That Lake Effect Snow Band Was Wild, Even In Vermont

In this photo taken a little after sunset near Georgia, Vermont looking
to the Northwest. That dark line of clouds off in the distance is
that lake effect snow band. It was snowing hard under
those clouds. 

I was absolutely fascinated by that incredible lake effect snow band that stretched from Lake Superior, over to get more energy from Lake Huron, before crossing Lake Ontario to blast the New York shore near and just south of Watertown.

At least 48 inches of snow fell in Carthage, New York and 33 inches buried Watertown, and these aren't final figures.

Lake effect snows are very common, and those snow totals didn't break all time records.

But the huge length of the lake effect snow band, the persistence of it, its unusual influence here in Vermont and the timing of it are all pretty fascinating.

Equally impressive was how well forecast it was.  Weather computer models and meteorologists accurately anticipated this entire scenario at least two days in advance.

First, I'll get into the timing of this thing.  You can get lake effect snow off the Great Lakes this time of year, but it's unusual. And something this impressive is quite rare for the end of February.

To get a decent lake effect storm, you need open, unfrozen water on the lakes. Cold air coming in from Canada picks up moisture from the lakes and then dumps it as snow on the shore. Usually, the Great Lakes are largely frozen this time of year, which means there's not much open water to gather moisture. Which means any lake effect snows in late winter are usually pretty paltry.

Radar image of the lake effect snow band Friday coming ashore
on the left by Lake Ontario and extending toward the northeast
to near St. Albans.  Click on the image to make it bigger and
easier to see. The apparent gap in the snow band near
Lake Placid is just mountains blocking the radar beam from
picking up the fallling snow in that region. 

Ice extent on the lakes right now is close to the lowest on record for this time of year, so there was plenty of open water for this thing to feed on

It was rare and fascinating to see how long this narrow snow band stretched.

In most places, it was not more than 15 miles wide, but at one point Friday, it stretched more than 1,200 miles from Lake Superior to northern New England and southern Quebec.

That the snow band affected Vermont so much was also a wild moment for me.

Strong lake effect snow bands often extend into Vermont, but in weakened form. A lot of the moisture from these things gets dumped out in the Adirondacks.

By the time a snow band gets to the mountains of Vermont, there's not much left. So you get accumulation of perhaps several inches to, sometimes as much as 10 inches or so in the northern Green Mountains.

In this case, the band stayed pretty much intact all the way to northern Vermont and southern Quebec on Friday.  True, it wasn't nearly as strong as it was near the shore of Lake Ontario, but it still had some oomph left.

The exception is the Champlain Valley, because the Adirondacks formed a "shadow" which kept the moisture from reaching the ground there. The snow largely skipped over the valley and hit the western slopes of the Green Mountains instead. That's how it usually works with Great Lakes snow bands.

Like most snow bands, this one wavered back and forth. It lifted north to just along the Quebec and New York and northwestern tip of Vermont by late Friday afternoon, then settled south again Friday evening.

It was fascinating to see that band of clouds to the northwest of my place in St. Albans, Vermont early Friday evening, wih the moon and Venus shining overhead.  The snow band settled slowly south later, and it snowed heavily for a time in St. Albans around 9 a.m. We picked up just 1.5 inches of new snow last night, but I'm sure it was much heavier to my east, out toward the Green Mountains near Bakersfield.

It is hard to tease out exactly how much snow was from the snow band itself and just wrap around moisture behind the storm that had passed well to our Northeast by Friday.

But preliminary totals are pretty amazing nonetheless. The summit of Mount Mansfield received 10 inches of snow from the actual storm system on Thursday, then 16 inches in lake effect and wrap around moisture on Friday.

Storm totals since Thursday, including the main storm, wrap around moisture and the lake effect band, amounted to a very impressive 17 inches in Greensboro by 7 a.m. Friday, 14 inches by 10 a.m. Friday in Eden, an 13.1 inches in Glover.

Since the snow kept coming Friday afternoon and night, I can't wait until snow total updates come in later today.

By this Saturday morning, the lake effect band had broken up, but lingering lake moisture and more damp, cold air coming down from Canada will keep light snow showers going for much of today.  Valleys will get two inches or less of new snow today, but the mountains could pull off a few more inches.

Enjoy the deep powder on the mountains Sunday, because it's going to warm up for much of next week, which will settle the snow, make it wet and/or a bit crusty. Sunday will certainly be the best powder day in northern Vermont in the winter of 2019-20.

Here's a video of people driving through the lake effect snow near Watertown, New York. As you can see, some motorists weren't all that smart:

Earliest Sunset Of The Season Starts Today. Not Even The Winter Solstice Yet, Here's Why

The winter solstice in Vermont last year, on Decembe 21, 2018 was typically
dark and gloomy in Vermont. This is a view of the Winooski River
in Burlington, Vermont's Intervale. 

Today in Burlington, Vermont, the sun will set at 4:13 p.m.  The sun will set at that time each day through December 14.

These are the earliest sunsets of the year.

Which seems not to make complete sense.  The winter solstice doesnn't hit until  December 21 this year.  On that date in Burlington, the sun will set at 4:16 p.m., three minutes later than it will this afternoon.

So why is sunset coming three minutes later than it does today, when December 21 is supposedly the shortest day of the year? Why is this happening?

It's complicated, but I'll give it a shot here. This is not meteorology, my forte, but astronomy. But later in this post, I'll get into some weather too, since this is, um a weather and climate blog.

We regard a day as lasting 24 hours.  But that's not exactly true, depending upon the time of year. According to timeanddate.com:

"The length of a solar day, as this duration is called, is not exactly 24 hours long. It varies throughout the year because of the ellpitial shape of Earth's orbit and it's axial tilt. It is longer than 24 hours around the summer and winter solstices, and shorter than 24 hours aroud the spring and fall equinoxes.

"On most days, solar noon does not occur at the same time as noon on your watch. Around the solstices, solar noon occurs a few minutes later than the previous day. For example, on December 21, 2019, - the day of the Northern Hemisphere winter solstice - solar noon in New York will be at 11:53 a.m. On January 4, 2020 the day of the latest sunrise solar noon will take place six minutes later, at 12  noon.

As solar noons increasingly occur later, sunrises and sunsets also steadily occur later each day after the winter solstice. This is why a location's earliest sunset occurs before, and the latest sunrise occurs after the winter solstice."

This state of affairs is true throughout the northern hemisphere. In Burlington, Vermont, even as the sun starts to set later in the day around the winter solstice, sunrises keep occuring later.  The latest sunrises of the season in Burlington ar at 7:29 a.m. All those late sunrises come between December 28 and January 8, after the winter solstice.

Despite coming after the shortest day of the year, January is typically
colder than at the winter solstice. On the bright side, it's a bit
sunnier in January and February than it was in December. It was
 below zero on a sunny  late afternoon in Janaury, 2018 when I
took this photo of Mount Mansfield, Vermont. 

Now for the meteorology.

As most winter weary Vermonters know, the coldest weather of the winter usually doesn't happen around the solstice on December 21, but later in the winter when we get well into January.

If the northern hemisphere has the least sun on December 21, shouldn't that be be the coldest time of year?  

Um, no.

The atmosphere changes slowly with the seasons and there's a lag time of about four to six week until temperatures bottom out.  Of course you can get the worst cold wave of the year around Christmas, but usually it waits until January or early February.

Sunlight, though increasing, is still relatively puny going through January. Meanwhile, it takes the land and especially the oceans to release heat that was built up last summer.  The land and oceans are still releasing heat from months ago in late December.  With more of that heat gone by January and early February, it will be colder then. In general, anyway.

Usually, but not always, in mid to late February, you begin to notice winter's sting is beginning to fade. That's because by then, the increasing sun angle is beginning to overpower the heat being released from land and oceans. The northern hemisphere begins to soak in the sun's rays, and we begin the climb into spring.

By the way, the same kind of stuff happens in the summer. The latest sunset of the year is not on the summer solstice, and the worst heat of summer comes in July and early August.

One other thing you'll notice in Vermont.  November and December are made darker by incessant cloud cover.  It's the cloudiest time of the year. That's partly because the Great Lakes, lakes in Canada and parts of Hudson Bay aren't frozen yet.

Moisture from these bodies of water rises into the cold air and quickly condenses into clouds, which then move overhead in the Green Mountain State.

In January and February, it's a little sunnier. Sure, we still get a lot of clouds from frequent passing storms. But the bodies of water to our north and west are getting more and more ice covered by then.  There's less open water to release moisture ot the skies, which means less cloudiness to darken our weekend ski trips.

Quiet, Cloudy Weather Day Saturday, But Really Cool, Strange Satellite Imagery

Most of Saturday was cloudier than expected, especially over northern Vermont.

While the view of the clouds from the ground was kind of dull and gray, fascinating stuff became apparent on satellite imagery, especially for those of us who are weather geeks.

The satellite photo of the clouds is in this post for your reference.  It's a little hard to see what I'm talking about, so click on the photo to make it bigger and easier to discern.

So here's the set up: An incoming large high pressure system trapped moisture in some of the lower layers of the atmosphere. Usually, in the warmer seasons at least, uneven heating helps mix drier air downward from up above, and the clouds dissipate. 

The high pressure was too strong to allow much of that mixing to happen during most of the day, so we were stuck under the clouds that were only about 1,000 feet thick. But thick enough to block out the sun.

In a way, this could be a sign of the season. In the winter, when the sun is much weaker and lower, the heat doesn't make it through the clouds to mix the atmosphere to ultimate chew up the clouds.

That's a big reason why it's so often overcast in Vermont during the winter, especially between November and January, when the sun is lowest.

Perhaps the sun would have broken through earlier Saturday afternoon if it were June or July, not August, when the sun is beginning to wane.

Now, the really cool part of this satellite image is that very narrow band of clear skies, stretching southeastward in the satellite photo from around Montreal into north central Vermont near Jay Peak and on into the Northeast Kingdom. After this photo was taken, the narrow clear line continued moving southwestward and broadened a little bit.

Also note the clouds seem a little thicker than elsewhere just to the west of that clearing band.

I asked for help from the National Weather Service in South Burlington and as always, they got back to me right away with an explanation. I'll do my best here to relay what they told me.

At the time the satellite photo was taken, a weak weather boundary was moving southwestward from eastern Quebec. It was essentially a mini, weak cold front.

A "dry slot" of mostly clear skies behind a cold front is seen in eastern Nebraska,
Kansas and Oklahoma in this old satellite photo.

As the cold front approached, it provided a little lift into the atmosphere. The lift encouraged more cloudiness, which is why those clouds were thicker just to the southwest of that skinny clear line.

Behind this "front," there air sinks. The boundary was basically like a wave coming ashore at a beach. As the wave comes in, the water rises, than falls again as the wave passes. Behind this boundary in northern Vermont, the air was sinking.

Sinking air can warm the atmosphere and that is often death to clouds.  That's probably why there was that narrow band of clear skies. Once that narrow air of sinking air passed, the moisture in the atmosphere was able to reassert itself, and the clouds once again formed in the far Northeast Kingdom and southeastern Quebec.

You see this kind of thing on a much larger scale with strong cold fronts, especially in the late autumn, winter and early spring. These much bigger versions of what we saw in that Vermont satellite photo are usually associated with strong storm systems, not weak, tiny little things that we had affecting us.

Lift ahead of these big cold fronts can often create a solid band of showers and thunderstorms. Behind the front, the air sinks, and you get a band of mostly clear skies known as a "dry slot."

As the narrow line of clear skies continued southwestward across Vermont during the mid-afternoon, it gradually widened, then the clouds over the entire region broke apart. The August sun finally did it's job, mixing the air and melting away that overcast. It was a gorgeous late afternoon and evening.

New Twist In Nation's 2019 Severe Weather Hell: A Derecho

Damage reports extending from Colorado to South Carolina Friday
along the path of a derecho.

As many parts of the nation continues to reel from severe storms and flooding that seem to go on and on, we had one more type of storm chaos to deal with this past week. A derecho.

Derechos are long-lasting, long-tracked thunderstorm complexes that are capable of lots and lots of damage. That's especially true because they cover quite a lot of real estate.

Here's the officials definition of a derecho from NOAA:

"By definition, if the swath of wind damage extend for more than 250 miles, includes wind gusts of at least 58 mph for most of its length and also includes several well separated 75 mph or greater gusts, then the event may be classified as a derecho."

It appears Friday's storm complex, which originated over Colorado late Thursday night and finally moved off the coast of far distanct South Carolina early Saturday, will be classified as a derecho.  This path was unusually long, even for a derecho. It went on for more than 1,000 miles before finally falling apart off the South Carolina coast.

Friday's derecho killed at least 3 people along its path, the Weather Channel reported. There were a good 550 reports of damage across the nation Friday, mostly along the path of the derecho.

Derechos can produce tornadoes, but most of the damage from them is from straight line winds. This was true of Friday's storm complex. Six tornadoes were reported, but most of the severe weather reports were of straight line winds.

Damage reports were spottier in Colorado and Kansas in the initial phase of the derecho. I think that's mostly because it went through sparsely populated areas so that not as many people were there to report on it

The derecho picked up steam later Friday as it past southeastward through Missouri, southern Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina.

Derechos aren't very common, to be honest. There's usually only a couple or a few in the United States every year, if that.

That's good, because derechos can be very expensive, not to mention deadly. Remember, they cover a lot of ground, so there's usually a huge number of people and property in the way of these things

There's no word on the dollar amount of damage of Friday's derecho, but some past ones have been really notable. A June, 2012 derecho that started in Iowa and moved east and southeastward through the Mid-Atlantic states killed 22 people, caused $2.9 billion in damage and cut off electricity for 4 million people.

Derechos are rare in Vermont, but can happen. On average, Vermont can be expected to experience a derecho once every four years.

Perhaps the most notable derecho in modern times to affect our neck of the woods was in July, 1995, amid a record heat wave. (Derechos often get their a lot of their energy from extremely hot, humid air.)

There was actually a series of four derechos during one week across the northern United States in mid-July, 1995. The fourth one originated in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and traveled southeastward through Ontario, New York, and on into southern Vermont and New Hampshire, and the rest of southern New England.

When this derecho crossed the Adirondacks, it leveled large tracts of forest and killed five people. There was also lots of tree damage in Vermont, mostly south of Route 4.

It's hard to tell when another derecho will develop. Suffice it to say there's plenty of severe weather once again in the middle of the nation today. No word yet on whether any of this will evolve into another derecho.

Tornado Season Launches, But AccuWeather's Tornado Forecast Just Too Clever

AccuWeather is precisely predicting 1,075 tornadoes in the
United States this year, but such precise forecasts are not
realistic. Their map shows where they think the most tornadoes
will happen in 2019, but this is basically a
climatological map that shows where tornadoes
usually spin up in any given year. 

Tornado season is upon us, and it has gotten off to a rough start. The 23 deaths from tornadoes in Alabama Sunday was the most since 2013.

This coming weekend might not be much better.  Another large storm system, one that unleased a huge barrage of lightning and flood risks over southern California last night will head east into the Plains by Saturday.

As you can tell by the action in California, this storm has a lot of dynamics with it. If things come together right, we could have another tornaod outbreak.  It's too soon to say how extensive this  might be, but it bears watching.

After that, it's really impossible to say if the 2019 tornado season will stay busy and tragic, or will it mercifully sputter out, resuming the relatively slow trend of recent years.

I say the extended tornado forecast for the season is almost impossible, and so do many other experts. But not AccuWeather.

AccuWeather has released an oddly precise forecast for how many tornadoes will hit the United States during 2019.

This weather corporation says there will be 1,075 United States tornadoes in 2019, of which 525 will come between March 1 and May 31. These figures are pretty close to the average yearly number of tornadoes in the nation.

AccuWeather tells us the biggest concentration of tornadoes this year will be in tornado alley - duh!. That includes Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and northern and central Texas.  Those would hit later in the season, mostly in April and May.

Tornadoes are more likely early in the season in the deep south, so the recent outbreak in Alabama and Georgia fits the norm in that respect.  AccuWeather's tornado forecast indicates a relatively light twister year in the Southeast, so early, uncertain signs indicated they might be wrong there.

For their part, Texas meteorologists are skeptical of AccuWeather's tornado prognostication.  As the Dallas Morning News reports:

"....some meteorologists in Dallas-Fort Worth have been quick to dispute AccuWeather's forecast, pointing out that tornadoes are difficult enough to predict when they're hours, let along months away."

For instance, Fort Worth National Weather Service meteorologist Bianca Villanueva told the Dallas Morning News that AccuWeather cited increased moisture as a reason for their expectation that tornadoes will be relatively frequent in North Texas this spring.

Villanueva pointed out that many other factors go into producing tornadoes, such as instability and lift in the atmosphere. Just the presence of moisture doesn't really mean much.

KDFW-TV meteorologist Evan Andrews minced no words when he dismissed AccuWeather's forecast. He posted on Facebook:

"STOP POSTING CLICK BAIT," Andrews implored in all caps. He continued, in part: "Trying to predict what isn't predictable with anything remotely accurate (70% or greater) is an effort in futility."

John Allen, a Central Michigan University Assistant Professor of Meteorology and a severe weather expert, had a Twitter thread in which he said the AccuWeather tornado forecast didn't make it clear enough what factors led to the forecast. Plus - Allen was more polite than me on this - the prediction was basically a rehash of what is normal climatology in the spring. Plus, he said, the science isn't there yet to make forecasts as specific as AccuWeather's.

For its part, AccuWeather had this to say about the skepticism:

"AccuWeather is really proud of its 2019 tornado forecast. We have been in the prediction business for 57 years and have found that the powerful combination of utilizing all the tools and reliable indicators available, including the expertise of our over 100 expert meteorologists, results in predictions with the greatest accuracy."

Tornado forecasts are getting better, just like predictions for most kinds of weather. The alerts, watches and warnings for the outbreak last Sunday in Alabama and Georgia, for instance, came well ahead of the actual storms.

The death toll was high because tragically, even though people got the warnings, there was nowhere to run. Many of the victims were in mobile homes or houses lacking basements. There needs to be a better look at where and how we can put people like this out of harm's way when we know a tornado is heading toward them.

I'm all for even better tornado forecasts than the good ones we have now. But AccuWeather is getting ahead of itself. I'm also hoping to see a lot more energy expended on getting people to heed warnings, and when they do, making sure safe places are available to them.

Extremely Rare Tornado In Snow. I'll Call It A Snornado

A tornado going over snow-covered ground, and
pulling up snow into its circulation in New
Mexico recently. This is an extremely rare,
if not unprecedented event I'm not aware
of any other tornadoes on snow. Photo by
Lydell Rafael, via Twitter.

Earlier this month, a relatively weak tornado touched down in New Mexico.

Tornadoes aren't super rare in New Mexico, but this one was really out-of-this world unusual. It was the first one I've ever heard of that moved over snow-covered ground. A lot of other weather weenies have said the same.

There was a pocket of very unusually cold air over New Mexico, part of this month's storminess that has brought feet of snow to some mountainous areas of the West and brought snow to oddly low elevations. It has even snowed a couple times on the Las Vegas Strip this month.

Pockets of cold air above the Earth, like the one in New Mexico, usually produce convection - that is towering clouds that form into thunderstorms, or at least very heavy showers of rain or snow.

This cold air aloft touched off snow squalls in New Mexico.  The air was so unstable, though, that it managed to produce a tornado.

Tornadoes are extremely rare on snow covered terrain because the cold snow almost always stabilizes the air in the lowest layers of the atmosphere near the ground. That is supposed to  cut off the ability for any columns of rotating air to actually touch down. Not this time.

The recent New Mexico storm was a landspout tornado, which is usually weaker than the traditional big Midwest tornadoes. A landspout is certainly one form of tornado, but there's a difference. Weather.com offers this definition describing the difference between a landspout and other tornadoes:

"A tornado is spawned from a parent thunderstorm with a rotating updraft, but a landspout isn't. A landspout requires a towering cumulus cloud to be present over a boundary of converging winds near the surface."

The New Mexico snow tornado was an odd duck of a landspout, meteorologist Bryon Morton, a meteorologist at television station KOAT Alburquerque explained on Twitter:

"This is not a traditional tornado. It's formed by colliding outflows from convective snow squalls that result in a spin up near the surface, whch is transported upward via an updraft. There are no rotating wall clouds or mesocyclones involved. Spectacular & rare nonetheless!"

By the way, a mesocyclone is an area of rotating winds in a supercell thunderstorm. Mesocyclones often, but don't always produce tornadoes.

I have not seen any reports of damage from this snow tornado (snornado?) near Tinian, New Mexico. But it sure was something!

Odd Midwest Tornado Outbreak Creates Havoc, Damage

Massive tornado approaching Taylerville, Illinois
Saturday evening. Photo by Robert Wolfe.

UPDATE: DECEMBER 4:

This proved to be the largest December Illinois on record. So far, they've counted 26 tornadoes in Illinois on December 1, beating the previous December record of 21 set in 1957. Shout out to Mike Bettes at the Weather Channel for pointing this out.

The National Weather Service in Springfield, Illinois said Saturday's outbreak was the third largest tornado outbreak for any month of the year.

Tornadoes in Illinois are much more of a springtime type of event. The largest Illinois tornado outbreak had 39 of them on April 16, 1996. There were 32 twisters in Illinois on April 2, 2006.

The worst tornado, the one I describe in my pre-updated post, below, was an EF3 with winds of up to 155 mph. It was up to a half mile wide and stay on the ground for nearly 13 miles.

It thankfully killed nobody, but left 22 injured, destroyed 34 homes, left 66 homes too damaged to inhabit, and left another 406 homes damaged but inhabitable. says the Springfield NWS.  

On Sunday, the severe weather continued, this time in the Southeast. One twister tore through King's Bay Naval Base in Georgia, causing relatively minor injuries to five people and leaving a trail of damage.

It surprisingly hasn't been a particularly busy end of year tornado period. There were 42 tornado reports in November in the United States, which isn't far from average. We're up to about 30 so far in this young December month. If we don't get many more twisters before the end of the year, December, too, will come out pretty close to normal in the tornado department.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Over the past two days, a rather out of season tornado outbreak has been causing big trouble from Oklahoma to Illinois to Georgia.

A strong, sprawling storm in the middle of the country is to blame.

Friday, the first day of the tornadoes wasn't much of a surprise. Forecasters had alerted people days in advance that eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri were under the gun. And these regions indeed got hit Friday.

One person died Friday night in a Missouri tornado, and another twister that might have tracked for as long as 60 miles through eastern Oklahoma caused a lot of damage, especially around Lake Tenkiller.

Saturday was more of a surprise. We knew there was the risk of severe storms and possible tornadoes in Illinois on Saturday. but things got out of control beyond what most people imagined.

So far there have been 22 reports of tornadoes in Illinois. Most of those tornadoes came from three or four supercell thunderstorms that kept dropping twister.

An especially strong one smashed the Illinois town of Taylorville, population approximately 11,000. Meteorologists watched in horror as radar indicated a strong tornado heading toward that town for as much as an hour before hitting. Everyone hoped it would weaken, but it didn't.

At least Taylorville residents got plenty of warning. The National Weather Service in Lincoln, Illinois  issued a tornado warning for the Taylorville area 42 minutes before the twister struck.

Another tornado spinning in Illinois yesterday.

Despite extensive damage to more than 100 homes, there were no deaths reported. About thirty people were injured.

Not necessarily fun fact: The high school sports teams in this town are the Taylorville Tornadoes.

The supercell responsible for this tornado lasted a long time, starting east of St. Louis and ending east of Bloomington, Illinois, a distance of 140 miles. As noted, this storm kept spitting out tornadoes along its path.

This morning, tornado warnings went up in parts of southern Georgia.

Tornado outbreaks do happen from time to time this time of year, if there's a strong enough parent storm system, as there was over the past couple of days.  It's a pretty odd to have such powerful tornadoes go as far north as central Illinois in early December, but it's not completely unprecedented.

Tornadoes have touched down as far north as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in past Decembers. However most twisters in the final month of the year are confined to near the Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi Valley.

One ingredient for tornadoes is warm, humid air, which is something of a rarity during the first month of winter.

Tornadoes are especially dangerous this time of year because people tend not to expect them. Plus, they're more likely to happen in darkness, since days are so short. People might not be aware of a twister approaching under cover of darkness.

After today, tornadoes seem unlikely in the United States until at least next Saturday, when a new storm along the Gulf Coast might create some Deep South severe weather.

If You Think You've Been Shovelilng A Lot Of Snow Lately, Watch This

A road in the snow belt of northern Japan.
Puts Erie, PA to shame doesn't it?

Here in Vermont, we're off to a typically snowy start to the winter. We're not breaking any records, but we've certainly gotten our share of snow.

Some people are probably sick of shoveling already, and it's only the end of December.

It could be worse. (It could always be worse.)  Just look at Erie, Pa. (63 inches in two days. starting Christmas. And at least another foot today.) Or Redfield, New York, (also 63 inches in two days.)

Even better, there are mountainous areas of northern Japan that get incredible amounts of snow. There are spots in this region that are among the snowiest in the world.  The relatively high elevation town of Tokamachi, for instance, averages 460 inches of snow per year. That's about 38 feet of snow.

For comparison's sake, here in Burlington, Vermont, we average very roughly 80 inches of snow per winter. That's about six and a half feet of snow.

Northern Japan's epic snow is caused by sort of the same phenomenon as the huge lake effect snow squalls common in early and mid-winter near the Great Lakes. The kind that hit Erie and Redfield. But the snow in Japan is much deeper.

Here's why: Cold Siberian winds blow across the Sea of Japan in the winter, picking up moisture just like cold northwest winds draw moisture from the Great Lakes this time of year. But the Great Lakes snow machine shuts down or at least weakens during the course of the winter as the lakes freeze, limiting the ability for moisture to get in the air to produce the snow squalls.

Not photoshop. People walk on a road cleared of deep
snow in drifts in the northern Japan snowbelt. They've
got it worse than the U.S. Great Lakes snow belts 

The Sea of Japan is relatively warm. And big. So it doesn't freeze. The "sea effect snows" go on and on all winter.

On top of that. winter storms ride northeastward along the nearby coastlines in Japan, much like those famous nor'easters in New England. Those Japanese nor'easters also dump huge amounts of snow.

Ski resorts in these snowy Japanese regions attract lots of visitors, as you might imagine. Long term, there are worries that some of these snow belts in Japan could start getting more rain and less snow as  global warming intensifies.

For now, though, it snows like crazy in parts of Japan. Thought you were a hero when you shoveled three feet of snow out of your driveway during a record snowstorm last March in northwestern Vermont?

Hah! Watch these two very fit Japanese men tackle an extremely snow laden roof after an epic snowfall.

Zonal Flow And Shortwaves: Why We Haven't Had The Usual Stormy November

This is an example of zonal flow, a flat west-to east
orientation of the jet stream across the U.S. That tiny
little dip in the flow over the Great Lakes is called
a short wave. We feel it as weak, fast moving little
storms, as opposed to the much bigger storms we're
accustomed to this time of year.

After that terrible windstorm in late October, we sure weren't looking forward to November, which has a stormy reputation both here in Vermont and in the nation as a whole 

The month will draw to a close in less than a week, and so far, almost nothing in terms of storms.  And nothing big is in the forecast for the next week.

Oh sure, there's been some rain and snow locally. It's been windy at times. And other parts of the nation had spells of bad weather. But there's really been nothing dramatic, like we've seen in most past Novembers.

What's going on?

Blame something called a zonal flow.

The jet stream usually meanders quite a lot especially in the colder months. The jet stream is a river of high speed, upper atmospheric air that circles the globe. It runs generally west to east in the northern hemisphere, but takes frequent big dives southward in some spots, and lifts dramatically northward in others. Those big excursions north are called ridges.

Near where there's these big dips, you get a storm. In the United States for instance cold air might slide southward along with the jet stream, and warm air, and moisture from the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico ride northward where the jet stream curves to the north.

That clash is a recipe for the formation of storms. So you get lots of rain, snow, wind and sometimes severe weather.

This November, the portion of the jet stream that comes across the United States has been mostly just west to east, with no pronounced dips or curves to the north to speak of.  In meteorology circles, we call that a zonal flow.

The jet stream has been entering North America over the Pacific Northwest of the United States and British Columbia, Canada. That has brought repeated storms off the Pacific Ocean, which have caused flooding in that region.

The moisture from these storms gets wrung out over the mountains. The storms, now small, zip west to east across the northern United States. These are called short waves. They're basically just mini-dips in the jet stream, as opposed to the big dips that usually cause those big storms this time of year.

These shortwaves, being just part of a mini dip in the jet stream, are moisture starved, since there's no big dip in the jet stream to grab Gulf of Mexico moisture. They also move fast, so they don't last long in any one place.

Do remember that I said that the jet stream is a fast moving river of air. These shortwaves can grab some of that high speed air and bring it to the surface. That largely explains why it has been so windy this month, despite the lack of big storms.

Generally speaking, this month's zonal flow has not been perfectly west to east. The jet stream is a little further north in the western half of the nation, and that has allowed occasionally record heat to spread over the Southwest and southern Plains.

Here in the Northeast, the zonal flow jet stream has been coming our way at an angle that's more west-northwesterly. That orientation has allowed those short waves that zip on through to grab little pieces of cold Arctic air from Canada and spread it over the Northeast in brief bursts.  That's why November has been a wee bit cooler than normal this month in Vermont.

Zonal flows always end eventually. The jet stream will buckle, and we'll go back to big dips and ridges. My guess is that will happen by mid-December or even earlier. And, we'll go back to our normal stormy winter weather.

Bright Sun And Storms: Skies Perfect For A Weather Geek

A photo I took last summer in Fairfield,
on a day with beautiful atmospheric
conditions similar to Sunday's
in Vermont.

Sunday featured what I consider perfect weather here in Vermont, though I know most people would disagree with me.

Oh sure, people must have thought it was nice enough, at times. There were bouts of briliant blue skies and bright sunshine. But those were frequently interrupted by billowing clouds, lightning, and quick downpours accompanied by chilly wind gusts.

But those skies! Big cloud towers lit up white by the sun against a deep blue sky backdrop, free of haze. Closer to the storms, evening sun cut underneath roiling storm clouds, giving the atmosphere an  otherworldly feel.

This kind of thing happens at least once a year, sometimes several times of year, especially in June and the first half of July.

These beautiful sunny and stormy days are created when a pocket of cold air sits high overhead. The sun is as strong as it gets this time of year and quickly heats the ground. Warm air starts to rise, and rises especially quickly when it's cold up above.

These rising air pockets condense into billowy clouds, and eventually, the types of showers and thunderstorms we saw on Sunday. This is especially true when a weak weather front, again like we had Sunday, adds more lift to the air.

You might think this is odd, but the weather conditions remind me of my favorite play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." by Edward Albee.

In that play, protagonists George and Martha are in constant conflict, but seem to have an emotional need to constantly engage in that conflict.

Sunday's weather was a classic conflict between warmth and cold, and the two temperature extremes needed each other to create the beautiful turmoil overhead.

The kind of storms we had Sunday come on days when the air isn't particularly humid. Which means there's no haze obscuring the beautiful cloud structures the way it usually does when we have thunderstorms. After all, we associate thunderstorms with hot, humid weather and not  during refreshingly cool days. But of course it does happen.  

Dramatic skies over St. Albans, Vermont Sunday evening
as the setting sun lit up the base of a thunderstorm
passing by just to my north. 

Sometimes, these cooler weather storms can get strong or even severe. Since there's plenty of cold air aloft, it's easier to get hail out of the type of storm we got Sunday, so that's one drawback. We love the sky we had yesterday, until the hail shreds the hostas.

Also, these storms are relatively brief, and will collapse suddenly, bringing a gush of potentially strong to damaging winds to a few local areas.

This all happened up toward St. Johnsbury, where one storm Sunday produced golf ball sized hail and knocked down some trees and power lines.

Today, there will be some cool weather showers and isolated thunderstorms around, but the dynamics of the atmosphere don't lend themselves to the skies we had Sunday.

However, tomorrow, Tuesday, we have another weather disturbance and a new pocket of cold air aloft  coming in, so there's the potential for things to look as beautiful as they did Sunday.

So make sure you look up and enjoy the spectacle of an active Vermont summer skh. Let's just keep the hail out of the gardens, OK?

There Are "New" Clouds In The Sky - 11 Of 'Em

A really cool type of cloud called aspirates. The International
Cloud Atlas has deemed these a "new" type of cloud
classification, though these clouds have existed forever.
Bonus: These clouds are really cool, but not dangerous.

As a weather geek, I'm always obnoxiously looking up at the sky checking out the shapes, formations and ever-changing cloud movements up there.

Apparently, there's a lot of people like me, because there's something called the International Cloud Atlas, that lists and describes all the different kinds of clouds that can happen.

Recently, the International Cloud Atlas has deemed that there are eleven "new" clouds that we can look at.

To be honest, the new clouds the Atlas lists have always existed, but hey, you have got to account for everything that's in the sky, right.

The reason these clouds are "new" is they didn't really fit any previous catagory of cloud, so they had to get their own groupings.

Five of the clouds are highly localized clouds that form from very, limited and specific circumstances.

For instance, there are flammagenitus clouds, which form near wildfires, and cataractagenitus clouds, which form from the spray generated by waterfalls.

My favorite "new" cloud, one that is actually somewhat rare but something most of us have seen at least once in our lives without realizing it, is asperitas clouds.

According to National Geographic recognition of Asperitas clouds came from citizen scientists.

Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds over Breckenridge, Colorado
in October, 2015. Photo by Stacy Nicholson and Skip Wood.

That's another plug for citizen scientists that I want to highlight.

These are normal, every day people that don't have a lot of training in science, but they observe what's going on in the natural world around them, and report that information to trained scientists.

Scientists, and their tools and instruments, can't be everywhere at once, so local people observing local phenomenon, can be the eyes and ears of meteorologists and any other scientists.

People - citizen scientists - hooked up with a group called the Cloud Appreciation Society to note the type of cloud they were observing, the Asperitas clouds, didn't really fit any existing category in the Cloud Atlas.

So, finally, Asperitas clouds are in the Atlas. Congratulations!

Other clouds added to the the Atlas are Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds, which I also mentioned not long ago. They look like a series of breaking waves in the sky.

Another fascinating cloud added to the list are fallstreak clouds. You see it when there's a layer of mid-level clouds overhead, and there's a circular area in those clouds where the sky is clear, and you can see streaks of what looks like rain coming out of where the hole in the clouds just formed.

What typically happens with fall streak holes is that the clouds are made of supercooled water - its still liquid, but the temperature is below 32 degrees. A plane flies through the cloud, causing the supercooled water to freeze in patch, and form ice crystals that begin falling toward the ground.

That's the streaks you see beneath the hole in the clouds. This process can move the air around the center of the hole, and the hole can expand as more droplets freeze and fall, or dry air intrudes and they evaporate.

To conclude, here's a timelapse of really cool asperitas clouds:

Random Images And Videos Of Really Cool Weather Phenomenon

Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds over Churchchrist, New Zealand.

I often run across images and videos on social media about weather that doesn't exactly fit what I want to tell you about, but are cool nonetheless.

So why not share them anyway?

The first image is of a rather rare cloud formation and one of my favorites: Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds. The photo was taken at an unspecified date over Christchurch, New Zealand.

The clouds, as you can see, look like breaking ocean waves. They are named for Lord Kelvin and Hermann von Helmholtz, who studies the physics of the atmospheric instability that creates the clouds.

The clouds form when two different layers of the atmosphere move at different speeds. The upper layer of air is moving faster than the lower levels of the air when these clouds form. The higher winds in the upper layr will sometimes scoop the top of the cloud layer and form these wave-like clouds.



A gorgeous thunderstorm over Grenada, Spain

Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds are not dangerous, and don't produce severe weather. But they are a sign that the air is very unstable, and aircraft flying through areas with these clouds can get in trouble.

I've never personally witnessed Kelving-Helmholtz clouds, and being a weather geek, seeing the clouds is definitely on my bucket list.

The next photo in this post is not a terribly unusual weather phenomenon, but it's a gorgeous photo of a thunderstorm over Granada, a Spanish city in the foothills of that country's Sierra Nevada mountains.  

The Alhambra Palace, a luxury hotel, is in the foreground. Between that building and those dramatic clouds, it makes for just a gorgeous photo.

A dramatic looking but non-lethal avalanche in Juneau, Alaska recently
r

It was taken by Jose Luis Hens Terron.

The next photo was taken on March 3 in Juneau, Alaska.

Amid cold, blue skies, an avalanche descended from the steep mountains surrounding the city. The avalanche caused no deaths or injuries, and damage was minimal.

Pretty cool image of such a snow slide.

Finally, we have some cool images of severe thunderstorms developing in Nebraska about a week and a half ago.

The satellite feed here is mesmerizing, if you are a weather geek like me.

I'll have more images in future posts, because they're piling up left and right, but here's that Nebraska storm outbreak 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.

Violent, Far-Ranging Storm Was Extreme Example Of "March Winds"

A tree knocked down by high winds in Michigan this week
smushed this car. 

The nearly coast-to-coast wind storm I talked about yesterday, the one that caused all those wildfires in the Plains and damage around the Great Lakes and the Northeast, was an extreme example of that "March Winds" cliche.

The folklore is that March is the windiest month.  As the viral video at the bottom of this post shows, most people learn about this early spring gustiness at an early age. And not always pleasantly.

March isn't necessarily the windiest month of the year in many parts of the country. However,  in March, early spring, you are often more apt than most times of year to get gusty winds.

Here's why:

In the winter, upper level winds are often quite strong. This state of affairs usually continues well into March, sometimes April, as winter-like storms cross the country.

But the sun is stronger in March than it was earlier in the winter. The sun heats the ground, which causes pockets of rising air.

What goes up, must come down. The rising air bumps up against that fast-moving air above, displaces it, and sends pieces and gusts of that strong wind down to the surface. That's a large reason why you got the destructive sharp wind gusts in many parts of the country this week.

That fast-moving upper level air is cranking earlier in the winter, too, but the sun that time of year is weaker, and is less prone to causing those updrafts that trigger these gusts.

Later in the spring and summer, the sun is much stronger than in March, but by then, the upper level winds are much weaker. So you're less likely to get that very gusty weather.

As of Friday morning, some areas of Michigan and western New York were still without power as crews cleaned up the mess left by winds gusting to over 70 mph Wednesday

Though March winds are common, this was an extreme version of it. The upper level winds, normally strong over the northern tier of the United States this time of year, were really, really screaming this week.

Winds are still gusty across the North Country today as we get more invasions of wintry Arctic air. This means wind chill alerts are up for parts of the Northeast as the temperatures plunge.

It's March. Bundle up and hang onto your hat.

Here's a video of a little girl in Ohio having a bad time of the strong winds Wednesday. The four-year old got caught in a big gust of wind when she tried to open her front door. She wasn't hurt. Watch:

Even Without The Current Warmth, The Sun Is Giving Us Signs Of Spring

This photo, taken Sunday in the woods around my house
in St. Albans, Vermont, shows how the warming late
February sun has first melted the snow around tree
trunks and evergreen branches. 

We've had a few warm days here in Vermont and that deep snowcover we had at the end of last week has seriously eroded, especially in the valleys.

Expected warm weather the rest of the week will further diminish the snow pack.

Even if we had not had the mild conditions, the receding snow cover offers another sign of spring. Go out and notice around tree trunks and under darker trees, like pines.

The snow has disappeared much faster in these spots.

Here's why:

The sun is much stronger in late February than it was in late December. The dark tree bark, the dark pine needles and such attract the increasing warmth of the sun. The heat collecting in these dark objects radiates out into its immediate surroundings.

The result is nice rings of melted snow around tree trunks, and near areas where warmth collects, like on pine and spruce needles.

This, of course is an early sign of spring, much like the changing songs of the chickadees and the brightening hues of goldfinches this time of year.

We'll surely have more wintry blasts here in Vermont in the coming weeks. But the core of winter has passed. It's too soon to say happy spring, but maybe we can celebrate pre-spring.

Next Big Storm Threatens Severe Storm, Tornado Outbreak In Southeast

This house in Mississippi was destroyed by a likely
tornado this morning. The twister marks the start
of an expected several days of severe weather in the South 

At least one likely tornado touched down in Mississippi this morning, causing damage to several homes and businesses and toppling hundreds of trees.  

That, and the severe flooding that hit the Houston, Texas metro area yesterday, marks the start of what could be a very nasty severe storm outbreak in the Southeast over the next few days.

After a brief bout with winter weather early this month, the Southeast has been unusually warm and humid the past several days.

For instance, Thursday was the eighth consecutive day that Atlanta, Georgia has reached 70 degrees, the most consecutive days in January in at least 67 years. (Normal high temperatures this time of year in Atlanta are in the low 50s.)

The warm, humid air, interacting with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and relatively weak disturbances in the atmosphere, are contributing to today's rough weather in the Southeast.

It's very likely going to get worse.  Several days of severe weather look likely.

SOUTHEAST STORM THREAT 

That strong storm that hit the West Coast over the past couple of days is going to trudge eastward and southeastward.

This storm will come through in pieces, with each package containing rising air, winds that veer with height and plenty of warmth and humidity. The first two initial pieces will go through the Southeast Friday and Saturday, each containing their own packages of heavy rain, severe thunderstorms and potential tornadoes

A third, more potent piece of atmospheric energy will pass through the Southeast Sunday and Monday, spinning up a storm system that will be unusually strong for one that far south. (Storm systems in the winter usually really crank up once they get up to the Midwest or Northeast, not the Deep South)

Of course, things are uncertain as always this far ahead of the Main Show, but the potential is there for some very bad storms, possibly some strong tornadoes in the Deep South, from Louisiana to Florida, and on up into Georgia and possibly the Carolinas.

This kind of thing sometimes happens in late February or March, but it's a bit unusual for January. But hey, it's a weird winter nationwide.

If there's a bright side to this scenario, it's that the storm will almost surely dump a LOT of rain on much of the Southeast. Huge sections of the region is still in a drought. (Remember the big wildfire in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in late November and early December ) so a good slug of rain is always helpful.

Of course, some of the rain might turn out to be torrential causing some unwelcome flash floods. So there's a little good and potentially a lot of bad with this storm.

This big storm will eventually lift north and east toward New England early next week, but up here in the Northeast, including Vermont, the effects don't look so dire at this point. Too soon to tell precisely what will happen with this in our neck of the woods, but we're looking at the potential for some mixed precipitation, rain and maybe some gusty winds.

A MOVE BACK TO WINTER?

It also looks like this powerhouse storm will help trigger a pattern change that would bring more typical wintry weather to the eastern two thirds of the nation. The pattern change would also at least temporarily diminish much of the extreme storminess the West Coast has endured for the past month or two.

It has been quite a warm January in the East. I mentioned Atlanta, but here in Vermont, you know it's warm when there's scarcely any snow on the ground at the time of year that is normally the coldest of the entire winter.

Actually, this January in Vermont is so far warmer than last January, which was part of the warmest winter on record.

I don't know precisely how the upcoming weather pattern change will affect Vermont. But it's very likely the constant thawing will end.

Also,  we've got a shot at getting those periodic storms that would bring  frequent light to possibly moderate snowfalls to the Green Mountain State in very late January and the first half of February.

The ski resorts would certainly love that!

You never know, but so far the indications are that when this pattern change hits, it won't be a turn to extreme winter weather in the Northeast, but something that we're pretty used to in the North Country.

Time will tell.