"Four'easter" Still Dumping Snow. Yeah, We're Sick Of It

Here's one of a variety of forecasts for snow totals
with the latest nor'easter. Areas in pink could get
up to a foot of snow. Most forecasting indicates
this will mercifully be mostly a miss for Vermont.

To me, the sky over Vermont looks a bit ominous, which might surprise other people who are looking at that same sky.

Spoiler alert: Don't worry, I'm still thinking we won't get much snow out of this late season nor'easter in Vermont. Still, it's the type of sky that says "snow."

That's because the nor'easter - the fourth big one this month -  is still lurking to our south. It's the type of sky that comes in the hours before a snowstorm:

A high, thin overcast that keeps gradually thickening, making the sun go dimmer, dimmer dimmer until it's pretty much gone.

Despite the signs from the sky, forecast guidance still tells us the nor'easter will be largely a miss for Vermont. The National Weather Service in South Burlington is going for a dusting to an inch south and east of a line roughly from St. Johnsbury to Rutland, with pretty much nothing north and west of that line.

The far southern Green Mountains could still pick up a couple, maybe three inches of un-needed snow from this tonight.

Still, that's better than the one to three feet of snow many of us got last week, right?

Somebody in Massachusetts is trying to coax spring
along as best as they can. 

The story is far worse further south, of course. Unseasonable winter storm warnings and winter weather advisories continue extending from Indiana and western North Carolina all the way to southern New England.

Some areas from New York City to Washington DC are likely to have one of their biggest late season snowstorms on record.

In New York and Washington, of the four nor'easters this month, this one will probably have the highest snow accumulations.

If New York and Philadelphia get more than a foot of snow, this would be the largest spring snowstorm on record for those cities. 

The accumulation will be hard to measure. This time of year, some solar radiation gets through the clouds during periods when the snow isn't coming down that hard, leading to some settling and melting. Then the accumulation picks up again when the snow starts coming down hard.

It still seems like it's a good possibility that the New York City metro area, parts of Long Island, much of New Jersey and pieces of eastern Pennsylvania could get 12 to 18 inches of snow out of this.

Washington DC which should be right into spring by now, is expecting four to eight inches of heavy, wet snow.

As you can imagine, this is one big mess that shouldn't be happening during the spring. NBC News reports about 3,700 flights canceled across the East today.

This sign pretty much sums up the mood
with repeated nor'easters and snowstorms
hitting much of the East 

All this wet, heavy snow in populated areas is causing a rising number of power failures, which will only get worse as the day wears on.  Repair crews were still trying to fix the mess left over by the previous three nor'easters when this one hits.

As I noted yesterday, coastlines in New Jersey, New York, especially including Long Island are going to be battered with this. High tides, storm surge flooding, high winds and battering waves will add to the damage that has piled up all this month.

Yeah, it's all pretty depressing if you ask me.

To make things more dreary for you, it's still not looking like any kind of full-on spring weather is coming any time soon.

Back here in Vermont, snow showers will probably add an occasional dusting of snow to some areas, especially the north and mountains tomorrow, and possibly again on Saturday.  At this point, though, I'm not seeing any blockbuster snowstorms in our near future, so we can hang onto that.

North winds will increase here in Vermont later today and especially tomorrow because of our proximity to the offshore nor'easter. That will add a windchill and a bite to the air. More clouds over the next few days will limit melting of the existing snowpack.

Still, there's glimmers of minor hope. Daytime highs in the valleys of Vermont should get barely above freezing, or least near 32 degrees each day through Sunday, which will melt the snow in tiny little increments, at least.

And it will turn somewhat warmer, but not torrid early next week. But the more seasonable temperatures next week should accelerate the gradual erosion of our unwanted spring snowpack. (And yes, not everybody considers it unwanted. I know there are plenty of winter sports fans out there, so be happy.)

It's not just us who are suffering under the weather. A strong blast of wet air is hitting central and southern California, where flash flooding is a risk through Thursday. In areas where there were big wildfires last year, very dangerous debris flows are possible, since vegetation that would hold soil in place has burned away.

There was already one destructive debris flow that killed nearly two dozen people in early January. California risks a repeat this week. As a precaution, up to 30,000 people have been asked to evacuate from their homes during this storm.

Two Bad Storms: One In Peru, One In Australia

Devastating mudslides and floods have been htting Peru
in recent weeks. Photo by Ernesto Benavides/Getty Images

Every once in awhile, I like to take you on a tour of weather elsewhere in the world, so here we go.

Last week, Peru was hit by one of the worst storms on record to hit that South American nation.

According to the always reliable and informative Weather Underground blog by Bob Hanson and Jeff Masters, the world's costliest disaster so far in 2017 has been going on or the past several days in Peru.

Torrential rain has fallen on normally dry terrain in Peru in recent weeks, causing flooding that has killed at least 80 people and displaced about 110,000 others.

Reuters reports large swaths of Peru, including the capital cit of Lima, schools have suspended classes and running water has been restricted because treatment plants are all screwed up by mudslides. Food shortages are developing in some towns because roads are so damaged by floods and mudslides that trucks can't move goods around.

The trouble in Lima, Henson and Masters say, developed despite the fact that little rain has fallen in most  of the lower elevation parts of the city.

The climate there is normally such that the city gets high humidity and fog fairly frequently, but the cool Pacific Ocean water just off the coast of South America helps prevent the kinds of updrafts that can trigger storms and heavy rain.

The flooding this year is in elevations above Lima, but even there, it is normally very dry, so what happened in the past couple of months to change that?

It's complicated and a bit weird, climatologically, but here we go. El Nino, that periodic warming of eastern Pacific waters, messes up weather patterns all around the world. It can really cause problems in Peru, which of course is right next to the eastern Pacific.

The water in the eastern Pacific gets warm, so you get more of those updrafts and storms that can cause heavy rain in Peru. That situation caused severe flooding in Peru in 1997 and 1998.

There was another very strong El Nino in 2014 through early 2016, but oddly, there wasn't all that much flooding in Peru then.  That puzzled scientists.

Now, El Nino is gone, so you'd think Peru would be safe from any big floods caused by this oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon. However, for some reason, the water temperature just off the coast of Peru skyrocketed in the past few months.

Scientists are even more puzzled by that.

This warm patch off the coast of Peru could lead to a more widepread El Nino, but so far that hasn't happened.

But the warm water lingers in the waters off Peru, so more flooding is a threat.

DEBBIE DOWN UNDER

Meanwhile, in Australia, Cyclone Debbie has hit the northeast part of the nation with devastating force.

Cyclones in that part of the world are another name for hurricanes.

Satellite view of Cyclone Debbie in northeastern Australia.

And Debbie is a biggie. It just hit land overnight our time on the U.S. East Coast, which is during the day Tuesday in Australia.  Winds were reported as high as 165 mph.

Since the storm was ongoing as I write this, details from the disaster zone are sketchy.

Early reports and video emerging from near where the cyclone made landfall indicate major damage, with roofs blown from homes, storm surges and other damage. We don't know yet if there have been any deaths, but injuries have been reported, according to The Guardian. 

Debbie made landfall at a series of very nice islands and coastal locations popular with tourists.

One tourist stuck there during the cyclone said the streets are littered with metal roofing and golf carts that have been flung around by the winds. In hotels, people stayed away from windows as the panes flexed in and out amid the destructive winds, The Guardian said. 

The tourist, named Peter Langtree, said the noise from Debbie was incredibly loud and scary. "The noise is like nothing I've ever heard before I guess if you had to explain it, it would be similar to standing next to a 747 at take off."

Cyclones hit Australia from time to time, almost always on the northern coasts of the nation, but this one was much stronger than usual. It was the worst cycline since at least 2007. It might turn out to be one of the worst cyclones in Australian history.

Some videos:

This video shows damage and strong winds from Debbie in Airlie, Australia:



This rather loud video shows Debbie at peak force. Looks scary to me!

A Third Of California's Trees Died In The Drought

This is not a picture of fall foliage. All the orange and rust
color you see here are trees in California killed off
by the drought. U.S. Forest Service photo.  

I had my tiny little mini weather drama here at my St Albans, Vermont weather hacienda when this week's storm destroyed about one third of a weeping willow on my property.

Imagine the maxi-drama, then going on in California where one third of all the trees in the state have died in the past six years.  

Talk about two contrasting disasters: Mine, an extremely minor inconvenience, and California's which is literally putting many lives at risk.

Blame the long lasting drought for California's sudden lack of trees.

About 62 million trees in California died this year, bringing the total during the drought to more than 102 million, says SFGate.com

The majority of the dead trees are in the central and southern Sierra Nevada range.  More trees will likely die as well, even if good rains somehow return to California.

"It's not beyond the pale to suggest that this is a pretty unprecedented event in at least recent history," said Adrian Das, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, as quoted in SFGate.com

This many dead trees is dangerous because all that dead wood would make wildfires much worse and more intense than they otherwise would be, which would put people at greater risk.

Tree roots also hold soil in place on steep hillsides. With the roots disappearing, there's a greater risk of erosion, landslides, mudslides and flash floods when it does rain.  That's more risk of death and property damage there.

This year's rainy season in California seems to be getting off to an OK start, but most of the rain so far has been in the north. Southern and central California are in most need of precipitation.

NOAA's winter outlook indicates bad news for central and southern California. If NOAA is right, that area can expect a drier and warmer than normal winter, exactly the opposite of what they need.

Mudslides Triggered By Hurricane Earl Kill Dozens of Mexicans

Destruction from the rains of Hurricane Earl in
Mexico. Photo by Kirsten Luce/NYT  

Hurricane Earl smashed ashore in Belize late last week, causing quite a bit of damage in that small nation's capital city.

But Earl's deadliest swipe came further north, in the southern reaches of Mexico, where incredible rains unleashed huge mudslides that swept into villages.

At least 38 people died in the mudslides, but the thinking is the death toll will rise as more bodies are discovered.

Some areas in Mexico had a month's worth of rain in five hours, and whole mountainsides seemed to shear off during the mudslides, the New York Times said.

Flooding from dying hurricanes moving inland is a real hazard. Often, these floods are the worst aspect of a hurricane or tropical storm.

We've seen that locally in Vermont. Hurricane Irene was kind of bad, but not extreme as it swiped North Carolina and the coastlines of New Jersey and Long Island.

But when the decaying hurricane moved inland, it caused record, devastating floods in central and northern New York, and across most of Vermont. 

Hurricane season in the Atlantic is heading into peak season. There's no immediate signs of anything forming, but Earl and Irene prove that you should worry about hurricanes even if you live nowhere near the coast.

"Fire Hose" Aimed At Northern California

A representative map of an atmospheric rier.
That orange band coming across the Pacific Ocean
to the West Coast is a narrow band of intense moisture
that would produce, in the example given here,
torrential rain and flooding to central California.

Get ready people in northern California and parts of coastal Oregon.

The Pacific Ocean fire hose is ready to soak you down but good.  Expect inches upon inches of rain over the next few days.

Sometimes in the winter, a fairly narrow zone of fast moving storms aims at the West Coast. It looks like northern California and Oregon are in for it over the next week.

Some of the computer models are forecasting over a foot of rain over the next seven days. Some areas are likely to get two to six inches of rain just on Sunday in northern California.

I'm calling it a fire hose, as the weather pattern is basically a narrow, intense stream of deep moisture hittng parts of the West Coast. Meteorologists, though, call this an "Atmospheric River."

And that's pretty much what it is, a river. Except it's a narrow band of deep moisture in the atmosphere, not a literal river. Still, the amount of moisture transported in an atmospheric river hitting the West Coast can be ten times the flow of liquid water in the Mississippi River as it it approaches the Gulf Coast.

These atmospheric rivers hit the West Coast most winters. They're more likely when there's an El Nino, and of course we've got a strong one under way now. Which means I'm totally not surprised there is one expected in the next few days.

Atmospheric Rivers can come in various intensities, of course. They are sometimes good, as they are on average respondible for a third to a half of the needed winter precipitation along the West Coast.

They are sometimes bad, as you can imagine, because they can easily bring flooding and mudslides to  the West Coast.

The atmospheric river about to hit northern California and Oregon seems to be moderately intense, and is both good and bad.

Good, because it's putting another substantial dent in the California drought, especially for the northern half of the state.

Bad, because this one will put some rivers above flood stage and swamp urban streets whose storm drains can't handle the downpours.

Most dangerously, it can cause sudden and life threatening mudslides and debris flows, espeically in areas that had wildfires last year that stripped vegetation from the landscape. Note there were a LOT of wild fires in the region being hit by this atmospheric river, so, Not Good.

Though it's not going to happen this time, there is fear that one day, there will be a Super Atmospheric River that would overwhelm the levees protecting very flood prone Sacramento and surrounding areas.  If that ever happened, it could be a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Again, we're not expecting anything nearly that bad this time.

But you will see news and images of flooding and mudslides in the northern half of California and in Oregon over the next week.

Atmospheric rivers don't continue on across the United States. The mountains in the West tend to break them up. But the remnants of these almost always stir up new storm systems that cross the country eventually.

One such atmospheric river-spawned storm is likely to cross the southern United States next week, but that particular storm at this point does not look like it will be particularly strong or dangerous.

Tornado In Los Angeles Amid Huge Storm

Flying debris amid a small tornado in Los Angeles today.  

As expected, that immense "pineapple express" storm caused lots of wind damage, flooding and very serious mudslides in much of California yesterday and today.

Among the problems it caused was a tornado on South Los Angeles today. It was an EFO, the weakest of tornadoes on a zero to five scale.

Still, an EFO tornado, with winds of between 65 and 85 mph, but they can still be scary, if brief, as the video below shows.

The expletives by the people filming the twister are annoying bleeped out with loud beeps, which makes the sound more annoying than if we just left the expletives in, but it's still quite a sight to see in southern California.

Watch:

Death Toll Rising in Epic Balkan Floods; Videos Show Havoc

The news continues to be grim coming from countries like Serbia and Bosnia as the worst flooding in those countries continues to devastate many towns and kill a rising number of people.

Homes in Bosnia overwhelmed by a mudlide
associated with record flooding this week.
Photo by Elvis Barukcic/Getty Images  

At last check, the death toll is about two dozen. It could rise substantially, according to some media reports.

Even worse, the flooding dislodged old land mines left over from wars in the region during the 1990s.

Rescuers or people returning to their wrecked property might encounter these mines, and that could raise the death and injury toll further.

The flooding was caused by an upper level low pressure system that was cut off from the normal west to east push of the jet stream.

That stalled system meant it could sit there, all the while drawing incredibly wet air into the Balkans. The storm also made the air rise, unleashing huge amounts of rain.

These systems, called cut off lows, are fairly common in the spring across much of the northern hemisphere. The jet stream is retreated to the north this time of year, leaving behind these lows like puddles remaining after a rain storm.

People await rescue from flooding in Serbia.
Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters.  

With nothing to push the lows away - remember, the jet streatm has pulled away to the north -- the cut off lows produce days of rainy weather because they sit in pretty much the same spot for for several days.    

Sometimes, these lows cause relatively minor flooding. This one is different, as it was oriented to keep bringing in massive amounts of precipitation.

Also the climate is warming, and that tend to make heavy rainstorms even heavier.

No, you can't blame each weather disaster on global warming, so there's no smoking gun in the Balkans. But this kind of torrential rain and flood disaster is becoming more common across many areas of the globe.

Here are some videos that demonstrate the magnitute of this huge disaster;

A bridge collides with another bridge in Bosnia



Dramatic video of a house collapsing:



A Serbian soldier gets caught in the flooding:



Here's a report from Reuters:



A dog is rescued from flooding and debris: