Wintry Blast Heading To New England; Southern Tornadoes

Daffodil blooming in my St. Albans, Vermont this morning.
Let's hope this little fella survives temperatures in the low to
mid 20s Wednesday night! 

As expected tornadoes and severe weather rocked the South yesterday, though thankfully this one wasn't as bad as the outbreak a week earlier.

There were several tornadoes, and reports of one particularly large, strong one in Mississippi.

It appears that tornado mostly went through rural and pretty unpopulated areas, so not too many houses got wrecked this time. And thankfully, so far, no deaths have been reported.

It looks like there will be one more threat of some severe weather in the South, midweek, and then there will be a brief break lasting several days, in which there will be relatively few reports of severe weather and tornadoes.  At least that's the way it looks at the moment.

Up here in Vermont, we don't expect anything dramatic like tornadoes, of course. But after an early spring, winter still wants to regain control.  Watch out for wind gusts, and then a hard freeze.

We have another system coming in similar to what we've seen a few times this month already: A very dynamic, energetic disturbance will come in from the west and northwest.  Like the previous systems, recipitation amounts won't be overwhelming at all. Still,  you'll notice the weather on Tuesday.

Out ahead of the storm's strong cold front, gusty south winds will blow Tuesday morning, especiall in the Champlain Valley, where winds could go over 40 mph at times.

Crocuses like these blooming in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens
look fragile, but they're pretty tough. We'll see how well they do in
a really hard freeze expected Wednesday night. 

A band of showers, and maybe some thunderstorms will accompany the cold front, which at this point  looks like it will enter western Vermont in the early afternoon and then sweep east.

The front might be energetic enough to set off a few thunderstorms, especially in southern Vermont.  NOAA's Storm Prediction  Center has much of the Northeast in a marginal risk zone for severe thunderstorms and that zone extends into the southern half of Vermont.

There might be a few isolated thunderstorms that manage to create damaging wind gusts. In Vermont, if this happens at all, the damaging gusts will be few and far between.

The real story will be the intense cold behind the cold front, at least by April standards. After snow showers dust a few areas Tuesday night, high temperatures Wednesday will stay in the 30s in many northern areas, with a stiff northwest wind. The Champlain Valley and southern Vermont could squeak into the low 40s, but that's a far cry from the mid and upper 50s that are normal for this time of year.

Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to lose some of the early blooms that are out there right now.  Temperatures Wednesday night will bottom out between 15 and 25 degrees, with the teens up in the mountains and colder hollows.

Early flowers like daffodils and crocuses are pretty tough, but early varieties that are blooming now might not fare that well in that level of cold.  The plants themselves will be fine, but the some of the blooming daffodils and other flowers could wilt and die in those temperatures.

It depends upon how hardy yours are, but the prospect of even losing a few is a bit depressing.

Temperatures will kind of, sort of warm up later in the week and into the weekend, but still remain below normal, unfortunately.

Desperation In Vermont Garden As Winter Sets In

My attemps at fall cleanup and digging away rocks
and clay for a new perennial bed carried on yesterday
in St. Albans, Vermont despite snow and a
temperature of about 30 degrees. 

Winter always arrives despite the fact that nobody is ever really ready for it.

Yesterday was a case in point as I struggled to work on my St. Albans, Vermont gardens and property.   Autumn yard projects are never truly done. We gardeners always want to do more before winter really sets in.

The forecast for Sunday around my place was for partly to mostly cloudy skies, with temperatures in the mid-30s. No mention of precipitation.

Not exactly gorgeous, but nice enough to get some raking done, as long as I dressed fairly warmly.

As late morning progressed, the sky grew darker. I stepped outside to get to work. Was that a snowflake?

Yep. It ended up snowing all afternoon. Not heavily, but constantly. It started accumulating.

So much for the raking. But I soldiered on, putting up fencing around some evergreens to keep the winter deer away, and cleaning up the autumn debris that had accumulated especially heavy near the cedars and pines.   I ended up raking a combination of leaves and snow in a tarp to be carted away

The ground wasn't yet frozen, so I  turned to digging up some rocky, clay soil to make room for eventual perennial beds.  As I worked, the temperature dropped, and the soil started to freeze, sticking to the shovel, clinging in clumps. That idea stopped working.

Especially since there was now about a half inch of snow on the ground.

So I started hauling the debris from the trees we cut down to the burn pile. As I did that, I heard a sickening crunch on the road just below my house. The hill had iced up. A pickup truck spun out and hit the guardrail. I went down and checked on the driver. She was OK. She'd already called the police, so I went back to work.

This is Vermont, after all. Light snow and a late afternoon temperature of 30 degrees is perfectly normal weather for the end of November. With lakes still ice-free and the ground largely unfrozen, it doesn't take much for the early winter atmosphere to take up moisture and release it as snow.  Often unexpectedly.

In this case, all it took was a very weak cold front sinking south from Canada. The snowflakes flew down from the gray November overcast. The cold front gave Burlington, Vermont its first measurable snow of the season. A paltry 0.2 inches.

Often by now, the ground is frozen hard. We should  have had several inches of snow, at least by now. It's been mild.

We've been blessed by a November that will be among the warmest on record in Vermont. Precipitation is well below normal. I, ,and my fellow Vermonters, should have had oodles of time to get our fall chores done.

This autumn, I did manage to do everything that HAS to get done. The garlic, roses and sensitive flowers are safely mulched. The raised beds are cleaned up. More daffodil and hyacinth bulbs have been planted. The perennial beds are cut back and neatened up. The most visible parts of my property are raked and tidied, thanks to that unexpectedly pleasant November.

But you always want to get more done before winter shuts you down. Which explains why I was out there, in the falling snow and the gathering afternoon darkness, trying to get more done. You might think I was crazy, but I think a lot of us do such things.

Yard work is one way to imagine we are fending off the inevitable winter.

New Study Backs Others: Growing Season Lengthening In The United States

It's well into October and the rose bush in front of my house has suddenly decided to put out a whole bunch of beautiful blooms.

A rose blooms in my St. Albans garden last weekend.
The growing season is lengthening allowing spectacles
like this October bloom.  

Foliage season in Vermont this year has been augmented by lush green grass in the fields, flowering gardens, and people still happily harvesting vegetables from their  back yards.

While much of Vermont has had some frost this autumn, some areas, particularly the Champlain Valley, hasn't had a freeze yet.

That's in keeping with a new federal Environmental Protection Agency study that says the growing season in the United States has, on average, lengthened by about two weeks in the past century.

That's one more piece of evidence that the planet is warming.

Another study released last winter from Plos One said flowers are blooming earlier and earlier in the spring.

For some reason, the growing season in the West is getting longer faster. There, its gone up by 22 days in the past century. Here in the East, we get about eight extra days of gardening per year.

The median date for a first freeze of the season in Burlington is October 7. This year, Burlington hasn't had a freeze yet, and none is in the forecast for the next few days.

The studies that show a longer growing season doesn't mean we won't have occasional late frosts in the spring or early frosts in the fall. It just means the trend line is we get to enjoy our gardens for longer periods of time each  year.

A couple spectacular blooms on my rose bush are fading after putting on a show this past weekend. But two more blooms are ready to pop. It's supposed to be mild over the next couple of days, so my roses will give me more late season joy it looks like.

Bottom line: Global warming is bad, but there are a few silver linings that come with it. Or in my case, white roses.