Early Vermont Foliage Despite Record Hot Summer (They're Related)

A bit of fall foliage on my St. Albans, Vermont property this afternoon.
At the time I took this photo, the temperature was 91
degrees with a heat index of 99. 

It's gotten past 90 degrees in Vermont today, part of a record hot August, which followed a record hot July.

You'd think trees would want to stay green forever under these conditions, but anyone who's taken even a casual look around is seeing pockets of fall foliage already.

If anything there's more spots of color than usual for late August. That might not be as weird as you think. 

The heat, accompanied by dry conditions in many parts of the region, have stressed trees.

Stressed trees sometimes turn color early. Or the leaves just turn brown and drop off as the soil dries out, as you can see in some areas, like on the ledges on Interstate 89 around Colchester.

It's too soon to tell if this forebodes a weird or muted foliage season, but the danger is there. Very warm early autumns in particular, can screw up foliage.

That, of course is important to Vermont. For decades the Green Mountain State has had the reputation as one of the best places to go when those green mountains turn practically every color but green. Fall foliage has long been a necessary windfall - literally, actually if you consider the windblown, falling leaves of October. It's a big piece of what keeps Vermont's economy afloat.

More than three million tourists annually make a pilgrimage to Vermont each fall to basically watch leaves die.

The weather that sets up our fall foliage season has been weird in Vermont in recent years. Since it involves warmth, I suspect climate change is partly to blame, but I honestly don't have the scientific chops to prove that.

Last year tied for the second hottest September on record, topped by the latest heat wave on record in late September. The unusual heat extended into October, which became the hottest October on record. Dates as late as October 24 had near normal temperatures for July.

The foliage season was very late last year, and muted. In the warmer valleys, some color lasted into the first days of November, which is really weird. If this unusually warm weather continues through September and early October, we'll have another in a series of late foliage seasons.

It's gotten bizarre Tourists were told in the past to visit Vermont between very late September until Columbus Day to see the best foliage. In recent years, it has come later than that.

Last year, I was in a scenic, hilly section of Richmond, Vermont on October 8, an uncomfortably warm, humid afternoon reminiscent of a typical August dog day. The hills were almost entirely green at a time of year they should be just about at peak foliage.

While warm autumns make foliage seasons late, it doesn't necessarily doom their brilliance. September 2016 was tied with last year as the second hottest September on record and the foliage that year was pretty good. September, 2015 holds the record for the hottest September, yet the foliage that October was absolutely brilliant.

There's a lot going on that scientists don't yet understand about what triggers a good foliage season. I have to wonder, though, whether abrupt cooldowns in late September and early October save the season. In 2015, the final days of September and the first week in October were colder than normal. That might have saved that season. Last year, as mentioned, it was July in October and foliage was, meh.

A pretty orange falllen maple leaf in my
yard today, photographed while a heat
advisory was in effect. 

It does seem, though, that when unusual heat extends into October, we get some muted foliage.

There's no telling how Vermont's weather will play out this autumn. Early September looks hot, but beyond that is anybody's guess.

There are other factors that threaten to dull Vermont's fall foliage in future years. The most immediate threat is the emerald ash borer, which will soon kill pretty much all the white ash trees in Vermont, just as this terrible insect has done in other parts of the nation.

White ash adds beautiful golds and purples to the fall foliage palette, and those will sadly be gone in the coming years.

Looking further ahead, in coming decades some of the trees that create many of the most brilliant foliage, namely sugar maples, will tend to head north as the climate in Vermont gradually turns a little too hot for these trees.

They'll be replaced in part by oaks, which tend not to have as vibrant color as maples.

No matter how fall foliage season 2018 plays out - dull and late or vibrant and on time, there will be at least pockets of absolute beauty. And most likely more than just pockets.

Temperatures are in the 90s today, but those little patches of red sugar maple leaves out there now do feel like a little tiny breath of crisp autumn air.

Extreme Global Heat In February Not The End Of The World, But.......

Hot times across the world in February, the most
above average warm month on record  

As worldwide temperature and climate assessments for February's global temperatures, jaws have been dropping among the climate scientists, meteorologists and weather geeks of the world.

The world was off the charts much warmer than normal, far more above average than any other month in recorded history. This follows December and January, which also set records for the greatest departures above normal.  

However, February was just ridiculous. February was a bit over 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal over the globe. Two degrees doesn't sound like all that much. After all, do you really notice the difference between, say,  55 and 57 degrees?

But a two degree departure from normal for a month distributed over the whole world is just insane and nothing close to that has been observed before.

February was also, incredibly, the tenth consecutive month a global high temperature record was set. As the Associated Press reported, government scientists sputtered that the wildly high temperatuers were "astronomical" or "staggering." "strange," or "insane."

The departure from normal in the Arctic was especially off the charts. You know you're in trouble with extreme warmth when the mapmakers at NOAA run out of colors to depict how hot it was in parts of the Arctic in February.

Scientists don't usually use huge superlatives like this, so you know something is up.

Here's Georgia Tech climate scientist Kim Cobb, who, according to the Associated Press, doesn't get too, too excited about new high temperatures being broken. It's been happening all the time, she's used to it.

But this is different. Says Cobb, quoted by the AP:

"When I look at the new February 2016 temperatures, I feel like I'm looking at something out of a sic-fi movie. In a way we are: It's like someone plucked a value off a graph from 2030 and stuck it on a graph of present temperatures. It is a portent of things to come, and it is sobering that such temperature extremes are already on our doorstep."

February temperatures were incredible, for sure. But before you panic, the world is going to temporarily cool off a little, and soon. A strong El Nino, that periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean looks like it's about to start waning, as it usually does after several month.

El Ninos make global temperatures go up, whether or not there's global warming. For the record, there IS global warming, so the combination of El Nino and climate change led to these worldwide heat records to be broken so spectacularly.

Climate change will keep happening, but El Nino might go away, at least for while. It always waxes and wanes.

A diminishing El Nino will allow the Earth's temperature to at least temporarily start easing back. Still, with global temperatures elevated from fossil fuel, don't expect a huge global cooldown.

Many climate observers are saying that we'll once again start getting months that are not the absolute warmest on record. Still well above normal, but not always record heat. This slight global cooling will probably start later this year and continue into 2017.

Of course, we can't be absolutely certain of that, but that's how it looks.

However, with climate change, you have to look at the long term trend, not one or two years. There was previously an enormous global temperature spike back in 1998 with a huge El Nino. Back then, we were told it was a glimpse of what the future might hold.

That future arrived, roughly after 2008. Temperatures between 2008 or so and 2013 were consistently close to the 1998 level.

Then, starting in 2014, global temperatures spiked again, peaking in 2015 and the first few months of this year it turns out.

Now we have another glimpse of the future. I've seen it where I live in St. Albans, Vermont. I know the little dot on the map where I live, St. Albans, is totally unrepresentative of the Earth as a whole.

However, I can't under play how bizarre the weather has been up here in northwestern Vermont over the past few months.

I wore shorts and a t-shirt outdoors all afternoon on Christmas Eve. In Vermont. In February, I dug up some soil to create new perennial bids. No snow, and the ground was totally not frozen. Unheard of in Vermont for February.

My daffodils and day lilies started coming up during the second week in March. Never seen that before either. But I've never seen the temperature reach 70 degrees in the beginning of March, either.

Will this past winter be a glimpse of what things will be like five, ten, fifteen years down the road? It's a distinct possibility.

So Cobb, the Georgia Tech climate scientist is right. We got a glimpse of our future and it's probably coming sooner than many of us think.

The cumulative effects of this mess is what really bothers me. Even as the global temperatures likely cool temporarily as we head toward 2017, world wide temperatures will almost certainly remain much higher than we were used to in the 20th century.

That leads to more climate extremes. We'll continue a trend of heat waves that kills thousands of people over the course of a month extreme droughts that cause many more deaths, or extreme storms that do the same, and on and on.

Meanwhile, the spike in global heat this winter also has policy makers questioning whether the world can adhere to the United Nation's goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celcius above 20th centry normals.

It this winter's warmth is a sign that global warming is accelerating, and even if not, policy makers with new analyses say we probably won't be able to cut our use of fossil fuel fast enough to keep the warming below 2 degree Celcius reports the Washington Post.

The Post says rewewable energy sources are increasing exponentially, but rising populations and living standards mean that fossil fuels will continue to be in high demand well into this century.

By the way, a bit of a feedback loop is probably contributing to this winter's high temperatures. The Arctic has had record low sea ice extent all winter. That means more heat is released into the atmosphere, keeping the extreme warmth going, especially in the Arctic.

That, in turn, means sea ice won't form like it normally does, and it will start to melt sooner, and that will lead to more relative warmth coming from the Arctic Ocean into the atmosphere, etc. etc.

Yeah, as I said, it will cool down a bit soon because of natural factors. But the overall trend upward shows no sign of stopping or slowing over the long haul. Be prepared to continue seeing a new climate that you and I and the rest of the world are totally unaccustomed to.

Winter Slogs On In New England: Arctic Cold, More Snow

Got snow? New England does. And they're going to get more.  

In the snowy wastelands of New England, it's cold this morning. Really cold. Temperatures were flirting with minus 20 in some northern areas as dawn broke.

Berlin and Whitefield, New Hampshire were at 22 below at 6 a.m this morning.

When there's deep snow, like there is now in southeastern New England, that really makes temperatures drop even more than usual on clear, calm winter nights.

That's the case now. It was around 10 to 12 below in the suburbs outside of Boston at dawn.

It was 16 below in Norwood, Mass and 12 below in Bedford. Brrr!

Next on the New England agenda: Snow. Again.

This next snowfall will mostly target northern New England, especially Maine.

That storm from the west was crossing the Great Lakes this morning, as expected, and will move east toward New England tonight.

Forecasters still think the storm will get much stronger, very fast, once it hits the coast of New England. If anything, it will emerge into the Atlantic a bit further south than I thought yesterday, which means some of the heavier snow might also creep a little further south than I thought yesterday.

Snow forecasts for northern New England have remained consistent since yesterday.

In northern Massachusetts, north of the Mass Pike, especially in the eastern half of the state, there's a winter weather advisory for four to six inches of snow Friday into early Saturday. This includes areas just north of Boston, and in the suburbs that got hit hardest by the blizzard earlier this week.

Usually four to six inches of snow is no big deal in New England. But since the Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire winter weather advisory zone got the most snow out of the blizzard -- three feet of it -- this four to six inches of additional accumulation will be a real pain in the neck.

It's even possible they'll get more than that, if the storm strengthens faster than expected on Friday, or loops a little more south than now forecast before looping north toward the Canadian Maritimes.

Areas well to the south and southwest of Boston will probably only get one to three inches of snow out of this.

Up north, in northern New York and Vermont, which largely missed out on the blizzard earlier this week, and in much of New Hampshire, there will be a mid-sized snowfall tonight through Friday night of three to six inches.

There is a winter weather advisory from this evening through Friday evening for the northwestern half of New York, the northern half of Vermont and all of New Hampshire for that forecasted three to six inches of snow.

A little less might fall down in the southern Champlain Valley toward Middlebury and Rutland, Vermont, maybe two or three inches. In New York's St. Lawrence Valley, the northern Green Mountains and in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the snow could be a little more substantial, maybe five to eight inches.

Then there's Maine. Poor Maine. The southeastern half of the state got pounded by that blizzard earlier this week. Maine, and the Canadian Maritimes, are going to take the brunt of this new storm Friday and early Saturday.

A winter storm warning is up for all of Maine. Another six to 12 inches of snow is expected with this storm across Maine.

By the way, blowing snow is going to be a problem again region wide as the storm strengthens and north winds pick up Friday. Between the new snow and the stuff that's already on the ground, there's going to be a lot of trouble with visibility, and big drifts quickly forming on roads Friday into Saturday.

This storm will fall a little short of being a blizzard, but it will be blizzard like at times. Especially in Maine.

This weekend, it will be brutally cold in New England with some northern areas barely making it to zero Saturday afternoon, with overnight lows well below zero.

Intense winter cold will last all of next week, too, waxing and waning a bit as the week goes on.

Yesterday, I mentioned the possibility of another nor'easter around Monday or so.

The forecasting computer models are still all over the place with this one. Yesterday morning, a lot of the models had New England in the bullseye. Later, many forecasting tools had the storm heading well out to sea to the south and missing New England entirely.

The models are still all totally disagreeing on this potential storm, so it's really anybody's guess as to what, if anything will happen. I have often seen a pattern among the models of promising a storm, backing off, then at the last minute saying, "Oh, yeah, you're going to get a storm after all."

The computer models, at least several of them anyway, did that prior to the blizzard that struck earlier this week.

So, in terms of Monday's forecast, I'll throw my hands up for now and not commit to one line of reasoning or another.

I, along with everyone else, will just wait for more updated forecasts.

U.S. Wildfire Fighting Budget Not Up To Snuff, Says Government Agency

The drought on the West Coast and in the Southwest means the wild fire season this year in that neck of the woods looks like it will be a bad one.  

A California wildfire last year.  

Unfortunately, it looks like there might not be enough money budgeted to fight the fires. 

In a press release issued last week, the USDA said they expect a shortfall of $470 million to fight fires this season.

Fighting these fires is expensive. The government has budgeted $1.4 billion to fight the fires, and the USDA forecasts  at least $1.8 billion will be needed.

Of course, if the government runs out of money to fight fires, they won't put their fire hoses and water dropping aircraft away. They'll continue to battle the blazes, and just take money from other programs, some of which would help prevent or mitigate future fires, according to the USDA.

The cost of fire fighting has gone up for two main reasons. Fire seasons are longer and worse than they used to be, probably because of climate change.  Over the past three decades the fire season length has increased by more than two moths and the annual acreage burned in the U.S. has more than doubled to 7 million acres annually.

And a lot of us are building houses in woodsy places that easily go up in flames.

So firefighters have to spend a lot of resources trying to protect those houses.

Hmm. Maybe building a dream house in some tinder dry wilderness isn't such a good idea after all.

First Day Of Fall Means People Now Begging For Winter Forecast

Astronomical fall, the autumn equinox arrives today. (Just as a cold front drops temperatures in Vermont to some of the coldest we've seen so far this season. Perfect!)

A wintry scene on Burlington, Vermont's Church Street
Marketplace last December.  There's no telling what
this winter will be like, despite the assurances
of all the almanacs and weather forecasters.  

The onset of fall means everybody wants to know what this winter is going to be like.

Every year all the almanacs, the National Weather Service,  all the private weather firms -- AccuIntelliWeatherChannel or whatever -- will give their grand forecast on where it will be cold, snowy, mild etc.

The forecasts are always wrong, of course. Nobody, no matter how good, can nail the weather pattern three or four months in advance. Don't let them ever tell you differently.

Oh sure, they might predict aspects of the weather pattern correctly, and be partly right about the winter, but they won't get it super correct.

So stop asking if this winter is going to be cold or not.

OK, I'll give you my forecast for the winter anyway, but only the parts that I know I'm going to be right about. I don't know whether it's going to be snowier than normal in Vermont or not, or if this winter will be frigid or balmy.

Here's what I can tell you for sure:

• It will snow somewhere in Vermont in each of these months: November, December, January, February and March
• Many more times than once, somebody will drive too fast and too recklessly, and be paying too much attention to texting, while driving on slushy, icy or snowy roads. This person will cause an accident and a bunch of people will be late for work as a result.
• Somebody will complain that it is too cold, too warm, too snowy, not snowy enough, too dark, too cloudy, too icy, too icky. The chances are very high the person doing the complaining will be me.
• If we do get a big dump of snow, a good portion of the Vermont population will come down with a dangeous, highly contagious illness called White Powder Syndrome. Those with WPS completely lose their  concentration and can't work. They only cure is a day on the snow skiing, riding, snowshoeing or snowmobiling. 
• At least a few women and probably some men, will risk frostbite and other injuries because they will wear inadequate clothes outside, because looking fashionable is obviously more important than keeping warm. 
• State highway crews will simultaneously use too much salt and not enough salt on the roads during a snowfall, at least in the eyes of many motorists. 
• On a slow news day, some members of the news media will breathlessly report on how incredibly cold it is. The cold in question will not be extreme as reported, but be about normal for a Vermont winter. 
• By late February, some Vermonters will be so sick of the gray and chill of winter that they will be drooling over seed catalogs, gardening magazines and the spring issue of Vermont Life with all the gusto of a pervert with his or her porn stash.

So there you have it, my Vermont winter forecast. Please feel free to add any of your other predictions of what the winter of 2013-14 will be like in the Green Mountain State. 

New Jersey Town Adapts To Climate Change By Rising From the Depths

Adapting to the heat, drought, fires, floods and storms brought on by climate change is going to be disruptive and expensive, no doubt about that.

Should downtown Highlands, New Jersey
be raised by ten feet to avoid future bad storms and
climate change?  

Here in Vermont, we are struggling to make culverts bigger, buying out low lying properties, shoring up highways and streets to make things more resistent to the floods we seem to be getting more and more of.

The cost and complexity of just little Vermont's adaption is daunting, as I wrote for the Burlington Free Press back in February.

If you think that's difficult and expensive, check out one New Jersey town. The not very well named town of Highlands, New Jersey was smacked hard by Hurricane Sandy last October.

According to ClimateProgress.org, Highlands is going to raise its entire downtown by ten feet.

Says ClimateProgress:

"City officials estimate the cost of elevating the town 8 to 11 feet would range from $150 to $200 million--in comparison to the $574 million the real estate is valued at post-Sandy, according to assessment records."

 About 1,250 Highlands homes and businessses were damaged or destroyed during Sandy. With the prospect of rising sea levels and the possibility of stronger coastal storms in a warmer world, the city fears such a disaster will happen again unless they take the drastic action of raising the community's elevation.

No word yet on how Highlands would pay for such a project. They do hope for help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but that funding is highly uncertain, to say the least.

And Highlands is just one community and the project cost is estimated at $200 million. What of all the other low-lying cities and towns along coastlines and vulnerable waterways?  We're talking trillions of dollars.

If the worst of the climate change predictions come true, maybe some coastal and low lying communities will just have to drown.  A sad prospect indeed.

I guess we can only hope climate change over the next century won't turn out to be as bad as some people fear.

Hurricane Season Still Looks Busy This Year

For the flood-weary eastern half of the United States, this can't be good news.

The Atlantic hurricane season is still expected to be busy this year.

Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.
It looks like this year will be another busy hurricane season  

I say that's bad for the water-logged East because hurricanes moving inland drop huge amounts of rain, often long after the strong winds from the storm subside.

Ex-hurricanes can wander far inland into the Southeast, the Mississippi and Ohio valleys and interior New England, among other places.

With the ground soaked in many of these locations, many inches of rain from a hurricane or former hurricane can really spell trouble.

Just ask people in Vermont who suffered a huge flood after dying Hurricane Irene dumped heavy rain on an already soggy state in 2011. The resulting flood was monstrous.

We've already had four tropical storms in the Atlantic this year, though fortunately none of them have amounted to too much.  With ocean water temperatures above normal and rather favorable wind patterns, it seems likely there will be quite a few tropical storms and hurricanes.

The tropics have been quiet for the past week or so because a huge amount of dust from sand storms in the Sahara blew out into the Atlantic Ocean and crossed over all the way to South America and the Caribbean.  This is normal and happens from time to time. The dust suppresses  the formation of tropical storms.

But imagine standing there in Miami and breathing a bit of dust that had been stepped on by a camel in Morocco a couple weeks earlier.  It can happen.

Anyway, the dust is subsiding. And though hurricane seasons starts June 1, it really gets going in earnest around mid-August and reaches a peak during September.

There are already signs there might be some tropical storms wanting to form next week. God knows where they might end up, but if there's a bunch of them over the next several weeks, it stands to reason at least one or two would hit the United States.

All we can do is hope that doesn't happen.