shores of Lake Michigan.

The strong upper level disturbance had so much cold air with it, and and so much energy, that it dropped temperatures to near record low levels.

The heavy precipitation with the disturbance further cooled the air, and the result was snow.

As a strong weather disturbance that was an
ingredient for today's southern snow passed
Chicago Friday, it stirred up big waves
on Lake Michigan. Photo by Nick Ulivieri via Twitter

The upper disturbance finally made it to the coast northeast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina at mid afternoon Saturday. Interactions with another, southern disturbance, and the warm waters of the Gulf Stream are making a nor'easter develop explosively.

A bomb is what we call these things, since they get going so fast and so extensively.

This "bomb" will move north, meaning New England is screwed. At least parts of New England, anyway.

As I said this morning, we're lucky the storm is tracking quite a ways offshore, so the worst effects will miss much of New England.

Still, a high wind warning is still up for Cape Cod and the islands. Coastal flood warnings are up along much of the New England coast, too. especially on north facing beaches where the strong winds will push ocean water ashore.

Harlan County, Kentucky on Saturday.
Photo by Debra Callahan via Twitter.  

The big part of this storm still looks to hit the eastern half of Maine. The storm is going to move more north, rather than northeast, once it gets past Cape Cod, so it will really affect that part of Maine.

Up to 14 inches of snow is likely to fall there, and it could drift quite a bit as winds will gust over 40 mph.

Very heavy snow, a foot or more in some areas, will hit parts of New Brunswick, Canada Sunday.

Inland areas of the Northeast, including western New England and northern New York, are in for a blustery Sunday, with some snow flurries, especially early in the day.

It was already snowing steadily in some mountainous areas of Vermont Saturday afternoon, but accumulations will generally be less than 3 inches in the mountains, and no more than a dusting in the valleys.

At my house at a low elevation St. Albans, near Lake Champlain in northwestern Vermont, I was treated to the joy of doing yard work this afternoon in a drizzle that was mixed with bits of sleet and slush. Yummy!

I still think the weather in the eastern United States will settle down this week and become much more seasonable. However, frequent rain showers will probably affect much of the Northeast.

However, the weather pattern remains dynamic, and there's still a greater than usual chance that other strong storms could hit hit the Northeast between November 5 and 15. That's no guarantee, of course, but it's something to watch.

Incredibly Rare, Tragic and Deadly Twin Tornadoes In Nebraska

Twin tornadoes leave Pilger, Nebraska after devastating
the town on Monday. Photo by Steve Silberman. 

I don't think I've ever seen this:

Two very large tornadoes marched through parts of Nebraska side by side this afternoon, killing at least one person and injuring many more

The two tornadoes teamed to devastate the tiny town of Pilger, Nebraska.   

I have seen cases in which a large tornado roars through an area, accompanied by a small, satellite tornado.

But I can't remember ever seeing enormous, strong tornadoes shoulder to shoulder, causing twin paths of destruction.

The severe weather outbreak has been going on all day, and continuous this evening.

Tornadoes continue to spin through the region. Winds gusted as high as 96 mph in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.   Once again, there have been numerous reports of basebaill sized hail.

Torrential rains falling from storms repeatedly raking over the same areas of South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska has touched off severe flooding.

As the storms continue tonight, the flooding will get worse.  Overall, this might not be the worst tornado outbreak the Great Plains has ever seen, but the combination of twisters, huge hail, incredible winds and Noah's Ark style floods is causing what will probably amount to billions of dollars in damage.

That's especially true that these severe storms have been going on almost daily in the region since the start of the month. This is truly an extreme weather event in a year of extreme weather events

Here's a video of the incredible twin tornadoes in Nebraska.