Wide Ranging Storm Is Cuttng Power From Plains To Northeast

Tornado in Burnsville, Misssissippi Saturday

As expected, it's incredibly windy in some parts of the nation due to an intense storm in the Great Lakes this Sunday morning. Where it isn't windy in the Northeast, it will soon get that way.

Given the huge area this storm is affecting, I'm actually wondering if this will be a billion dollar storm, one that causes at least $1 billion in damage. That amount of damage is a hallmark of a bad storm, for sure.

If this happens, it won't be because there's particularly intense damage in one region. There is pockets of extensive damage in the Mid-South, where flooding has forced a number of people from their houses.

Many roads are still closed, and not every river has crested yet. A landslide in Chattanooga, Tennessee flattened a Subway restaurant, but nobody was hurt. Another Tennessee landslide earlier this week killed a person.

There is also spots with serious damage in the Deep South from Saturday's tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. Mississippi was hit especially hard. Unfortunately, we've had our first tornado death of the year.  A woman in hard-hit  Columbus, Mississippi died when a roof of the building she was in collapsed during the tornado.

Only ten tornado deaths were recorded in the United States during 2018, the lowest number on record. I'm obviously hoping the Mississippi death Saturday is not the beginning of a trend reversal. The peak of the tornado season, after all, doesn't hit until the period April through June.

The threat of more tornadoes with this storm is over. However, there's a huge area of real estate that will have relatively light wind damage - trees and power lines down, some trees down on houses, a few barns unroofed, shingles and siding off homes and businesses - that kind of thing.

I don't remember the last time I've seen such a vast area covered by high wind warnings. The warnings this morning stretched from Wisconsin to New England and south as far as North Carolina.

Most of this area is of course heavily populated. When you add up all the scattered wind damage, that will be a lot of insurance claims.

The power failures will be extensive, too, considering the millions of people who live in the high wind zone. It will be interesting to see by tonight and Monday morning just how many people lose electricity.

VERMONT IMPACTS

Gas station in Illinois damaged by high winds
this weekend. Those strong winds
are heading east, and will affect
the Midwest and Northeast through
Monday 

As expected, there was, and is, mixed precipitation all around the state. It hasn't been particularly heavy, but was certainly enough to screw up the roads. My St. Albans, Vermont driveway, for instance, was a sheet of ice this morning.
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The salt shakers are out, and temperatures were rising above freezing by mid-morning in many areas. By this afternoon, most if not all of Vermont will be above freezing, with scattered light rain showers.

The big story with this storm in Vermont continues to be the wind. There hasn't been many gusts yet but that will change soon.

The first wave of wind won't be the most widespread. While most of the state will be pretty gusty this afternoon, the real blustery zone will be along the western slopes of the Green Mountains as winds come from the southeast.

Gusts along the western slopes will be as high as 55 mph in some spots, enough for a few power failures here and there.

The big storm's cold front will come through this evening, probably with a band of showers. There's even a slight chance of a rumble of thunder with that line of showers. After the front goes by, winds regionwide will really ramp up overnight and continue Monday.  Most of us will have gusts near 50 mph. 

Gusts will approach or even exceed 60 mph in the Adironacks of New York, perhaps the open areas near Lake Champlain in Vermont, and in some of the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains.

As temperatures fall, snow showers will break out and continue into Monday. Accumulations will be minor, with a dusting to as much as three inches in the valleys and two to six inches in the mountains. But with all this wind, even that little bit of snow will blow around an awful lot, making for occasional local white outs on the roads.

Winds will finally die down by Tuesday, but it will be awfully cold for late February, with highs Tuesday and Wednesday 5 to 15 above and lows at least a little below zero.

It's kind of beginning to look like another rinse and repeat of this kind of storm next weekend, but I don't think the winds will be as strong as the one we're contending with today and tomorrow.

Sunday Evening Storm Update: Huge Winds Biggest Threat Later Tonight

Water vapor imagery from the National Weather Service
shows an incredibly dynamic storm taking shape in the East
as of late Sunday afternoon. 

As I'm writing this at around 4:30 p.m Sunday, I hope you're locating your flashlights and re-charging your cell phones and such because it is going to be a very windy and loud late Sunday night and first half of Monday in Vermont and the rest of the Northeast.

This storm that's coming in, originally billed as a flood threat, is turning into more of a damaging wind event for the region.

Flooding is still a good bet, especially in parts of New York, New Jersey, northeastern Pennsylvania and I think parts of New Hampshire and Maine. Already, flood warnings are up for a wide swath of New Jersey, and the heaviest rain is just now reaching that state. They have hours of downpours to go.

The New York City metro area is also very much under the gun for flash flooding overnight.

The wind is going to be the big weather maker with this storm, though. If anything, signals have become stronger and stronger all day that we're in for a big blow. That's here in Vermont and also much of the rest of the Northeast.

So far the wind hasn't been that bad, and has been fitful. But that was expected as the main action will come late tonight and Monday morning. (It'll probably begin sooner than that in southern New England and Long Island.)

Still, it's already beginning. As of late this afternoon, gusts have reached 43 mph in East Berkshire, Wells, and Underhill, Vermont, says the National Weather Service office in Burlington, Vermont. This happened many hours before the conditions become ripe for the strongest winds.

As of 5 p.m. there were already 400 or so Vermont homes and businesses without power, mostly in Addison County. Again, this is many hours before the main event arrives.

While the entire Northeast will have damaging wind gusts and power failures, there are areas in particular where the wind will be especially strong.

Those places will be all coastal locations on Long Island, all of the New England coast, on up into parts of the Maritime provinces of Canada.  Winds in a few of these spots could easily gust past 70 mph. Along the coasts, the strongest winds will come through between roughly 10 p.m. tonight and 4 a.m. Monday, though later up toward Maine.

Other areas under the gun for wind gusts of up to 70 mph or maybe even more are along the western slopes of the Green Mountains in Vermont, parts of the northern Adirondacks, and downslope wind zones in parts of Vermonts's Northeast Kingdom and northwestern New Hampshire.

Here in Vermont, if you live in towns like Bakersfield, Jericho, Underhill, Cambridge, Huntington, Richmond, Bristol, and communities just east of Rutland will probably be especially hard hit.

The dynamics of this storm are so strong that we'll have to watch late tonight and tomorrow morning for some of these west slope of the Green Mountains winds to extend further west, with possible gusts to 60 mph in the more populated communities of Rutland City and Town, Middlebury, the Burlington metro area and St. Albans City and Town. No guarantees the wind gusts will get that strong there, but it's something to watch.

No matter what, the wind will howl, and this will be a bigger blow than our standard type of windy storm.

A band of heavy rain will probably precede the strongest winds. A punch of drier air looks like it's going to wrap into the storm system late tonight and early Monday. That would make it a little easier for screaming strong winds a few thousand feet above us to mix down to where we live in the form of sporadic strong gusts.

It also looks like a cold front of sorts will form Monday morning and pass through the Champlain Valley with more strong to damaging and shifting winds

Power failures and tree damage in the hardest hit areas of Vermont and other parts of the Northeast will probably be pretty extensive, and I wouldn't be surprised if some areas have no electricity for one, two, possibly even three days. (Though I think most places will get power back within hours, or less than a day.)

Vermont Emergency Management put out a helpful checklist of things to do this evening before the storm, and during it.

Among them:

1. If you haven't put aware or secured outdoor objects like lawn furniture and Halloween decorations, do it now, before the wind really gets cranking.

2. Have headlamps, flashlights and LED and battery operated candles ready to go and easy to find in the dark. If the power goes out, it will probably be while it's dark. Don't use regular flame candles. They could cause fires. And as I said, charge up those electronic devices.

3. Be ready for a rough morning commute. If you can, avoid driving while the wind is strongest, as it's harder to control your car in wind gusts, and trees and branches and power lines might be falling on roads. Be prepared for fallen trees on roads. And don't drive over fallen power lines. That's dangerous. Also, watch out for flooded roads.

4. If you use a generator, make sure it's running well away from the house, and certainly not in it. If you do, you could easily die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

It will remain gusty all during the day Monday, but you'll start to notice the strongest winds dying down a bit in the afternoon and evening. The strongest winds for most of us will come out of the south and east overnight and tomorrow morning, then shift to westerly. The strongest winds in much of northern New York will happen once the wind shifts to the west on Monday.

There Could Be An Incredibly Bad Storm In The Pacific Northwest This Evening

A steeple on Campbell Hall at the Oregon College of Education
in Monmouth blows down amid hurricane force
 winds during the famous Columbus Day storm of 1962.
There's a chance of a similar storm in the Pacific
Northwest this weekend. 

The Pacific Northwest is used to big rainy, windy storms roaring in off the Pacific Ocean.

But there's a risk that a storm this weekend could be one for the record books. It all depends on where the storm goes.

The region is off to a start today, with one strong storm coming in. High wind warnings are up for much of Washington and Oregon, and several inches of rain could fall with this one. Some flooding is possible.

While today's storm is really big, especially for this early in the season, it's not a record breaker. There will be power failures and local flooding, but they'll get over it.

On Saturday, there's a risk of a much, MUCH bigger storm, powered by the remnants of Typhoon Songda.

The National Weather  Service in Seattle says there's roughly a one in three chance this Saturday storm will be extreme in Washington and Oregon.

If it plows onshore in Washington, expect a historic storm something like the Columbus Day Storm of 1962, which was spawned by similar weather conditions as those now over the Pacific, notes the Seattle Times.

In 1962, a storm powered by the remains of Typhoon Freda slammed into the Pacific Northwest, killing 46 people and causing extreme wind damage. Winds during that storm gusted to an estimated 150 mph in spots, or even 180 mph at the coast, but it's hard to know since so many wind measuring sites were damagted.

There's a good video summary of the 1962 storm, with some dramatic footage, at the bottom of this post.

Of course, the National Weather Service in Seattle, thankfully says there's a better chance, maybe two in three, that the storm will curve northward, way off shore.

That would mean the Northwest has a very stormy, windy weekend with some power failures and flooding, but again, it would be something they're used to. Still, some computer models are unloading one to two feet of rain on coastal Pacific Northwest, and up to seven inches of rain in Idaho.

You can see why they're worried about flooding.

Parts of British Columbia, Canada are under the gun with this stormy weather, too.

Here's that video of the 1962 storm:

Damaging Big Winds, Rain, Ugly Day in New England Today

Damage to a farm during a downslope windstorm
along the westenr slopes of Vermont's Green Mountains
in December, 2010.

Today's a GREAT day to stay inside and watch television in Vermont and the rest of New England, along with much of New York State.

That's assuming the power stays on.

A strengthening storm is moving up through the Great Lakes today. It's the same one that was partially responsible for a tornado last night that injured three people in Cape Coral, Florida.

This strong storm has a lot of screaming winds with it just a few thousand feet above the Earth's surface, and certain conditions will make some of this strong wind mix down to where people live, at least in some parts of New England.

One target area is the western slopes of the Green Mountains.

In today's sort of set up, there's going to be a strong east wind that will go up and over the Green Mountain range. Think of water in a brook going up and over a submerged rock and you can sort of get the picture of how the wind is behaving.

Often, a layer of colder air jus below the mountain summits might temporarily block the flow of air that wants to go up and over the mountains, then down the western slopes of the Green Mountains.

The air piles up and becomes pressurized, as if we built a dam just downstream from that rock in the brook.

After a while, the air behind that dam breaks through it, and roars down the western slopes of the Green Mountains. Which is why you get the bursts of strong, damaging gusts along those western slopes. It's like the rush of water you get if the brook bursts through that dam you built.

In the worst cases, I've seen these western slope gusts reach 90 mph or even a little more.

That's why Green Mountain Power is taking no chances. They've got trucks and people deployed and ready to go, because they're expecting power failures.  You can see some of what these western slope wind storms can do in Vermont in the video at the bottom of this post.

Winds late this morning and this afternoon could gust as high as 65 or 70 mph in a few spots along the immediate western slopes of the Green Mountains from Cambridge/Underhill Vermont all the way down into Rutland County around Mendon, Shrewsbury and that area. Even areas east and northeast of Bennington could get in on the action.

The western slopes of the Adirondacks could also get strong winds today as well, and a high wind warning is posted there.

In Massachusetts, high wind warnings are up for much of Cape Cod, the Islands, and Cape Ann. There will be a fairly brief period this afternoon of winds gusting past 60 mph there.  This is especially true as a cold front approaches.

There might be a few embedded thunderstorms, or at least towering shower clouds. These, too, could "grab" high level winds and bring them down to the surface.

Downeast Maine could also see some strong, damaging winds this afternoon and evening.

Coastal flood advisories and warnings are also up along Long Island and the New Jersey shore, too.

The rest of New England and New York will probably be fairly windy as well, with gusts in many areas in the 40 to 50 mph range.

There's going to be quite a bit of rain, too. Bad news for the ski industry, as the rain will fall even on mountain summits.

In fact, there's a flood watch out for much of New Hampshire and parts of western Maine because the one to two inches of rain, combined with melting snow could lead to some flood problems.

In the rest of New England and New York, there might well be some trouble with water ponding on roads, flooding in poor drainage areas, that type of thing.

During this brief burst of warm weather during the storm, a few towns and cities in New England could see some record high temperatures for the date.

Winter comes back tomorrow, and unlike the brief visit last week, it's going to stick around for awhile.

I don't see signs of extreme cold or extreme snows in the next week, but Northeast ski areas will recover from today's rain through almost daily periods of snow and good weather for snowmaking

In additon, the lake effect snow machine is going to get cranking, and some of the traditional western New York snow belts are about to get clobbered. Up to two feet of snow might fall under the more persistent squalls.

Here's that video of what one of those Vermont western slope wind storms look like. This one was in Williston, back in December, 2010.



At best, these western slope wind storms can just be loud and unpleasant, as shown in this video I took in Underhill, Vermont, December, 2012: