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:

Extreme Weather Weekend: Cat 5 Lorenzo, Huge Western Snows, Storms, California Twister?

Giant Hurricane Lorenzo in the central Atlantic
Ocean this morning. 

Time to update one of those weekend when the weather across the nation and parts of the world have once again kind of gone off the rails.

There's a couple videos at the bottom of this post.

So let's get going:

WILD HURRICANE LORENZO

Yesterday, I joked a little about Hurricane Lorenzo, in relation to ex-tropical storm Karen. But Hurricane Lorenzo really wowed the weather world last night.

Lorenzo is way out over the central Atlantic, and is no threat to land with the very notable exception of the Azores, which are really under the gun from this storm.

At the end of the week, Lorenzo was a high-end category 4 hurricane, and it was arguably the furthest east in the Atlantic Ocean for such a strong storm. Water temperatures are usually cooler in the eastern half of the Atlantic Ocean than in the western  half, at least in the northern hemisphere.

That means those eastern hurricanes tend not to get as strong as those more to the west, since hurricanes crave the warmest water possible to thrive.

Last night, Lorenzo pulled a fast one on everybody. It was expected to slowly weaken as it moved northward over the open water. And it was weakening Friday night and the first half of Saturday.

Lare Saturday night, though, Lorenzo blew up into a category 5 monster with 160 mph sustained winds. Luckily it wasn't near land. This is easily the strongest hurricane on record in the eastern half of the Atlantic. Also the furthest north we've seen a category 5 hurricane.

Meteorologist Phil Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) posted this map. The dot in blue
is where Category 5 Hurricane Lorenzo was. The red dots
are where all other Category 5 hurricanes developed. You
can see ho far east Lorenzo is

As Dennis Mersereau notes in Forbes, and citing meteorologist Eric Blake, the previous record for the furthest east Category 5 was Hurricane Hugo in 1989, which was a good 600 miles west of Lorenzo's position. (Mersereau is @wxdam on Twitter.)

A number of weather experts I've seen on line say this could easily be another sign of climate change. The water in the eastern Atlantic is now warmer than it used to be decades ago, so this region can support more intense storms.

There certainly has been an uptick in unusually strong Atlantic hurricanes in recent years. As Mersereau writes:

"Lorenzo is the second category five hurricane we've seen in the Atlantic Ocean so far this year, and the sixth such storm to form in the Atlantic in the last four years."

As Lorenzo moves north into cooler waters, it will finally weaken and transform into a regular mid-latitude storm. It could bring strong winds and heavy rain to the British Isles toward the end of the week, we'll have to wait and see.

ROCKIES SNOW

A lovely September day in Choteau, Montana Saturday

It usually snows in the northern Rocky Mountains in September, but not like this!

Some areas, especially in the mountains, can expect a good three feet of snow by the time things taper off Monday night or Tuesday.

Since leaves are still on the trees in many areas, the heavy wet snow is causing a lot of damage to forests, street trees and powerlines. Livestock is suffering and crops are being ruined.

According to meteorologist Jonathan Erdman (@wxjerdman on Twitter), Great Falls, Montana has 9.7 inches of snow Saturday. That's the snowiest September day on record there. It also would have been the snowiest October day in Great Falls. Erman said you'd have to go to November 8, 2012 to find a snowier day in Great Falls.

Over in Spokane, Washington, they had their first September snowfall since 1926. And it was quite a bit considering the season - 1.9 inches.

Cut Bank, Montana has been snowy, with temperatures in the upper 20s and wind chills in the lower teens since Saturday morning.  That would be rather unpleasant by January standards here in Vermont.

CALIFORNIA SUPERCELL

A relatively rare supercell thunderstorm developed about midway between San Francisco and Sacramento, California Saturday evening. It produced a possible tornado near Davis, and dumped several inches of hail on one area, including a stretch of major highway.

There was also a smattering of severe storms in the mid-Atlantic states, and in and around Missouri yesterday. One especially strong storm hit a Christian music festival in Pennsylvania Saturday, blowing tents around and injuring six people.

RECORD HEAT

Intense heat continued in the Southeast Saturday, with many more records being set.  This state of affairs will continue into the middle of the week.  I expect several cities in the East and Ohio and Tennessee Valleys to set all-time records for the month of October.

Several cities in the Southeast and Deep South are having their hottest September on record.

VERMONT IMPACTS

The Green Mountain State will mostly miss the wild weather over the next couple of days. But things will still be interesting. And very changeable.

Yesterday actually felt humid in Vermont ahead of a cold front. Now that front has gone by, and it's cool and sunny. It's going to be a gorgous Sunday for leaf peepers (though most places aren't at peak yet.)  Look out tonight, as there will be scattered frost around, especially away from Lake Champlain.

After another nice day Monday, a warm front will come in with some rains for Tuesday. If skies clear enough briefly before a cold front approaches, highs in some parts of Vermont could top 80 degrees

It appears this cold front will give us a good slug of rain especially Wednesday.

Then it will cool down dramatically. It won't be anything too out of the ordinary for October, but it will come as a shock because it's been rather mild lately. By the end of the week and next weekend, highs will only be in the upper 40s to mid 50s.  A hard freeze is beginning to look like a fairly good bet next weekend. It could even snow on the mountain peaks.

Yeah, I just said the "s" word.

Some videos:

Possible tornado in Davis, California Saturday:



Incredible amounts of hail on a highway near Davis, California Saturday after a tornado-warned
supercell thunderstorm went by:



And a bit of time spent outdoors in Montana Saturday:

If You Have Cabin Fever, Check This Out. It Could Be Worse

If winter is too much for you, consider the people who were trapped
for a few days by up to seven feet of snow in a California mountain
lodge. Photo by Joel Keeler via AP. 

It's going to snow again this week in Vermont.  I noticed the winter storm watch that was in effect this morning has been upgraded to a winter storm warning. 

Another 5 to 15 inches of snow and sleet is forecast Tuesday and Wednesday. Which doesn't necessarily thrill me.

Today, Sunday, the snow around my St. Albans, Vermont yard had become thin enough an hard-packed enough so that I could do a few things outdoors, like cut back a bit of brush.

Any further outdoor projects by the middle of the week will be put on hold by more snow, it seems.

By February, I've usually come down with a bit of cabin fever. I'm tired of not easily walking anywhere I want. When the snow is deeper, I'm hemmed into to walking on shoveled paths and driveways and such.

I'm also really over the fact that I always seem to have to walk gingerly, for fear of falling on the ice. When the snow and ice finally disappear, if feels like I've gotten out of prison.

I shouldn't complain, though. Especially compared to what people go through in some mountain areas where several feet of snow can fall in a single storm.

A great example came last week at the Montecito Sequoia Lodge in Kings Canyon National Park in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, as CBS News reports.

There was already plenty of snow on the ground, and a storm last week dumped another seven feet of snow on the resort. It was so much that 120 guests there were stranded for several days.

Luckily, the place had heat, power and plenty of food, so nobody suffered physically. But the cabin fever must have been extreme.

Finally, on Thursday, during a brief break between that storm and another one that blew in the next day, crews carved a path up the road to the resort. The crews had to fight their way through eight miles of deep snow, not to mention a couple dozen fallen trees.

In th end, the road out wasn't wide or totally clear, but enough for everybody to drive out.

As you can see in the video below, the snowbanks on either side of the road were huge. But the "prisoners" in the Sierra were free to head downhill, where there was little or no snow

Here's the video:

Lingering Snow Falls This Afternoon As We Start Cleanup from Historic, Record-Breaking Snows.

A bit of work to do at this
Trumansburg, New York car dealership

 1:30 PM WEDNESDAY UPDATE

OK, it can stop snowing now.

Snow continues to fall mostly lightly, across especially western Vermont as our storm slowly winds down.

There's not much additional accumulation going on, but it is harassing those of us who are trying to clean up, and it's keeping road conditions from improving as fast as we'd like.

Burlington, Vermont is up to 29.6 inches from this storm, just 0.2 inches from becoming the second biggest snowstorm in the city's history.

Still could do it, as a little light snow continues to fall in the Burlington area as I write this.

I made a mistake in this morning's post. It turned out Plattsburgh, New York DID achieve blizzard conditions in yesterdqy's storm. A blizzard is defined as at least three consecutive hours of visibility of a quarter mile or less in falling and/or blowing snow, with frequent gusts of 35 mph or more during that period.

Turns out Plattsburgh DID have that long a period with blizzard conditions. Ticonderoga, New York also have an official blizzard. Burlington, Vermont did not because winds weren't strong enough.

Other updated snow totals include 41 inches in Lake Placid, New York, 35 inches in Au Sable, New York, 32 inches in Westford, Vermont and 30 inches in several towns in the eastern part of Chittenden County, Vermont.

I'm still sure more updates are coming.  More details on snowfall are in this morning's post. You can scroll down and read it below this update.

Up in Quebec, the snow was deep, too, causing numerous buses and cars to get stuck overnight in the Montreal metro area. A 50 car pileup developed on a highway near Magog, Quebec.

Elsewhere, I should note a freeze warning is up for an ENORMOUS part of the southeastern part of the country, all the way down into northern Florida.

A record warm February caused a record early spring, and now a record cold wave is hitting that neck of the woods. We're still expecting most of this year's peach and pecan crop to be wiped out, along with other foods and veggies.

Temperatures will get into the mid and upper 20s in northern Florida, and the low 20s, with maybe a few upper teens in Georgia and South Carolina.

The famed cherry blossoms in Washinton DC are absolutely screwed. They were about to bloom and the weather will probably kill a large proportion of them off.

The trees will survive to bloom hopefully next year, anyway.

My husband Jeff snapped this
pic this morning of me starting
the enormous task of shoveling
our driveway out of 26
inches of new snow. 

The blossoms managed to mostly survive cold weather last weekend and a snowstorm yesterday but temperatures might not get above freezing there this afternoon, and temperatures will bottom out at or just below 20 degrees in Washington DC tonight.

Very sad

Back up here in Vermont and the rest of New England, all this snow isn't going anywhere anytime fast. Unlike the snows of February, which rapidly disappeared amid record warmth, it's going to stay wintry for quire awhile.

Computer models disagree on a system for this weekend. Some of the models say a system will come in from the west and bring light snow, maybe a bit of rain in the valleys, and then another nor'easter will blow up off the New England coast.

Some models place that storm too far off the coast to have much of an effect, while other computer models suggest we might get more snow out of it. (But not 30 inches)

Then another sharp wintry cold wave blasts in for the middle and end of next week.

Sigh.

Here's a dramatic video of that snow covered big highway pileup near Magog, Quebec, and below that, you can read this morning's detailed post of this storm if you missed it.

9 AM WEDNESDAY DISCUSSION

My weather watching dogs Tonks (foreground) and
Jackson (in black) struggled with the two feet of new
snow outside my St. Albans, Vermont house this morning. 

It's still snowing in much of Vermont this morning, but nearly as hard as it did yesterday.

With snow still falling, we haven't finished re-writing the record books yet from this big March storm.

Already, though, the National Weather Service office in South Burlington, Vermont reported its largest March snowstorm on record with 25.9 inches. So far.

It was still snowing lightly there at last report. It's also the third largest snowstorm of any month in Burlington.

Looks like 25 inches of new snow outside my house in St. Albans, so far. It's still snowing. I've got a LOT of work to do outside, don't I?

Well, at least if I was itching to go anywhere, the National Weather Service is putting a stop to that. Yes, the blizzard warning has been cancelled, having been downgraded to a winter weather advisory in the Champlain Valley.  A winter storm warning continues in the Northeast Kingdom and in the mountains.

However, the National Weather Service, Vermont State Police and pretty much everybody else is saying that travel is TOTALLY not recommended in the state this morning. Roads are still hopelessly clogged.

As an aside, I noticed up on Montreal, about 300 motorists were stranded overnight on Highway 13 in the West Island. See? Even in urban areas, you can get in trouble with the kind of road conditions we have now.

Plows are working on it, but this amount of snow takes time. Plus, the wind is going to pick up again today, making the blowing and drifting all that much worse. And, as noted, some more snow is coming down.

They're expecting another one to three inches in the part of the Champlain Valley closest to the lake, two to five inches away from the lake, and four to eight inches additional in parts of northern Vermont and the mountains.

As the day wears on, the snow will become more and more confined to the spine of the Green Mountains and the western slopes. I can't wait to hear storm total reports from places like Jay Peak .

IMPORTANT TIPS

Some tips, since we haven't coped with a storm this big since March, 2011:

Take your time shoveling. Your boss, your school or whatever is going to give you some slack today if you show up late or not at all. Plenty of schools and businesses are closed today anyway, so don't panic. Or get somebody else to shovel and plow. There's always somebody looking to pick up an extra buck.

This is IMPORTANT: The first place you should shovel is near any exhaust vents for your house or building.  If you don't, carbon monoxide can back up into your house and kill you. And you do have working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, right?

I don't think these vehicles in my driveway are going
anywhere anytime soon

If you want to warm up your car, and I don't know why if it's mired in two feet of snow, don't sit in it unless you are COMPLETLY sure there's a big clearing with no snow anywhere near the exhaust pipe.

Same problem as above here: A snow clogged car tailpipe will kill you with carbon monoxide.

Is there a fire hydrant buried in snow somewhere near your house? Give that priority too, and dig it out pronto. Shovel away a nice clearing away from the hydrant. That way, if there's an emergency, the fire department will be able to find and use the hydrant quickly.

Low on fuel and expecting a fuel delivery? Shovel a nice clear path to the intake valve. Fuel delivery people have to drag heavy hoses to fill the oil tank and it's just impossible if there's two feet of snow in the way.

STORM STATS:

As noted above, Burlington, Vermont had its largest March snowstorm on record with 25.9 inches, beating the record of 25.8 inches on March 6-7, 2011.

There was a blizzard warning up yesterday for parts of the North Country, especially the Champlain Valley. There might have been spots that qualified for a blizzard, but major reporting stations as far as I can tell fell short of a blizzard.

A blizzard is defined as at least three hours of visibility of a quarter mile or less in falling and/or blowing snow and frequest gusts to at least 35 mph.

Plattsburgh, New York came close. There was indeed a three hour period when winds gusted over 35 mph. Two of those hours had visibilities of a quarter of a mile, but in the third hour, visibility "improved" to a half mile.

Burlington did not come close. The city had several hours of visibility of under a quarter mile, but no prolonged periods with wind gusts over 35 mph.

But who cares if you didn't get an official blizzard. This was still a memorable storm, for sure.

Snow totals elsewhere in Vermont included 34 inches in Jay, 26 inches in Hyde Park and 29 inches in Jericho. Several places statewide are at or at least approaching two feet of new snow. I'm sure we'll get even bigger numbers later today

Elsewhere in the Northeast, Binghamton, New York had its biggest one day snowfall on record with 31.3 inches.

Numerous places in northeast Pennsylvania and areas of New York just across the border from Pennsylvania had 30 or more inches of snow. Same was true for many communities in New York's Hudson Valley.

Wind was the major factor in coastal New England. Winds gusted as high as 79 mph in Wellfleet and 77 mph at Plum Island, both in Massachusetts.

The wind, combined with wet snow and mixed precipitation, caused widespread tree and power line damage. Quite a few houses and cars were trashed by falling trees. A wind turbine toppled over in Rhode Island during the wind, and part of a church roof was blown off in Lowell, Massachusetts.

I'll have more updates later.

That Was One HELL Of A Cold Wave

Lots of people were thinking this in the Northern Plains
and Midwest over the weekend. H/T to John
Howland for posting this cartoon on Facebook

An epic cold wave over the Plains and Midwest will start to fade today after breaking numerous rlow temperature records.  

A lot of the record lows were broken by large margins.  

Some examples, according to the Weather Channel:

First, Saturday:

Pueblo, Colorado, -19, old record -10.
Garden City, Kansas: -13 degrees, old record -1
Aberdeen, South Dakota: -32 degrees, old record -24
Bismarck, North Dakota, -31 degrees, old record -27.

On Sunday, things in some areas got worse.

South Dakota seemed to be the epicenter of the record low temperatures, but a lot of other areas set records as well.

The Weather Channel says record lows in South Dakota included -37 degrees in Aberdeen and Watertown; -31 at Huron, -27 in Sioux Falls, -26 at Mobridge and -25 at Mitchell. (The actual temperature of -37 in Aberdeen was accompanied by a wind chill of 58 below.)

Other record lows within shouting distance of South Dakota were -20 at Sioux City, Iowa and -31 at Valentine, Nebraska,

The cold spread south, bigly, as Donald Trump might say, all the way to Oklahoma and Texas Saturday night.

Kansas City, Missouri got down to 9 below, the city's third coldest reading since 2000.

Record lows including 3 degrees at Tulsa, Oklahoma, 4 degrees at Oklahoma City, minus 3 at Amarillo, Texas and 10 degrees above zero at Abilene, Texas

A  fascinating part of this was watching the Arctic front press rapidly south through the southern Plains.

The front led to some pretty extreme statewide extremes.

This weekend's Arctic cold front approaching Kileen, Texas.
Photo by Cancels Serrano, via Twitter. 

Meteorologist Matt Mahalik noted on Twitter that at one point in Texas, there was a 42 degree temperature distance over 13 miles, or basically a degree per 1,600 feet, which is absolutely amazing.

As the cold front bisected Texas, there was an 84 degree temperature difference between the panhandle in the North and the humid Rio Grande valley to the south.

The apparent temperature - wind chill or heat index and not the actual temperature - Saturday morning in Oklahoma ranged from 17 below in the northwestern Panhandle to 70 degrees in the southeast corner of the state.

One thing that might be confusing to people is that scientists say the Arctic is having an incredibly warm stretch of weather. So how is it able to send record cold air down to the United States.

Two things: One, the  Arctic is much warmer than normal overall, but much warmer than normal up there is still damn frigid by our standards.

Plus the warmth up there isn't uniform, just like it's not uniform everywhere else. There are pockets of colder air as there always is. The jet stream was able to configure itself just perfectly to directly channel a pocket of frigid air directly south into the United States.

So  yes, it's all the jet stream's fault.

Relief is definitely on the way as that weird jet stream pattern quickly breaks down.

True, several more record lows are occuring this Monday morning in the Midwest, but there probably won't be as many extremes as over the weekend.

The cold wave has spread east, but is weakening. Temperatures across the East will be well below normal today and Tuesday morning, but I expect few, if any record lows there.

Here in Vermont early Monday, temperatures were within a few degrees either side of zero in most plaees. Some of the colder areas in northern New York were in the upper teens below zero. Definitely chilly, but not record breaking.

Things are going to warm up drastically in the cold zone this week. By midweek, temperatures in most of the nation, including the areas in the northern Plains that were in the core of the frigid cold, will warm up to near or above normal readings.

For instance, Aberdeen, South Dakota, which suffered through those minus 37 degree temperatures Sunday morning is expecting a high temperature of 25 degrees today, 27 degrees Tuesday, and 34 degrees Wednesday.

That's above zero. Sweet relief for them, I'm sure.

Incredibly Ultra Weird Vermont And National December Weather Closes Out Wild 2015

A flower blooming in a West Rutland, Vermont
garden on Christmas Day, 2015. 

Something strange is going to happen outside my house in St. Albans, Vermont during this first week in January.

The strange thing is that the weather outside will be more or less normal.

I know that sentence doesn't make much sense. What would be so strange about average weather?

It's strange because we've had pretty much no normal weather lately. It's been off the charts.

I've never seen a month like December, 2015. Not locally, and not nationally.

Pretty much every state east of the oddly flooding Mississippi River, and pretty much every city east of the Mississippi had its hottest December on record.

First of all, it's extremely rare for such a wide geographical area to have a record hot month. It's even more odd -- extremely odd -- for some of those monthly heat records to be broken by such large margins.

On the relatively rare occasions when you have a new record for hottest or coldest month, that record is broken by a few tenths of a degree. It's pretty much unheard of to break the record by more than two degrees.

This time, many cities broke the monthly December record by several degrees.

VERMONT DECEMBER HEAT

Let't start here where I live, in Vermont, for the extreme records.

Burlington, Vermont's mean temperature in December, 2015 was 39.2 degrees, beating the old record hot month by 6.6 degrees. It's pretty rare to be merely 6.6 degrees warmer than average for a given month. Breaking a record by that margin was unthinkable until now.

December was a whopping 13.4 degrees warmer than normal in Burlington. Had December's weather happened in November instead, November still would have been one degree warmer than average.

For the first time since they started keeping records in Burlington, there were never any days that got below 10 degrees. (The closest it came was 16 degrees on the 28th) On 10 days, the temperature reached 50 degrees or more. Usually it takes a decade of Decembers to accumulate 10 days that reach 50 or more.

And of course there was that Christmas Eve in Burlington, in which the temperature reached 68 degrees, the hottest temperature on record for the entire month of December.  The month also had the latest first date of the season in which the temperature in Burlington never rose above freezing. That was on Dec. 28, ten days later than the old record set in 1998.

The month also had the fewest number of days that stayed below freezing during December. Just two.

Montpelier and St. Johnsbury, Vermont also broke their records for the hottest December on record by wide margins

December was soggy, too. Burlington had 4.44 inches of precipitation, double the average and good enough to make December, 2015 the 6th wettest on record.

Like I said, I don't know of any month that I can remember in which the weather was more extreme than in December, 2015.

THE NATION

Over the past 30 days, there have been 5,121 daily record highs at weather stations across the country, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center

Nights have been even weirder across the nation. Over the past 30 days, 6,441 daily records were set for highest minimum temperatures for any given day, says the NCDC.

Florida has been an extreme example of this. In Tampa, there were eight daily record high temperatures in a row. Fort Lauderdale had no cooler than normal days in December, and only 2 of the last 72 days were a bit cooler than average.

Shitless volleyball players in New York City,
Christmas Eve, 2015. 

Up until this year, the warmest overnight low for any December night on record in Key West, Florida, was 78 degrees. This year, for each of eight consecutive days starting December 23, that Key West warm overnight low record was tied or broken.

Further north, in New York City's Central Park, 11 days during December, 2015 reached 60 degrees or more. The previous record for most such December days was eight.

Many areas of the United States had record wet Decembers, too. These places include Portland, Oregon, with 15.24 inches for the month. Portland also  had its hottest year on record. , St. Louis, Missouri with 11.74 inches,  had its wettest December. Several cities in Georgia also had their wettest December since they began keeping track of such things.

I'm sure I've only hit just a few of the highlights in this year's extreme December across the country.

Let's see how 2016 turns out.

India Heat Is Worst Weather Disaster Of The Year

Melting pavement during the intense heat
wave underway in India.  

Although it is getting some increasing media coverage in recent days, you could still be forgiven for not even hearing about an epic weather disaster unfolding this week.

No, it's not the Texas floods, though those are incredible, with billions in damage and at least 19 deaths.

Yes, tornadoes have been spinning up across parts of the Plains and Midwest, but that's not what I'm talking about, either.

The enormous weather disaster now unfolding is a terrible heat wave in India and Pakistan. So far, at least 1,000 people have died, and the unrelenting heat will certainly kill more people this week.

The Hindustan Times put it most graphically, as temperatures soared to 48 degrees Celcius, or about 118 degrees Fahrenheit:

"Humans 'boil in their own skin' at 48 degrees Celcius, the maximum temperaure record at Khamman in Telangana, which has become the focal point of a blistering heat wave sweeping through swaths of India."

True, other parts of the world, like Arizona and Saudi Arabia, get that hot and people do just fine. But they can retreat to air conditioned buildings in Phoenix and Riyadh. Not so in much of India, especially the poor and homeless, who must sit out there in that horrible heat. It's more humid, too, than in the deserts, so it makes it worse.

A disaster that kills more than a 1,000 people, with a spiraling death toll continuing, is usually big news. But every picture tells a story. More so than the printed word.

Heat waves are not telegenic. We are in awe of flash floods sweeping away buildings or tornadoes lifting whole houses into the sky. But a heat wave just bakes the populace quietly, with no fireworks.

The only dramatic photos we get are of pavement melting under the relentless Indian sun.

Heat waves are often the world's biggest weather killer, During a summer long heat wave in Europe back in 2003, 70,000 people, mostly elderly and ill people, died in the torrid conditions.

An extreme Russian heat wave in 2010 killed 11,000 people in just Moscow.

With climate change, bigger, more intense and longer heat waves are becoming more likely, so ore fatal heat waves seem to be a good bet

In India, the heat is forecast to continue for days. This disaster is only going to get worse.

New England Snow Has Officially Gotten Ridiculous

  A woman at her home in eastern Massachusetts yesterday.
Photo via Twitter, @JohnDePetroshow  

I know, I know, New England snow, New England snow.

I now think I can safely say that some parts of southeastern New England probably have not seen snow like this since it was settled in the 1600s.

Bouts of snow in 1717, the mid-1800s, 1978 and 1996 come close but this really takes the cake.

Yesterday pushed everything into the ridiculous zone. The huge headline on today's Boston Globe says it all "Piling It On."

I'll say. Let's go to the numbers.

The storm that ended in southern New England dumped 23.1 inches of snow on Boston, whih was the 7th biggest snowstorm on record there.

That's the second storm within two weeks to score in Boston's Top 10 storms. The blizzard on January 26 and 27 was Boston's sixth biggest, with 24.6 inches.

There was also 37 inches of snow on the ground in Boston yesterday, after it settled and compacted. That's the most on the ground on record there.

So far, 40.1 inches of snow has fallen on Boston in February. If only 5.3 more inches of snow falls there this month, it'll be the snowest on record. The chances of that happening are excellent.

Until now the record in Boston for the most snow in a 30 day stretch was 58.8 inches, during the period ending on February 7 1978, the tail end of the Great Blizzard of 1978.

The new record now set is 71 inches. But that's only in the past 17 days. There's nearly two weeks to go and more snow is forecast for Boston. Yep, more snow.

GRIM FORECAST

Front page of today's
Boston  Globe.  

This next one looks really nasty. It's a little soon to tell, but present indications are the next storm won't be nearly as deep as yesterday's or the January blizzard.  Even if the snow amounts are uncertain with the next storm, it will be very windy and very cold during the next storm.

The pattern with the expected Thursday and Friday storm is similar to many of the others. An energetic Alberta clipper type storm is now in the upper Midwest, causing a mess of snow, sleet, freezing rain and wind in parts of the Dakotas and Minnesota.

The Clipper will come across the Great Lakes, across New York and into northern and western New England.

In those places, towns like Houghton, Michigan, Watertown, New York  and Burlington, Vermont, that Clipper will dump perhaps one to as much as five inches of snow. No big deal, especially since in those areas, the snow on the ground is fairly robust, but not ridiculously deep.

Then, here we go again, the Alberta Clipper will transfer to and off the coast and blow up into a massive storm.

Though it's almost certain several inches of snow will fall on eastern Massachusetts, it's not clear yet if by several inches, I mean five inches or 20 inches. It's a little unclear how far off the coast this thing will blow up.

What is more certain is the wind. Since the storm will really crank up explosively off the coast it'll generate strong north to northeast winds. That's dangerous in two major respects: With several feet of powdery snow on the ground already, the blowing and drifting will be horrendous. I wouldn't be surprised if drifts are 10 feet tall or more once this storm's done.

Nobody's leaving via this Boston
basement door anytime soon.
Photo from Christopher Fielding, via Twitter.  

The other danger applies to all of New England, and much of the Northeast for that matter. The north winds will be accompanied by an Arctic blast which will plunge temperatures below zero. So being outside could get very dicey.

It gets worse. Another disturbance will dive almost due southward from the North Pole into New England Sunday. That'll make the cold even worse, driving temperatures into the teens and 20s below zero in parts of northern New England.

This disturbance will - you guessed it! -- blow up just off the coast into a monsterous huge storm. Again, it's too soon to tell if this Sunday episode will develop into an eastern New England blizzard or just light snow.

Either way, winds will gust past 30 mph well inland in New York and Vermont with this feature and even stronger in eastern New England. With temperatures far below zero, this will be one of the most dangerous bouts of wind chills we've had in years.

A for instance: It the temperature is minus 10 and the wind is blowing at 25 mph, the wind chill is 37 below. Such conditions have a strong chance of happening on Sunday.

This second cold wave on Sunday will dive south all the way to Florida, so we might start hearing about frozen oranges and other crops in Florida by early next week.

There's a Jeep in there, I think, Hingham, Mass.  

DANGER AND EXPENSE:

Beyond the expense and severe inconvenience of all that snow lying around, things are getting dangerous.

The weight of the snow is beginning to collapse roofs, and if more snow comes, as predicted, that problem will get worse.

Roofs are starting to cave in under the weight of all that snow. The National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass this morning reported several snow-related structural failures. The roof of a building in Rockport, Mass called the "Piano Mill" collapsed this morning.

Nobody has been hurt by the collapses so far, but I worry about the possibility that a roof could give way on a building with people inside.

Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said the city will have spent double its $18 million budget for snow removal by the end of this week. And winter is far from over.

WARM OCEAN WATER PRIME SUSPECT

One interesting thing I picked up on social media chatter in weather circles over the past few days is the water temperature off the New England coast. The water is much, much warmer than normal.

Here's what noted meteorologist and climate expert Michael Mann Tweeted yesterday:

Mann is saying here that SST's - that's sea surface temperature-  is 21 degrees warmer than normal off of Cape Cod. Temperatures that much warmer than normal has been totally unheard of out there until now.

It stands to reason that a storm encountering this warm water would strengthen faster and more robustly than otherwise.

Plus, whether or not the storm strengthens faster, the warmer water supplies more moisture to a storm system than cooler water would, so precipitation associated with the storm would be heavier with the toasty water.

The very warm water is almost surely a major player in New England's snow blitz this year.

With the storm that ended yesterday, five of Boston's biggest snowstorms have occurred since 2003.

The trend toward bigger Northeast snowstorms is widespread. None of the recent storms in Burlington, Vermont scored in that city's Top 20 biggest (northwestern New England has so far tended to only get the fringe effects of the past month's snow blitz.)

But in records dating back to the 1880s at least, eight of Burlington's 20 biggest snowstorms have occurred since the year 2000.  Statistically, you'd expect only one or at most two of the biggest snowstorms to have occured in the past 15 years. So something's going on.

Air and ocean temperatures along and off the East Coast have generally been increasingly warmer than normal for years now, a symptom of global warming. 

Even as things continue to warm up, winter is not canceled. You still can get sharp cold waves, like New England is getting now, and when these cold waves plunge into or interact with very warm air or water nearby, you get these big storms.

The only way now to stop the snow dump in the New England is weather pattern change, one that does not send nascent storms over that hot water off the coast.

The pattern will indeed change. We just don't yet know exactly when that will happen.

Counterintutive, But, Is New England Extreme Winter Weather Linked To Climate Change?

Dwight Johnson of Worcester, Mass clears
his roof on Friday for the second time this winter in anticipation
of the next big snowstorm now arriving in the region.
Photo by Paul Kapteyn, Worcester Telegram and Gazette.  

New England remains on tap for continued extreme winter weather for at least this week and probably beyond.

As I hint at in the headline, there might be a weird connection to climate change. I'll get to that in a minute.

But first, I'll get into what's going on today and for the next week, since that's the immediate concern.

Forecasts haven't changed a whole lot since yesterday.

Once again, northeastern Massachusetts and the areas around Worcester, Mass are in the bullseye for the deepest snow with the winter storm that is starting in fits and starts but will gain momentum tonight and Monday.

With an Arctic front stalled to the south of New England, and relatively modest storm systems rippling along the front, the snow will just keep on going. The most substantial of the storms will come along tonight and Monday, hence the heaviest snows in southern New England.

With strong east winds coming off the ocean north of the storm and the front in Massachusetts, the snow will really come down near and just north of Boston, and on toward Worcester. Those areas are the ones that really seem to keep getting the most snow in this persistent, very weird weather pattern.

The National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. near Boston is referring to that blast of wet, cold east wind as a "moist, cold conveyor belt.... which will serve as a fire hose transporting copious moisture into the cold airmass over southern New England."

That's why the expect to get so much snow.

 There's about two feet of snow on the ground, locally more in the area due to get the heaviest snow. (They've had five feet or more of accumulation since the third week of January, but snow tends to settle.)

The snow banks are huge, and I have no idea where they're going to put the snow.

In the Capitol District around Albany, N.Y and much of eastern New York for that matter, the winter storm warning calls for generally 9 to 18 inches of new snow by Monday night.

The southern halves of Vermont and New Hampshire will get into the act with the heavy snow, with ten to fourteen additional inches forecast through Tuesday morning.

When I say "heavy snow" I don't mean it will snow super hard. The storm is just lasting a long time, so light to moderate snow going on for more than 48 hours will really pile up.

Areas closer to the Canadian border in New York, Vermont and New Hampshire are still expecting maybe six to ten inches of additional snow.

Areas of Maine hardest hit by the recent snows will fare OK with this one. They're expected three to six inches of snow.

ANOTHER STORM?

We're still looking at another storm that would dive down from Canada midweek. Like many of the past storms, this one has the potential to blow up into something pretty big along the coast, which could dump a LOT more snow on eastern New England.

Oh, boy, I bet they're excited around Boston!

There's still a lot of questions as to whether that storm will get big and snowy, or whether New England will get a reprieve of sorts and only get light snow.

There's more certainty that behind that storm, perhaps the coldest air of the year, and perhaps the coldest air in decades could plunge into New England

Some runs of the American computer forecasting models are ridiculous, hinting at temperatures in the upper 20s to low 50s (not a typo) below zero in northern New England and teens and 20s below in southern New England

Before you start panicking the American model always overdoes cold waves this far in advance, so it won't be nearly as bad as they're suggesting.

But, there's a chance thing could be brutal over Valentines weekend, rivaling epic, historic cold waves in 1994 and 1979. Make plans now to cuddle up with your lover. Or get a lover --FAST!

If predictions pans out, it would mean lows in the 25 to 40 below range in much of northern New England, and single number and teens below zero in southern New England. High tempertures wouldn't get above zero in much of the region in this scenario.

Just for comparison's sake, the all time record low for any winter day is 18 below in Boston, Mass., 26 below in Hartford, Ct., 17 below in Providence, Rhode Island, 24 below in Worcester, Mass, and 30 below in Burlington, Vermont.

The coldest readings on record in New England are -50 at Big Black River Maine on Jan. 16, 2009, and another -50 at Bloomfield, Vermont on Dec. 30, 1933.

I don't think it will get that cold in any of these places this coming weekend, but it could get within a few degrees of those readings. Plus, sometimes all the computer models back down as we get closer to the event, and we just end up with frigid air, but not record breaking readings. We'll just have to wait and see.

This incredible weather pattern that has been in place since late January and will continue for most of February. I would rate it as unprecedented in southern New England, and extreme, but maybe not unprecedented in northern New England.

COUNTERINTUTIVE, BUT CLIMATE CHANGE CONTRIBUTING TO WINTER BLITZ? 

I know, Duh!. Extremes snows and record cold doesn't exactly make you think you're in the throes of global warming, but hear me out.

There have always been extreme weather events, of course. Records are made to be broken.  But the frequency of previously unheard of storms and temperature extremes does make us think about climate change

Is climate change making the jet stream contort into
big ridges and dips, like shown here? If so, extreme weather,
like the current New England winter blitz,
big storms and big heat waves might be increasing.  

I've mentioned this before, but climate scientists, digging into the gory details of climate change, have noted that the jet stream has tended more and more to develop bigger ridges poking way to the north, and bigger dips diving way to the south. And these patterns seem to be getting "stuck" in place more often.

Extreme jet stream bulges to the north cause record warmth, and extreme dips to the south cause record cold, even if the world overall is gradually warming.

And if the jet stream gets stuck in place, storms take the same path over and over again, hitting the same spots, causing record rainfall and snowfall.

New England has been the victim of recent weeks of an extreme southward dip in the jet stream that has become stuck, which is why the snowstorms keep targeting New England, areas near Boston in particular.

There's been an unusually flurry of stuck weather patterns, stuck jet streams in recent years. The California drought, which has dragged on for three years now (and is only getting partial relief from heavy rains this weekend) is the child of what has become known as the "ridiculously resilient ridge" that has more less stayed put over the West Coast for three years.

Super Storm Sandy came ashore in New Jersey with its devastation in 2012 due to an extremely odd and serpentine jet stream configuration that sent the storm smahing into the East Coast instead of roaring harmlessly northeastward into the open Atlantic, which is normally what happens.

Given how we're shivering, a lot of us might not remember the incredible heat wave of March, 2012, where dozens of cities in the Midwest, East Coast and southeastern Canada had all time high readings for March in the 80s over the course of a week due to an incredibly large northward bulge in the jet stream.

I want to caution that the "global warming is screwing with the jet stream" theory is intriguing, but not yet proven.  The science is settled on the fact global warming is occurring, but not totally settled yet on what effect the warming might be having on the jet stream and weather patterns.

Plus, there are always natural phenomenon at play which also periodically affect weather patterns. These natural cycles also influence extreme weather events and storms.

Of course, few winter weary New Englanders are worried about the jet stream at this particular moment. Who can blame them? The immediate crisis is just finding a place to put all this snow as they struggle to remove it from their driveways.

Three Days Of Summer Snow Make A Mess Of Calgary

Workers try to remove snow from a Calgary golf course
in anticipation of a golf tournament this weekend. Photo by
Stuart Dryden, Calgary Sun.  

It's been snowing for three days now in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and as you can imagine, it's really taking a toll.

The big problem is the trees haven't begun to lose their leaves yet, since it's still technically summer. The snow is piling up on the leaves, weighing down the trees and they're breaking left and right. 

Then you have the tableau of snow covered boats still docked at the lakes. (Again, still summer!)

Plus you get the usual litany of slippery roads, car accidents, slips and falls on icy sidewalks and events being canceled.

 They're even trying to clear snow off a golf course so they can play the Spruce Meadows Masters Tournament in Calgary this coming weekend.

According to the Weather Channel, Calgary had 4.6 inches of snow Monday and another half inch today.

This photo wasn't taken last winter.
It's this week, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  

Believe it or not, that's not a record early season snowfall. The earliest four inch snowfall on record in Calgary was on September 6, 1972,  says the Weather Channel.

On August 25-26, 1900 the city had a two-day total snowfall of around four inches. And a dusting of snow covered the Calgary ground on July 23, 1918, adds the Weather Channel.

The cold air causing the snow is heading across the international border into the United States, so the states will get some snow as well.

There's a winter storm warning for higher elevations of Montana, and even somewhat lower elevation cities like Great Falls might pick up a couple inches tonight.

There's also a winter weather advisory for tonight and tomorrow in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where they might get three to six inches of snow.

Yikes!!

Everybody has an opinion. Someone leaves
their thoughts on this week's snow in Calgary.  

The cold will spread south and east across the Great Lakes, Plains, Ohio Valley and East Coast over the the next few days.

None of these places will get snow, but frosts and freezes are possible in some of these areas.  

Meanwhile, the the great relief of people in Calgary, winter hasn't permanently settled in. Environment Canada forecasts a high of 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) on Saturday, 63 on Sunday and 75 next Monday.

Meanwhile, here's a chilling video of a guy's drive around Calgary during the snow. The trees don't look so good.

Watch A Flash Flood Roar Into Traffic On An Arizona Interstate Today

In a still from ABC 15 in Phoenix, flash flood water
cascades into traffic on Interstate 17 north of Phoenix.  

Incredible flash floods are hitting Arizona today, another salvo in what I'm calling the Year of the Flash Flood

Arizona has flash floods during the late summer rainy season every year, and this year the state has had more than usual.

But today's flooding is way beyond what they normally experience. I'm sure some rainfall records were set in parts of the state.  

The United States as a whole has not been particularly wet this summer, but it seems almost every single day, there's an extreme rain storm, and big time flash flooding.

Other flood alerts and warnings have been issued today for parts of Nevada, Utah and Michigan.

But it was Arizona that really got it.

Today, up to eight inches of rain has fallen in some towns in Arizona. There have been dramatic helicopter rescues from homes and cars caught in the sudden, unprecedented flooding.

News helicopters showed one couple being rescued from a house in the middle of a raging torrent. It looked like the house was THIS CLOSE to washing away.

Arguably the most spectacular incident in the Arizona flooding so far today looked like something out of  a cheesy Hollywood disaster movie.

The storms are still ongoing in Arizona, so more destructive floods will continue into this evening, I'm sure.

In the video below from ABC 15 in Phoenix, we have a rush of water hitting traffic on Interstate 17 north of Phoenix. The quality of the video isn't the best, but it is still out of this world amazing. Fast forward to just after the one minute mark to see:




Here's what it looked like from inside one of the cars on Interstate 17. The dark storm clouds in the background probably made people think, with good reason, it was going to get a lot worse.

Watch:

Tornado Outbreak Ends; Transitions To Incredible, Extreme Flood

The big tornado outbreak that killed 35 people in the United States since Sunday is winding down, though there might be a few more twisters in the Southeast today.

Downtown Pensacola, Fla. flooding last night, via @pnj on Twitter.
Add caption

That's the good news.

The very bad news is the storm has transitioned into one that has caused extreme flooding along the Gulf Coast.

Incredibly, 23 inches of rain has fallen on Pensacola, Florida in just over 24 hours. (That amount of rain is what we'd normally expect over eight months here where I sit in Vermont.)

Water up to the doorknob inside
a Pensacola, Fla. home last night.  

At one point, 5.24 inches of rain came down in just 45 minutes. Large swaths of the Gulf Coast have gotten 10 to 25 inches of rain since yesterday. As you can imagine, the flooding is incredible.  

Downtown Pensacola and Mobile, Alabama are flooded, there were many, many water rescues. Traffic jams extended for 16 miles on flooded Interstate 10, the major east-west corridor in that neck of the woods.    

It was still pouring on the Gulf Coast as dawn broke this morning.  Lightning has been incredible, too. We don't have a full accounting of rainfall in Pensacola because lightning hit the National Weather Service station.

At one point in the southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, there were 9000 lightning strikes in 15 minutes last night.

The flooding is likely to extend up the East Coast today as the very wet feed of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico rides north.

The inside of a flooded home
in Pensacola, Fla. last night.  

While nobody in the Mid-Atlantic states to New England will get 20 inches of rain, several inches seems likely in several spots.

Flood watches extend from Georgia to New York and southern New England.

Funny, practically the only place that's getting off without much trouble in the eastern half of the nation from this storm is up where I live in Vermont.  At worst, we'll get minor field flooding from the rains over the next couple of days.

And the rain will extend the minor flooding that's going on now along the shores of Lake Champlain.

Somehow, I worry the other shoe will drop for us up here in northern New England at some point.