More Extremes Due, But Vermont To (Mostly) Escape Again

What looks like a narrow line
of showers with a cold front
in Oklahoma uesterday was
a line of bugs, moarch butterflies,
a few birds and other critters getting
a push southward by the oncoming
north winds as they migrated
south for the winter. 

The wild ride of weather in the United States over the past month has been something. It's one that brought all-time record October record highs to no fewer than nine states and dozens of cities in the eastern United States.

It's also a pattern that brought record September snows and cold to the northern Rockies and southwestern Canada.

No rest for the weary, as a number of potential events are shaping up over the next week.  Details are uncertain, but I think the weather might end up in the news again.  Just probably not here in Vermont.

The heat wave in the Southeast is finally, slowly breaking down, pushed away by inevitable October cold fronts.

One of those fronts will arrive here in Vermont Monday and slow down. This front will grab lots of deep moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and dump a good slug of rain on most of us.  Places in southern Vermont and from the Green Mountains east will easily get more than an inch of rain out of this.

We'll have to watch this a bit, because parts of north central and northeast Vermont got a lot of rain last week, too. There could be some minor flooding, but nothing too horrible is expected.

While we enjoy some pleasant October weather after the front clears on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, some other interesting weather systems could take shape. How wild things get really kind of depends on whether things come together in just the right way.

A cold front, stronger than the one that is affecting us Monday, will take shape in the northern Rockies. That threatens them with another possible snowstorm.

Our friends in Cut Bank, Montana, an epicenter of the epic snowstorm in September, can expect another dump and near record cold by Tuesday and Wednesday. Luckily, the snow won't be as deep, and the cold not as long lasting as the last episode.

This time, though, forecasters say it's possible snow could spread over much of the Dakotas and a good chunk of Nebraska later in the week. It'll also be quite windy in these areas as the quick cold blast moves in.

The cold front will eventually reach us next weekend, but at this early stage I don't expect any super big drama in New England from that. But stay tuned.

Meanwhile, a weird storm is expected to get going and stall well off the southeastern New England coast. A strong ridge of high pressure - the same system that should give Vermont fine weather during the middle of the week -looks like it wants to trap that storm in place.

It's also possible that the storm, sitting over the warm Gulf Stream waters, could take on some subtropical characteristics.

Depending upon where the storm sets up and the position of the high pressure in southeastern Canada, coastal regions of southern New England could get a long period of persistent swells, wind and rain, which could end up causing some beach erosion. Again, we'll see!

The image I put in this post is interesting to us weather geeks, and maybe you.  It's been awhile since a decent cold front moved through Oklahoma, but one went through yesterday.   As it pressed south and the winds shifted into the north, and pushed a band of migrating insects, monarch butterflies and a few birds southward with it.

Weather radar picked up what looked like a thin line of showers heading south with the cold front. But that line of "showers" had no rain. It was those bugs and other critters being pushed southward by the onslaught of autumn.

Pretty cool!

That "Rain Shower" In California Was Actually A Bunch Of Ladybugs

The green blob on radar in southern California looks
like a rain shower, but it was a swarm of ladybugs

The other day, weather radar appeared to show a large, isolated rain shower moving southward from California's San Bernadino Mountains toward San Diego.

It was an odd looking shower, and not one that was forecast. As some of you might have heard, this wasn't a rain shower at all. It was ladybugs. Lots of them.

The ladybug swarm was about 80 miles in diameter, flying at elevations of between 5,000 and 9,000 feet above sea level. The most concentrated part of the swarm was about ten miles in diameter.

According to scientists, this weird "shower" of ladybugs is perfectly normal. As the Los Angeles Times wrote:

"In early spring, after temperatures reach 65 degrees, adult convergent lady beetles mate and migrate from the Sierra Nevada to valley areas where they eat aphids and lay eggs.

In the early summer, once the aphid numbers decline, beetles become hungry and migrate to higher elevations."

Weather spotters in the San Bernadino mountains said from the ground, the swarm didn't look remarkable. People did see "specks" flying by, which were individual ladybugs in the lower levels of the swarm heading south.

This isn't the only time bugs or other living things show up on radar. Expanding rings often show up on weather radar in and around Austin, Texas in the evenings. That's bats coming out of their roosts under bridges and such for evening meals.

Big mayfly hatches sometimes show up in the Midwest, too. As recently as May, swarms of midges appeared on radar near Cleveland.

New England's Newly Tornadic Reputation Got Another Boost Monday

A storm near Barre, Vermont Monday. Photo via Twitter, Geoff Marion

The other day, I mentioned in this blog thingy that the Northeastern United States is having an unusually tornadic year, even if the nation as the whole is relatively quiet on the twister front.

New England's tornadic reputation was burnished Monday when more tornado warnings were issued in central Massachusetts, and in of all places, the rugged White Mountains region of northern New Hampshire.

It remains to be seen as to whether any of the rapidly rotating storms detected on radar Monday actually produced tornadoes that touched down. But they might have. I imagine National Weather Service meteorologists might be looking for evidence of that today.

But certainly, funnel clouds were sighted in northern New Hampshire, and what appeared to be a rapidly rotating wall cloud was filmed over Granby, Massachusetts.

Certainly, there was plenty of wind damage to trees and power lines and such across much of New England. That includes here in Vermont, though there were no tornado warnings and no obvious signs of  twisters in the Green Mountain State.

Some of highlights of the Vermont damage included a damaged barn and numerous snapped off trees in Waitsfield, trees down on Interstate 89 near Waterbury and Interstate 91 in Orange County. Part of Route 7A near Shaftsbury were closed by downed trees and power lines.

Possible funnel cloud in Durham, New Hampshire Monday. Photo
 by Julie Smith

At least we got some needed rain. In some cases lots of it. In a few cases, almost too much. Burlington, got 2.29 inches of rain Monday, a record high precipitation level for the date.

I have to check but I think Monday was Burlington's wettest day in at least a year, if not more.

Flash flooding was reported in northwestern New York. And I'm sure there were some washed out or eroded road edges and driveways in parts of the Champlain Valley and down the Winooski River Valley in central Vermont as big rains fell in short periods of time.

Jericho reported 1.44 inches of rain from just one thunderstorm. The same initial thunderstorm Monday afternoon dumped 1.81 inches of rain on Middlesex. We did need the rain. It was super dry around my house in St. Albans before Monday.

Then, a pair of downpours blustered through in the afternoon, and then we had several hours in the evening in which it rained constantly, sometimes fairly heavily.

The rest of the week looks nice, with plenty of sun and comfortable temperatures and humidity levels. It looks like it will rain again this coming weekend. At this point, it doesn't look like we're in line for any severe thunderstorms, but there might be locally heavy rain again.

Too Many Tornado Chasers With Saturday's Tornadoes

As expected, there were quite a few tornadoes in parts of the Great Plains on Saturday, all the way from Minnesota to Texas.

Also, as expected, there are quite a few new tornado videos on YouTube this morning. 

Luckily, it appears the largest, worst tornadoes seemed to avoid hitting large population centers, so that's a good thing.

One bit of concern. Atmospheric Scientist Marshall Shepherd - you might know him as host of "Weather Geeks" on the Weather Channel - shared an image on Twitter today that he saw from Paul Knightley, a British meteorologist with an interest in tornadoes

The image is in this post. Click on it to make it bigger and easier to see.

It's a Doppler radar image of a tornado, I think in Oklahoma, but the post was unclear. The different colors mostly represent different directions the wind is blowing.

You see the blue/green and red/pink in very close proximity to each other, and the colors seem "hotter" at the point at which they're closest together.

That's the circulation of a tornado. Winds are blowing in opposite directions on either side of the tornado, so that's why you get the contrast.

This isn't the disturbing part. It's just a classic radar image of a tornado. Great for meteorology textbooks, if they make textbooks anymore.

Here's what bothers me: Look in the mostly purple area, just to the right of the tornado. If you look closely, those red dots are tornado chasers on a nearby road, filming and watching the tornado.

It appears the tornado is heading to the northeast in this image, just to the north of the long line of tornado chasers.  But what if the twister suddenly decided to change directions, as they sometimes do, and make a run at the chasers?

With the tornado so close and so many cars in the way, they never would have been able to get out of the way in time is my guess.

If what I'm saying is true, this is worrying. We already had some tornado chasers die in 2013. Is it worth losing more lives to get videos of tornadoes?  Yes, I like those videos and watch them all the time. I don't think boycotting them wouldn't change anything, but still.

Just a bit chilling, ya think?

Cool Image: Weather Radar Catches HUGE Flock of Swallows

That half circle shaped "shower" in the middle
of this weather radar image is not rain, but tree swallows.  

In the radar loop in this post, taken a few days ago, you see, if you look closely, a few showers trudging slowly southeastward near Niantic, Connecticut.

Then what's that?  What looks like another shower abruptly forms in the center of the screen, near Old Lyme, Connecticut, expands and flies super fast westward and dissipates.

Now THAT'S some weird weather!

Or not. That slow shower near Niantic was rain, for sure, but that weird westward moving image in the radar is a big, big, big flock of tree swallows taking off

The flock was so big weather radar picked it up.

My understanding is the sheer number of these tree swallows is absolutely spectacular. There's even an outfit called Connecticut River Expeditions which will take you out there this time of year to watch the show. Tree swallows congregate by the millions in the lower Connecticut River  basin in late August and September.

Watch. It's pretty cool. Especially for us weather geeks: