Analysis: Vermont Storm Fit Climate Change Trend: Was Big, I Even Have to Pick Up The Pieces

This tree fell on my husband Jeep in my St. Albans, Vermont yard,
likely totaling the vehicle

I spent last night as a storm refugee for the first time I can remember.  Then again, the storm Thursday night and Friday was among the worst I can remember, at least for Vermont as a whole.

At least in my opinion, it was the Green Mountain State's most destructive storm since the epic floods of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.  Between the flooding - record river crests in at least two spots in northern Vermont - and the damaging winds, this one will probably have parts of Vermont declared a disaster areas.

For me and my husband Jeff, things aren't nearly as bad, as it is for some people, mind you.  My house is intact, but it lacks electricity. Falling branches pulled the wires and electrical box from the house and messed with the wiring system in the house, so we had to shut off the brakers. We hope to get things fixed within the next few days.

Plus a large tree fell on Jeff's Jeep, and it's probably totaled.  With all that going on, we moved into a La Quinta Inn motel room for the night.  I'm wrote most of this missive Saturday morning from the "comforts" of this motel room.

Our situation is an inconvenience that is being resolved super quickly. I was surprised and delighted when I checked on my house at 8:30 a.m. today to find Green Mountain Power already there repairing our electrical line. They have so much work to do after this store that I was very impressed with GMP's responsiveness.

There are other Vermonters who are sorting through flood damaged homes and businesses, trying to navigate washed out roads, figuring out what to do now that the culvert under the driveway, and the driveway itself is gone.  It will take awhile for some people to recover from this.  (Had we not replaced a culvert with a larger, sturdier one this summer, Jeff and I would have lost our driveway too in this storm, along with the other trouble we had.)

This was a much more serious storm than anyone expected in Vermont. Its effects are wide ranging, causing damage from near the Gulf Coast to Quebec.  The storm had its birth in the Rocky Mountains, where it caused unseasonable snows and all-time record lows for October. The storm contributed to the strong winds in California that fanned those wildfires.

Technically, the storm was a nationwide disaster.

You usually can't trace a direct line between a storm and climate change. You can't say this storm was "caused" by climate change. You can say this storm was consistent with climate change. The storm was probably influenced by climate change and there's a very good chance climate change made this storm worse than it otherwise might have been. If there wasn't climate change maybe the wind with this storm would not have been strong enough to knock the tree onto Jeff's Jeep. Who knows?

From WVNY: Significand flooding in Richmond, Vermont Friday. 

This tempest was a product of a wonky jet stream, which many scientists see as clue that climate change is messing with weather patterns. In a sense, this is so far the biggest direct impact climate change has had on me so far.

The rainfall was particularly, oddly heavy, especially in northern and central New York, most of Vermont and southern Quebec.  Here in Vemont, the storm dumped 5.26 inches of rain on East Berkshire and 4.85 inches on Enosburg Falls. After the heavy rains of the previous week, it's no wonder the Missisquoi River reached a record high crest at North Troy,'

In the Lamoille River watershed, 4.8 inches of rain fell on Fletcher, raising that river to a record high crest in Jeffersonville. This was no ordinary Vermont flood.

In an ominous way, this type of heavy rainfall makes sense. The atmosphere can hold more water when its warmer, meaning potential precipitation is heavier. Sure, this might have happened anyway. Vermont's worst flood on record, in 1927, happened this time of year, too. But these heavy rain events are getting more frequent. Parts of the Green Mountain State were declared a disaster area due to some serious flooding just this past April.

This storm had quite a one/two punch as the winds caused serious damage, as I said all up and down the East Coast and into Quebec. The damage was certainly noticeable here in Vermont, including at my St. Albans house, as mentioned.

Up to 50,000 people lost power in Vermont. That figure was 900,000 in Quebec, making this the worst power outage in the Canadian province since the famous ice storm of 1998. A man died around Montreal when, while taking a photo of a fallen tree, another tree fell on him, CBC reported.

The wind in Vermont was almost as destructive as the flooding. At some points Friday, at least 50,000 homes and businesses were without power in Vermont. Before dawn this morning that figure had fallen to roughly 28,000, including at yours truly's house.  With numbers that big, it will take a long time before everybody has electricity. I bet some people will be out for a week or more.

Elsewhere, the wind collapsed a large barn up in Maidstone, Vermont. A section of Interstate 91 was briefly closed when a fallen tree blocked both southbound lanes. The storm also cut off internet access in much of Burlington.

The temperature gyrations with this storm were incredibly remarkable, too. Again, I won't say climate changed "caused" this temperature weirdness, but it probably influenced it. Climate change can lead to bigger extremes.

True, out in the Rockies, on the cold side of this storm, they had a nearly unprecedented cold snap for this early in the season. Some cities hit all-time record lows for October. But as Vermont was in the throes of the storm, temperatures rose to a record highs in places like Burlington, where it reached 71 degrees late in the evening of October 31,  despite the fact the sun had long since set and it was raining.

The dew point, a measure of how much moisture is in the air, reached the humid levels of a muggy July night.

Very often, an emergency brings out the best in people and that was the case here.  For instance, in Burlington's Intervale, vegetable farms put out a call on social media to help quickly harvest carrots and other crops before the Winooski River flood arrived to ruin the vegetables. More than a dozen people showed up to save the day.

Even Vermont Gov. Phil Scott got into the act.  A tree blocked a road along his route Friday, so he pulled a chainsaw out of the back of his truck and removed the tree.

As is typical with big storms, we're getting something of a break from the rough weather.  A series of small little storms will gradually sink us into winter conditions over the course of the next week, at least for awhile.

But we are in a "new normal," as the cliche goes, so we'll experience more wild storms, more temperature extremes and more weirdness, both here in Vermont and everywhere else.  As my experience shows, even when it's not that bad, this is tiring and expensive. But here we are.

Some videos:

The Winooski River racing through the city of Winooski:



During the Halloween night storm, a tornado touched down west of Philadelphia. Here's a damage video:



And an ABC News overview of the storm.

It's Foliage Season In Vermont!

My idea of Vermont foliage season. A springtime view last
year in Franklin County. 

No, despite the headline in this post, I haven't gone off the deep end. I fully understand it's spring, not autumn.

But really, we've hit what I consider the nicer of the two foliage seasons in Vermont. The one where the landscape comes to life in an explosion of green and blooms. As in right now.

I say this every year in May, but I have no idea why the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing doesn't promote this time of year like they do the traditional fall foliage season.

True the Vermont tourism web page currently has a gorgeous spring view, but still.

Maybe it's just as well. I can enjoy the scenery without rubbing elbows with too many lost tourists.

Yes, fall foliage here is gorgeous, and perhaps a bit more multi-colored than the spring foliage. However, it's hardly monochromatic out there at the moment. There's every shade of green imaginable in the buds and new leaves, and it seems to change by the minute.

Yesterday was a great example. We had near summer-like warmth in the afternoon, and the woods responded. When I drove to work early Monday morning in the northern Champlain Valley, the landscape was mostly brown with splashes of green.

By the time I drove back home in the late afternoon, the landscape was green was spots of lingering early spring brown.

Plus it's fascinating in the spring to watch the green start on the ground, in the grass, in the lowest elevations, then climb into the trees, and then climb the slopes of the soon-to-be aptly named Green Mountains.

There's other wonderful colors, of course. Pops of white shadbush blooms are emerging in the forests. Patches of white and pink trillium are about to create throw rugs of blooms on patches of wet forest floors.

It was cool and damp most of this spring, and that was great for the forsythia and daffodils. These yellow blooms almost glow in the dark they're so brilliant. I don't know a friendlier face than a happy looking daffodil bobbing gently back and forth in the breeze. Soon, meadows will be polka dotted with thousands of dandelion blooms. Who can resist that?

And it keeps coming. Next up, pink and purple crabapple trees will pop out, and lilacs. Those glorious, aromatic lilacs.  It's impossible for me to walk down a street without sticking my face and nose into every lilac bloom I encounter on my trip.

Speaking of aromas, have you ever really smelled the air this time of year, especially on a rainy or humid evening? It's a gorgeous, rich organic smell, punctuated by the sweetness of blooming flowers.

The sounds you hear this time of year are about as pleasant as you can get, too. This time of year when I take the dogs outside at dawn, we're treated to the happy sound of robins greeting the morning, and the DEE-DEE of chickadees debating each other in opposing trees.

Like every season, spring in Vermont does have its drawbacks. The black flies swarming in your face are unpleasant to say the least. You also can't go hiking in the woods and mountains. It's too muddy and wet.

But we'll take it. Amid the bitter winds and deep snow of early March, when we've already endured winter for months, I often ask myself, "Why do I live in Vermont?"

I get my emphatic answer when I walk out the door into the explosively re-awakening new green landscape.

Weather Forecasting IS Very Accurate, Even If You Don't Believe That

Joe Queenan had some fun with what he said
are wildly inaccurate meteorologists. But contrary to
much public opinion, weather forecasting has
gotten really good. We just remember the
blown predictions better than the right ones.  

Meteorologists are sensitive to that old saw that they can keep their jobs even though they're wrong so often.

Part of the sensitivity is meteorologists are correct in their forecasts the overwhelming majority of the time.

Usually when they are wrong, it's because scientists don't fully understand the atmosphere yet, which gives the weather the ability to surprise even the most seasoned and smartest forecasters.

This issue came to prominence again thanks to a humor article making the rounds the past few days.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Joe Queenan suggests firing meteorologists whose forecasts  Queenan says were inaccurate during winter storms over the past couple of months.

Maybe we should fire Queenan if he's ever written something inaccurate?

Queenan's article was tongue in cheek, but it does revisit the familiar complaint that weather forecasts are "always" wrong.

It also seems he still hasn't quite gotten over predictions of a huge blizzard in New York City back in January, one that ended barely missing the Big Apple, but slamming New England, as expected.

Queenan writes, or rants, depending on your perspective, this:

"They say we'll get a dusting and we get an avalanche. They say that Snowmageddon or the Snowpocalypse or Snowgatory is roaring in from the Midwest, and it turns out to be a smattering of harmless flakes.

Schools close when they shouldn't, subways lock up in expectation of a blizzard that never arrives, people go on long drives when they should stay home. Meanwhile in Boston, theres no way to toss woefully inaccurate weather reports into the trash because nobody has been able to dig out the trash cans."

Um, like I said, the Boston blizzard was accurately forecast back in January, but whatever.

Many forecasters indicated that New York City risked
getting two feet of snow in a January blizzard,
but much less than that fell on the Big Apple.
Photo from Reuters.  

Queenan acknowledges that predicting the weather is difficult. But still doesn't cut meteorologists slack. He also seems to think older meteorologists are better than younger ones, which is bunk.

(By the way, Queenan is 64 years old, so he's no spring chicken.)

"Frankly, I think we need young weather people to take over the industry. Athletes are young. Snowplow guys are generally young. Couldn't we hire 12 year olds to hack their weay into esoteric computer models that really work and give us a head's up about what the cloud condensation nuclei are up to?

".....so how about a Manhattan Project where we train thousands of new weather people to replace the current crew? People with lots of energy and enthusiasm and, I would hope, brains?

And Queenan said this:

"Couldn't we say that any weather-personage who misforecasts more than three snowstorms in any winter season has to go home? Forever?"

Again, I get it. Queenan is pretty much being tongue-in-cheek.

The unfortunate reality, though, is nobody can perfectly, 100 percent accurately predict the weather. At least not yet. Forecasts have gotten much, much better over the past decade or so, and continue to improve.

How does one define a blown forecast? In January, predictions that the heaviest snow - two feet of it - would get into New York City were wrong. But that much snow came close, into central Long Island. Forecasts for the rest of New England in that late January storm were spot on.

Which meteorologists do we fire for that storm, then?

As Marshall Shepherd and Chuck Doswell pointed out in a Weather Underground blog post,  a more recent storm featured forecasts that Atlanta, Georgia would be within, but near the southern edge, of some heavy snow.

"....the rain/snow line was off by 20-30 miles. That is an amazing forecast from a meteorological perspective, but the public now has an expectation of pinpoint, backyard forecasts and timing as precise as that of the official 'world clock.'"

Weather forecasting has had some pretty big and life saving successes in recent history.  As Shepherd and Doswell point out, the general jist of Superstorm Sandy's fateful left turn into the U.S. East Coast was anticipated up to a week in advance. A big scary May, 2013 tornado outbreak in Oklahoma was forecast three days ahead of time.

Weather predictions can't be absolutely precise, or always right. The atmosphere is too chaotic for us to keep track of it that well. But nobody likes uncertainty. That's human nature.

It's really difficult when you get situations like a warm, humid summer afternoon when scattered thunderstorms pop up. It's usually pretty easy to predict the general weather for that kind of afternoon. Some places will get a thunderstorm in the forecasting area, others won't.

You also don't know much in advance exactly when a particular place will get a thunderstorm. At 1 p.m.? 3 p.m.? 5:30 p.m.? You never know.

Yet I've frequently had people ask me on, say, Monday, at exactly what time a thunderstorm will roll through, for example, Burlington, Vermont on Wednesday afternoon. "I need to know if it will be raining at 3:30 p.m."

They act disappointed when you say you don't know.

I guess the only thing to do is try to continue educating the public about how to interpet weather forecasts. Educate them as to what is reasonable to expect from meteorologists, and what not to.

One fairly complicated study shows weather forecasts for the next day are accurate about 95 percent of the time. Forecasts are still pretty good but not great five days out, and you should take a forecast for 10 days from now with a giant grain of salt.

Another interesting note about weather forecasting accuracy. People tend to remember blown forecasts when rain falls when it wasn't predicted. The public is generally more relaxed about forecasts that predict rain but the sun stayed out.

Some broadcast meteorologists have a "wet bias" according to a New York Times article. Consciously or unconsciously, some TV or other media meteorologists sometimes over-predict precipitation, perhaps to avoid incurring the wrath of viewers whose picnics were rained out.

As in any profession, there are good meteorologists and a few bad ones. But none of them are paid to be right half the time. They're almost always correct.

I'm not a meteorologist, personally. I'm just a journalist with a keen interest in the weather and climate. Of course I use the National Weather Service and other forecasting organizations, both public and private, as sources. I'll occasionally give forecasts based on the expertise of these organizations.

Almost without exception, I trust these sources. (There are some weather and climate 'experts' to use the term loosely, who are wildly dumb and irresponsible.  I don't generally use them in blog posts, except for the purposes of ridicule. You figure out pretty fast who's good and who's terrible.)

When there is a forecast that turns out to be really wrong, it behooves us all to explain why the prediction was incorrect. An educated weather watcher is a prepared one. They will also understand the continued limits on the understanding of the mysteries of weather and climate.