Vermont Air: A Hazy Shade Of Winter Indeed

Hazy shade of winter indeed. A temperature inversion gave us this
murky view of St. Albans, Vermont Saturday. The bluish
greyish tint to the fog suggests some pollution mixed in. 

Saturday in Vermont, the atmosphere had an interesting look to it.  It wasn't necessarily a healthy look, either.

It was murky and foggy, but the fog had a blue and gray slate colored tint to it. It's as if somebody added a bit of steel blue food coloring to the atmosphere. The atmosphere totally had me humming   that old song, "Hazy Shade of Winter," that old Simon and Garfunkle song released in 1966. You might remember it as the 1980s version by the Bangles.

Anyway, the hazy, foggy air was a sign there has been a bit of air pollution in this weekend's murk.

By this morning, air quality in the Champlain Valley had become unhealthy for sensitive groups, according to data from the Vermont Department of Enviromental Conservation. That means people like the elderly, patients with heart and lung problems, and that type of thing should probably avoid prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors.  

This relatively bad air also covered a large portion of Quebec, including the Montreal metro area as of Sunday morning.

Elsewhere, through most of Vermont, western and southern New England and New York, the air quality was "moderate."  That means it's not necessarily unhealthy, but it's not super great, either. The situation has not gotten bad enough for anyone to issue any air quality alerts.

The wind has been pretty calm over the past few days, which is uncharacteristically of winter, Under these conditions, inversions find it easy to form, and that's what we've had on our hands for the past few days.

A regional air quality map from Sunday morning. Orange shading is
air that's unhealthy for senstive people. Yellow is not hazardous, really,
but there is some pollution in the air. . 

Inversions are when there's a layer of warmer air above the surface, with somewhat chillier air near the ground.  That layer acts as a lid, trapping clouds, moisture and pollution near the surface. We've had this type of weather pattern in Vermont often this winter.  More so than usual.

The inversion began when the air was more clear late last week.  Now, it's dank and cloudy and foggy and hazy.  Occasionally, the sun might poke through, but it will remain hazy.

Most of this stuff in the atmosphere is just harmless moisture trapped under the inversion. But as noted, there's a bit of pollution mixed in, mostly particulates. These are teeny, tiny particles and bits come from the exhaust of cars, trucks, wood and pellet stoves and whatever else people are burning out there.

Under extreme conditions, these wintertime inversions can get very dangerous in terms of pollution, though I want to very strongly emphasize this sort of meh air over Vermont now is not and will NOT become especially dangerous.

But there have been instances, especially in the days before the 1963 federal Clean Air Act when air pollution was far worse.

For instance, in the autumn of 1948, an inversion formed over Donora, Pennsylvania.  Emissions from a huge steel mill in the area causd a choking smog in Donora that killed 19 people and sickened hundreds, if not thousands.

Luckily, there's no threat of that happening.  See, environmental laws DO make a difference!

It looks as if it will remain murky in and around Vermont through Monday, and maybe into Tuesday.  I don't think the relatively limited amount of pollution will get worse, as the air is at least stirring some, and bouts of light precipitation falling through this air gunk can help.

By Wednesday, the wind will pick up a bit, and the air coming into northern New England will have originated from the rather pristine environment around James Bay, Canada. Storminess later in the week will help ensure the air quality remains good, as the winds and precipitation from storms disperses accumulated yuckiness in the air.

"On One Foggy Christmas Eve...."

Dense fog in Yankton, South Dakota this morning. 

I've seen all kinds of weather on Christmas Eve and Christmas.  Snow, cold, wind, clouds, rain, sleet, freezing rain, you name it.

Sometimes there's been a little patchy fog, like when it's raining.  But this time of year, there's usually not much in the way of dense fog. It's most common on still summer and autumn mornings, especially during periods of wet weather.

It's usually too windy and too brisk for much fog to form around Christmas. Which made the song "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" confuse me when I was a kid. (It can certainly be foggy often in other parts of the world this time of year, but I didn't think about that).

Anyway, I felt an element of surprise Christmas Eve and this morning while on my visit with relatives in Yankton, South Dakota over the dense fog that has enveloped the area this morning.

The fog was widespread over the northern Plains, parts of the Great Lakes and elsewhere this morning. Some of it is freezing fog, which is making trees beautiful and frosty, but slickening roads. Here in Yankton, it was a tad above freezing, so there's no ice out there. But it was still tricky on the roads, as visibility was lousy.

Still, based on evidence found under Christmas trees throughout Yankton, it looks like Santa did manage to break through the fog with the help of Rudolph and successfully deliver all the presents.

Reports are the fog did not hinder Santa anywhere. Which is to be expected.

As I said, it is an unusual weather pattern for Christmas. One that will break up as more wind and storminess starts to glide across the country, returning us to a more normal weather pattern, relativelly speaking.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Odd Quiet Weather Pattern This Week Producing Fog, Pollution

Aftermath of a pileup on Interstate 64 in Virginia this morning.
Fog lifted after the crash. But dense fog and ice contributed
to this crash. 

The eastern two-thirds of the United States is still oddly quiet in the weather department.

Great for travel, but not so great for air quality. Or the production of fog.

The storminess we usually see this time of year mixes the air. Strong winds dissipate and blow away any emissions we produce and most of the fog that tries to form in moist air.

But high pressure is dominating this week, so the air is relatively still. When high pressure, fair weather systems dominate in the summer, you can get pollution problems too. But the strong sun of summer mixes the air, so that helps dissipate fog and pollution.

Around now, the winter solstice, the sun is weak, of course. So you don't get the updrafts caused by the sun's heating, and the air doesn't mix. In fact, an inversion often forms, in which the air above is warmer than the air at the surface. That locks in the air, not allowing fog and pollution to escape.

That's why it's hazy from the Plains through the Midwest to the East Coast this weekend. I noticed this while flying from Burlington, Vermont to Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Saturday. During a stopover in Chicago, it was actually kind of smoggy.

As my plane took off from O'Hare, you can see a brown smudge enveloping the air over the Windy City, which was anything but windy on Saturday.

Some places are worse than others. There's an air quality alert in southwestern New Hampshire, as air pollution is accumulating in low elevations there.

Elswhere, dense fog advisories were up for large parts of the central Plains this morning. Where I am this morning in Yankton, South Dakota, the sun is out, but you can see haze accumulating in the atmosphere.

Sometimes, this situation can get dangerous. Fog can get thick, and in the winter, the moisture from the fog can ice up bridges and highways. Motorists start sliding on the ice, and can't see each other in the dense fog.

Such was the case early this morning in Virginia. Dense fog and ice contributed to a 45-car pileup on I-64  and many people are injured, according to Virgina State Police.

Weather conditions will slowly begin to get more active on and after Christmas, so the haze and fog will start to decline, only to be replaced by our usual winter hazards of snow and ice, at least in some parts of the country.

Blame Out Of Season Temperature Inversion On Dank Vermont Weather

Spring flowers in my St. Albans, Vermont perennial gardens and bright
flags on my deck try to brighten up a very dreary Thursday
afternoon, but they can only do so much. 

For almost all of us Vermonters, this Thursday morning and afternoon has been an unpleasant exercise in chill, damp, clouds, fog and drizzle.  It's not the type of bright, blossomy May weather we expect, and feel entitled to this time of year.  

Blame it on a temperature inversion. It's warmer a few thousand feet up above us than it is near the surface.

This is the opposite of the usual regime, where it gets progressively colder the more you go up in elevation.

The warm-ish air up above locks us in the thick, chilly moisture and mist, as the atmosphere can't mix. Drier up above can't penetrate the "lid" the temperature inversion forms.

Since the drier air can't work its way down to us, it can't clear the clouds. The sun can't penetrate to warm us up. So, yuck.

These inversions are pretty typical in the late fall and winter. At that time of year, the sun angle is low and the light is weak.  If the sun is able to warm the air near the surface, it starts to rise, poking holes in the inversion up above until it finally breaks apart. In the winter, the sun just doesn't have the strength to pull that off.

The sun angle this time of year is much higher, so inversions are more rare. The sun usually can burst through, offering us a jail break from the gloom. Not today. The inversion is just too strong.

There's a slow moving weather front just to our south. Warmer air is feeding up and over that front and gliding northward, keeping that inversion sustained, despite what the sun wants to do.

South of the front, it's mild. It was 60 degrees at mid-afternoon in Bennington, which is just south of the front. Not super warm for early May, but much better than the March-like foggy 40s in the rest of Vermont.

So far today, the high temperature in Burlington was 45 degrees. That's not far from the coldest high temperature on record for the date, which was 41 degrees in 1953.

The inversion will break up tomorrow as a new, relatively weak storm comes in from the west and southwest. It will be a bit warmer Friday, but the overall weather won't improve much. It'll be in the 50s during the day - still a little chilly for this time of year. And there will be a lot of light rain and showers around.

You won't see the sun, so if you're craving it, you're out of luck.

Until Saturday, that is. By then, a little clearing will at least temporarily work in. The afternoon that day will feature some sun, and temperatures near 60 degrees. That's not too far from normal, so that's good.

With the forecasted sun and comfortable temperatures Saturday, it will be great if you want to participate in Vermont's Green-Up Day. That's when thousands of volunteers go out and clean up roadside trash. You ought to consider joining in.

But the weather pattern will remain active. We might not have more foggy, dank and drizzly inversions like we're having this afternoon, but we will have frequent bouts of clouds and showers for at least the next week or so.

No Escaping Rough Christmastime Weather Across The Nation

Will kids be test driving their new sleds Christmas
morning in our area, like these youngsters? It all depends
upon how a busy weather pattern works itself out between
now and December 25. 

You might have to forgive me in this post, as I will be jumping around between updates on some very changeable weather that will continue for the next week or more here in Vermont, and some Christmastime weather and travel hazards going on across the rest of the nation.

Christmastime is a busy time of year anyway, and Mother Nature is definitely getting into the act. She's going to be very busy and keeping us very busy through Christmast and the end of the year.

Locally in northern New England, the current storm, a weak-ish one, has behaved so far largely as expected. There was a general one to three inch snowfall yesterday afternoon and evening across northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Things were going over to rain showers this morning, though there was still freezing rain (ugh!) in New York's St. Lawrence Valley.

It will be thawish around here today, with light rain showers and mild temperatures, but that won't last long. More on that in a minute. I told you I'd be jumping around.

Across the southern United States, from Texas to Georgia, there's a LOT of fog around. That's not helping with the aftermath of the big power failure Sunday at Atlanta's major hub of an airport. They're trying to clear a backlog of stranded passengers from that event, and the widespread fog is delaying even more flights. Another ugh.

Back to us here in Vermont: The warm, and in some places windy weather today will be replaced by a cold front today that will bring temperatures back a little below normal by Wednesday night. (Temperatures will get below freezing tonight, and either fall or hold steady during the day Wednesday.)

That, and the cold weather predicted for Thursday is just what we told you about in Sunday's post, so again, so far, accurate enough.

The further out you get in a forecast, the less likely it will match reality. We did say there would be another temperature swing by Saturday and it would thaw again. That remains true, but the Friday and Saturday storm will turn out to be messy, just as I has worried about.

Again, this is subject to change, but here's the current scenario. The Friday and Saturday storm is still expected to go by to the west of New England,  putting us on the warm side of the storm. However, the storm will be a little closer to us than first expected, so it won't be quite as warm as we first thought, and it will be harder to scour out the cold air Friday night and early Saturday.

It looks like snow will overspread the area Friday and Friday night, then change to sleet and freezing rain. It will be especially tough for the cold air to retreat from the valleys of eastern Vermont, northern New Hampshire, northwestern Maine and the St. Lawrence Valley of New York, so late Friday and the first half of Saturday at this point look pretty ugly and icy for those regions.

A brief thaw will probably ensue Satuday afternoon and early evening, but instead of temperatures in the 50s, it'll be closer to 40 degrees in most places. Then another cold front comes through, and the weather gets super uncertain for Christmas Eve and especially Christmas Day around here.

A sharp Arctic outbreak is coming into the Northern Plains and Great Lakes area late this week and this weekend. It will initially have trouble pushing east. We don't yet know how much trouble. All we know at this point is there will probably be a sharp contrast east to west across the far eastern part of the United States, including New England.

Chances are, it might be springlike in Boston and Arctic in Burlington, but we don't know for sure yet. Making things more complicated, there will likely be storminess riding up along the East Coast on Christmas Day. We don't know yet how much precipitation there will be, who will get snow, who will get freezing rain, and who will get rain. The potential is high - but not certain - for a messy Christmas Day in Vermont and the rest of the Northeast.

Meanwhile, much of the rest of the nation is not going to catch a break for the days leading up to Christmas, Christmas Day, and the days leading up to New Year's Day.  After the fog clears in the south, areas of heavy rain, localized flash flooding and occasional threats of severe thunderstorms are likely in different parts of the South off and on today through Sunday.

That frigid air mass will keep things Arctic and below zero in parts of the Northern Plains and northern Great Lakes later this week and on Christmas weekend. On the bright side, it won't be the coldest Christmas ever, but it will still be a very Jack Frost type of holiday.

The fire threat in southern California has temporarily diminished, but will likely ramp up dramatically by the weekend, so their wildfire nightmare still isn't over yet.

Escaping to Hawaii? Good luck: The island chain is under a flash flood watch at least through late Wednesday night.

How about Alaska? They've been having what is for them record warmth. It'll stay warm up there for the next week at least, but much of that huge state is covered by a variety of winter weather, winter storm and blizzard warnings and advisories.

By the way, the weather pattern looks extremely active across almost the entire nation from Christmas onward through at least the first few days of 2018. Expect more weather news during your Christmas, and when you ring in the new year.

I Guess The Dubai Crown Prince Is A Weather Geek With His Gorgeous Video

Dubai Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan enjoyed a gorgeous
morning fog recently and shared it with the world via social media.

Dubai Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan shared a video on Instagram earlier this month which has become a viral video on social media.

Glitzy Dubai is normally a dry climate, but sometimes it gets hemmed in by fog.

Prince Hamdan caught one of those mornings recently, when he gave us this beautiful brief video of Dubai's skyscrapes poking up out of the fog.

The fog disrupted a number of flights in and out of Dubai that morning, but the Crown Prince got a great view. Glad he shared it with the world.

Here we go:

Inversions A Wintertime Topsy Turvy Fog And Smog Creator

This visible satellite image taken Sunday morning
and provided by the National Weather Service in
Burlington, Vermont shows low clouds
and fog in the valleys, and clear skies
in the higher elevations. 

Here in Vermont on Sunday, the early morning forecast called for sunny skies during the day with unseasonably warm temperatures.

That forecast proved spot on, especially in higher elevations. Some of the state's valleys, however, stayed foggy, overcast and chilly most of the day.

What happened? It's called a temperature nversion, and they are generally most common this time of year, when the sun angle is low and the days are short.

Normally, the temperature drops as you go up in elevation.  Sometimes, though, there's a layer of warmer air above some chilly air trapped in lower spots, like valleys. The normal elevation temperature regime is inverted. You have an official inversion. Congratulations!

Inversions happen often at night, when cold air drains down into valleys on clear, calm nights. These inversions usually break up quickly in the morning, especially in the warmer times of the year.

That's because the sun comes up, heats the air right near the ground, which starts to rise, which mixes with the warm air above. The atmosphere in these cases sorts itself out, and you go back to the normal circumstances of it getting colder as you get higher up.

This time of year, though, the sun angle is pretty much at its lowest point. The sun isn't able to heat the ground easily, and it's not above the horizon for all that long. Which means it's sometimes too feeble to break the inversion.

That happened in much of the Northeast Sunday, and it was happening again in parts of eastern New England this morning.

For much of Sunday morning, the landscape was shrouded n many areas by dense fog or dense freezing fog.

Freezing fog is merely fog that occurs when the temperature is below freezing. Water droplets that make up the fog stay in liquid form despite the subfreezing tempertures. The droplets stay in liquid form, that is, until they touch something, when the instantly freeze.

The frozen droplets in dense fog cause beautiful rime ice on trees, but also black ice on roadways.  The beauty and the beast, I guess.

On Sunday, mid and high elevations in the Northeast in the warm air above the valley chill  enjoyed a sunny, mild day. The inversion also broke up in some valleys when enough sun broke through to disrupt the inversion.

Other areas stayed firmly in the foggy inversion. Montpelier, Vermont, for instance, had fog or freezing fog pretty much all day Sunday, and the temperature only barely rose above freezing to a high of 34 degrees.

However, Saranac Lake, New York, at a relatively high elevation and normally the coldest reporting station in the North Country, reached a sunny 45 degrees Sunday afternoon.

Another danger from temperature inversions is pollution, especially if the inversion lasts a long time.

I was in Rutland, Vermont on Sunday. The inversion sort of broke for a time, and the fog lifted. But the inversion re-established itself. It was dry enough by then that fog did not re-form.

But with so many people burning wood to heat their homes, and cars driving around and such, you could actually see a layer of brown smog hugging the populated valley floors around Rutland, West Rutland and Proctor.

Believe it or not, considering we're talking about "clean" Vermont, the area around Rutland in particular is prone to air pollution alerts in the winter because that valley is especially likely to get some persistent inversions during the cold season.

Elsewhere in the world, inversions can be more persistent, and last much longer. Salt Lake City, Utah often goes for days and days on end shrouded in fog and smog as inverstions take hold in the Salt Lake Valley.

And the type of dangerous, thick smog that has blanketed Beijing, China recently is also a product of wintertime temperature inversions.  I'm told the smog is back big time in today in Beijing, too.

This kind of thing used to happen in the United States, too. Most famously the industrial town of Denora, Pennsylvania suffered a smog inversion that killed perhaps 20 people and sickened thousands more in the late autumn of 1948.

Here in the Northeast, wintertime inversions usually don't last long. A storm system will come along with a bunch of wind, and the wind mixes up the atmosphere and breaks up the inversion. However, even then, inversions are a risk.

When a storm has a warm front approaching your area in the winter, sometimes onrushing mild air, which is lighter, goes up and over the dense cold air near the surface. The result is dangerous freezing rain.

Calm high pressure is likely to hold over much of the Northeast for at least the first half of this week, so we're likely to see more inversions, more fog or freezing fog, and maybe some smog in spots.

It's one of those cases that if you like sunny, mild weather this time of year, head for the hills.







except in  of the state's all

Cool Images: New England's Fall Colors And Morning Fog From Space

The landscape in this visual satellite photo has turned
orange in southern Quebec and northern New
England. That's fall foliage.  

Two weather satellite images from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Space, Science and Engineering Center pretty much sum up fall in New England just awesomely.

The first fascinating satellite photo in this post is a visible image taken amid the clear skies Saturday.

With no clouds to get in the way, you can see the rust colored hue of the landscape in southern Quebec, New York's Adirondacks, and the northern parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

That orange-ish hue is the autumn foliage, approaching peak in this region. More to the south, you can see things are still mostly green in southern New England.  

Morning fog is seen in the Connecticut River
valley, and in the valleys of central and eastern Vermont.  

The second satellite photo was taken this morning.

You can see river valley fog snaking up through the valleys, especially along the length of the Connecticut River, and in the Winooski and White River valleys of central and eastern Vermont.

Pretty cool vantage points of our beautiful autumn weekend.

Friday Morning Satellite Yielded Beautiful Fog Image

Yesterday morning, visible satellite photos showed clear skies over the Northeast, with fingers of fog extending up the river valleys.

With the clear skies and the rains that hit in the previous days, the cool air in the valleys, the wet ground and the rivers combined to form the fog.

The satellite image made the Northeast look like a block of exquisite, veined black marble. Beautiful.

And, as is usual in cases like this, the fog burned off and created a picture perfect summer day across basically all of the Northeast.

Mild And Murky Vermont, But Winter Lurks

It's turning out to be a mild and murky week here in Vermont. Afternoon temperatures have been sneaking above freezing, there's little wind, a lot of clouds and a fair amount of fog and haze.

A gloomy early December Tuesday afternoon
in my St. Albans, Vermont yard.  

Typical early December dreariness.

If you're bored with the weather though, you can live vicariously through the rough and cold winter weather starting to engulf much of the rest of the nation.

That frigid, snowy, icy and at times dangerous weather will continue to spread across much of the United States, and we here in northern New England should start getting a taste of that by Sunday or Monday.

The cold is going to be focused on the northern Rocky Mountains and northern and central Plains. There are some areas near the Canadian border in Montana and North Dakota that went below zero today, and might not get above zero again until the weekend. Not even during the day.   BRRRR!!!!

It's mild in the east, and such a clash of air masses inevitably stirs up a storm. There's already winter storm warnings in a huge area from Idaho to Wisconsin. That weather will spread south and east. Don't be surprised to hear news of a nasty ice storm in a band from Texas to Kentucky later in the week.

Winter storm watches are already up for Thursday and Friday in Oklahoma and Arkansas for an expected snow, sleet and ice storm.

Other areas of the country are going to get LOTS of snow.

OK, what does that mean for Vermont and surrounding areas? Truth be told, I have no idea. Nobody does. It's too early to tell.

It will start to get cold again this weekend, and some kind of storm is coming along for the Sunday night through Tuesday time frame but I don't know how big it will be or whether it will bring snow, rain, a mix or all of the above.

We'll have to stay tuned until the event draws closer.

Aside from the mild temperatures between now and Friday, though, don't expect a break from wintry, cold weather over the next couple of weeks. It's a chilly weather pattern coast to coast, including in Vermont.

At least we here in northern New England looks like we will be spared the most intense cold.

Fog Is Not Your Friend

Yesterday, I wrote about thick smog in China and elsewhere and noted that's not usually much of a problem in Vermont or surrounding states.

However, Vermont can have a real fog problem.

And fog can be some of the most dangerous weather out there.

The web site Jalopnik, which covers cars and car culture, had a thing on how people  on foggy highways tend to drive too fast, going faster than their ability to see through the gloom.

Here's the video Jalopnik featured of a crash on foggy highway.





If you're not terrified enough by that video, here's another one of a grandmotherly woman saying she can't see in the fog as she speeds along a highway, and can't even figure out how to turn on her lights, which of course distracts her even more.

As you can guess, it doesn't end well.




According to the Federal Highway Administration, fog causes or contributes to about 38,000 road crashes with about 600 deaths each year.

True, that's only 3 percent of all weather related car crashes and 8 percent of all weather related car crash deaths, but that's probably surprising to the many of us who think fog doesn't kill.

But compare the 600 people who die in foggy crashes to the average number of U.S. deaths from floods, In 2011, a particularly bad year for floods, 113 people died in high water, 68 in car-related flood incidents.

An average of 60 people die each year in tornadoes, but that number varies greatly year to year.

So far this year there have been 23 lightning deaths in the United States.

Bottom line: Fog is dangerous. Sometimes.

Vermont has many foggy mornings in the fall. And of course in the winter, heavy snow and whiteouts  cut visibility next to nothing. Plus the snow adds the joy of glare ice to the roads, so it's doubly dangerous.

So if the visibility is low on the highway, do us all a favor. Drive more slowly than you think you need to. Thank you.

Morning Fog Makes Vermont Satellite Image Look Like Beautiful Black Marble

The photo is this post is a visible satellite shot of Vermont and surrounding states early Monday morning.

The spider web pattern makes the image of Vermont look like beautiful, expensive, black marble.

Those little fingers of whitish clouds against the dark background is the fog that forms so frequently in river valleys on calm mornings this time of year.

The fog is most noticeable in the Winooski River , White River and Passumpsic River valleys. I also like how the fog creeps up the valleys containing the tributaries of these rivers.

I've also noticed the fog pattern has been almost identical each of the past few mornings. And as we know, the fog always burns off by mid morning, and today, like the past few, will be gorgeous.

A Sign of Fall Valley Fog

Sunday morning dawned mostly clear and cool in Vermont and other places in the northeastern United States.

Fog in Burlington last March
Morning fog is actually most
common in late summer and fall.  

Some valleys, especially near rivers or other bodies of water, were socked in with fog, however.

The fog would burn off by midmorning in all places, so the rest of today is going to be nice.

The areas of fog are one sign of autumn.

The ground and the water have been soaking up the summer heat for months now. Nights are starting to get a little cooler as we approach autumn.

The cool nighttime air comes in contact with the warm, moist ground. The moisture combined with the cool air condenses, and you get fog in the valleys.

This morning fog will now be quite common in the calm of many early mornings now into October.

On the bright side, if you wake up to dense fog, chances are the day will be gorgeous.  The morning fog, which always burns off as the sun gets higher in the sky,  usually comes when there is a high pressure system nearby or overhead. And high pressure usually brings sunny weather.