Still Wowed By May Cold, Snow, Some More Still On The Way

A wintry looking evening in St. Albans, Vermont Saturday as snow showers
loom over Lake Champlain to the west. 

On those very rare occasions when there is a May snowfall,  it usually happens at night. The strong May sun during the day will change the snow to rain, or at least prevent any accumulation.

The extreme cold of the atmospheric blast of frigid air that roared down from the Arctic this weekend was so strong, that it snowed during the day as far south as New Jersey. That is what impresses me most about this unreal spring cold snap.

True, most of the heaviest accumulations of snow came Friday night and before dawn Saturday.  But dustings of snow briefly covered the ground in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and the lower Hudson Valley of New York.  Those little instant snowstorms were created by snow squalls.

The cold was so intense, but the May sun is so strong, it all created towering clouds. Normally those towering clouds would create intermittent downpours of rain this time of year. But the atmosphere up above was record cold for this time of year. So it snowed.  A couple videos are at the bottom of this post.

Islip, Long Island reported a latest on record trace of snow.  That is actually more snow there than fell in February, when it didn't snow at all in Islip.

Before the snow squalls, the main accumulation of snow came as a storm passed near southern New England and off the coast.

These types of storms sometimes form something called a "deformation band" to the northwest of the storm center. These cause narrow bands of heavy snow accumulations during storms in the middle of winter. But not in May, in my experience.

Except this time. One such "deformation band" set up in southwestern Vermont and adjacent New York, mostly near and east of Glens Falls and Saratoga.

A spot at a 1,300 foot elevation in Cambridge, New York,  less than 10 miles from the Vermont border, received a whopping 12 inches of snow.  Nearby Shaftsbury, Vermont had 10.5 inches. Arlington, Vermont clocked in with 8.8 inches and high elevation Woodford, east of Bennington, reported 8.5 inches.

In northern Vermont, snowfall was a little lighter, but still impressive in spots. Concord, in the Northeast Kingdom reported 7 inches and Cabot received 6.5 inches.

Wide areas of the nation experienced almost unprecedented May cold on Saturday. According to The Weather Channel, Van Wert, Ohio, plunged to 18 degrees, the only time it's been under 20 degrees there in May, with 127 years of records.

Fort Wayne, Indiana got down to 23 degrees. Until Saturday, the latest in the year it had gotten that cold in Fort Waye was April 20, in 1897 and 1904, says The Weather Channel. Binghamton, New York set its all time record low for May with 24 degrees. Indianapolis, Indiana did the same with their reading of 27 degrees.

Wild looking snow squall over Staten Island, New York on
Saturday. Photo by Collin Gross, @CollinGrosswx

Daytime temperatures were impressive as well. At 4 p.m. Saturday - remember, this was May 9 - temperature in Montpelier was 29 degrees.

Last night here in Vermont, the wind kept blowing and the core of the very coldest of the air passed by to the northeast, so temperatures in Vermont didn't bottom out as low as they could have.  Montpelier actually rose into the low 30s after dark and stayed that way through dawn, for instance.

The air overhead with this cold blast is still frigid, and will stay that way for a few more days.  There's even a reinforcing shot of cold air coming, but it won't be quite as bad as Saturday.

Today will be "warmer" than Saturday, with highs in Vermont in the 40s to around 50.  That's still close to 20 degrees colder than normal.

A small storm will cross New England Monday. This time, it will be mostly rain, but some mid and high elevation snow is possible in southern and central Vermont.  It just can't stop, can it? Unfortunately, it looks like most or all of the precipitation will miss bone-dry northwestern Vermont.

A reinforcing shot of cold air will come in Monday night and Tuesday, so we'll need to watch for more hard frosts and freezes Monday, Tuesday and maybe Wednesday nights.   Highs Tuesdays will again be frigid for this time of year, with readings staying at or below 50 degrees during the afternoon.

After that, a real, gradual warmup will begin.

There's another really intense ball of frigid air setting up for next week near Hudson Bay, but definitely don't let that scare you.  Unlike the one that came down on us Saturday, this next one will sit and spin for a few days up there, then get shunted almost due east into far northeastern Canada. It'll be a sure miss for us. Thank Gawd!

The only reason I mention that next ball of cold air is there's a good chance it could send a "back door" cold front down on New England, which would temporarily limit the amount of warming we get a week from now. But again, don't, if we get that cold front, it will only be somewhat cool for May, not scarily cold.

For the rest of the month, it does look like squirts of warm air will keep trying to punch into the northeast, including northern New England, which will help make this frigid spell just a bad memory.

Videos:

Jon M. woke up to this snowy scene in the green, or at least formerly spring green lower Hudson Valley of New York.




A guy named Mitch, a meteorologist and snow enthusiast who goes by @VermonsterWx on Twitter - great to follow by the way, filmed this at his high elevation home in Readsboro, Vermont. The snow was actually dry and powdery, like winter.



And here's some clown mowing his lawn in the May snow. I think it's in Pennsylvania, but I'm not sure:

"Amplified" Weather Pattern Keeps The Severe Storms, Weird Weather Going

Satellite view of a storm system in the middle of the nation on
Tuesday. It's rare to get a storm this well developed and
wound up this late in the spring. 

It's true that the current extreme weather pattern in much of the nation did not produce the expected huge tornado outbreak in the southern Plains Monday.

That's great, of course. But the current weather pattern is keeping a large part of the nation in a
daily grind of flooding, spots of severe thunderstorms, almost daily tornadoes somewhere in the nation, and other bad stuff.

Storm systems coming across the country this week are stronger than they normally would be this time of year.

It's an incredibly weird, stormy May in large swaths of the nation, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Some videos at the bottom of this post illustrate some of the damaging weather.

It's hard to get precise as to what will happen where beyond three days from now, so we'll stick to what's happening now, and what will occur in the next couple of days.

Here in Vermont, there might be a couple moments of "interesting" weather over the next week or so, but it won't be a wild as other parts of the nation.

The weather pattern is what weather geeks would call amplified.  That just means the dips and upward bumps in the jet stream are bigger than usual.

Generally in the winter, the jet stream is amplified, meaning there are deep southward pushes in the jet stream matched by big bulges northward.

By this time of year, the jet stream is normally much less "amplified" as we head toward summer. The dips in the jet stream aren't that big, and the northward bulges aren't impressive, either. Plus the entire jet stream tends to shift northward into Canada, leaving most of us here in the United States with relatively few extremes in the weather department.

The jet stream this week has clearly not gotten the memo that winter is over. It sinks way down deep into the western United States, created odd snowstorms and an unusual chill. Meanwhile, a strong ridge of high pressure is over the Southeast, which will create a heat wave there over the next few days.

The battle zone between the cold west and the hot southeast runs diagonally from roughly and broadly from Texas to the Northeast. That battleground is where the repeated storms and possible flooding will occur.

TEMPERATURE EXTREMES

The cold out west is incredibly impressive for this time of year.  High temperatures this time of year are normally in the low 90s in Las Vegas. Today's expected high temperature there is just 64 degrees, which is chillier than the expected high way up north in Burlington, Vermont, where it's supposed to get up to 67 degrees today.

The snow across parts of Colorado, Wyoming and the Black Hills of South Dakota has been impressive, too. Some higher elevations in Colorado got up to 20 inches of new snow over the past couple of days. There's massive tree damage in some towns, like Colorado Springs, as several inches of wet, heavy snow clung to the leaves on the trees, weighing them down so branches snapped.

Meanwhile, record heat will grip the Southeast. High temperatures near 100 degrees are likely over the Memorial Day weekend in parts of Georgia, the Carolinas and some Gulf Coast states. Some of these readings would be all-time high temperature records for the entire month of May.

THE STORMY BATTLE ZONE

As mentioned the Midwest, and occasionally parts of the Northeast are in a storm zone in part because of the temperature contrasts between the west and Southeast.

To give you one example of this weird contrast: It snowed in western Nebraska Tuesday, but in the eastern part of the state, there were tornadoes.

Severe thunderstorms and perhaps a few tornadoes are possible
tomorrow in areas shaded in yellow and orange.

There were actually more tornadoes reported Tuesday - a preliminary count of 38 - in the midde of the nation than on what was to have been the great big outbreak on Monday, when the preliminary count was 22 twisters. (These numbers are subject to change as the National Weather Service investigates tornado reports.)

More tornadoes are possible today in parts of northeastern Oklahoma, Missouri and eastern Kansas.  On Thursday, the interesting weather heads to the Northeast, where severe thunderstorms are possible.

The greatest risk on Thursday of severe weather is in Pennsylvania, where there could even be a few tornadoes out of this. Some strong to severe storms could develop in northern New York and move into western Vermont late in the afternoon or the evening.

Though there won't be widespread bad storms, a couple spots in western Vermont especially could have thunderstorm winds strong enough to knock down some trees or branches. It could also hail.

Another round of severe storms looks like it could strike the Northeast Saturday. Early indications are Vermont will get a good slug of rain, but we will be too far north to get the severe thunderstorms.

There will also be almost daily chances of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in the southern Plains through the weekend.

Flooding will continue to be a threat, as if there hasn't been enough of it in the middle of the nation already. Flood warnings remain in effect across a broad area of Missouri, southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma.

Flooding has been extreme in Oklahoma, with one creek rising from six feet to 36 feet deep within a day.

Flood warnings and watches are also up for western South Dakota.

The stormy spring continues on....

Some videos:

Television station KTVQ aired this tornado video from Oklahoma on Monday:



CBS News report really shows the great extent of Oklahoma flooding:



NBC News shows a woman in Oklahoma being rescued from rushing water:



And a news report of the snow and tree damage in the Denver/Colorado Springs area:

Cool Video Of Skinny But Intense Little Tornado In Indiana

In this screen grab, you can see the skinny white tornado
to the left, between the brick house and the white truck

Some of the tornadoes that ripped through parts of the Midwest last week hit in Indiana.

One tornado in particular, near Corydon, Indian was especially interesting

It was the skinniest little thing. If your arms were outstretched, they would almost stretch from one side of the tornado to the other.

The tornado later widen and intensified, becoming an EF-1 strength storm that damaged homes and buildings in nearby New Middletown.

A home security camera captured the drama, then after that, there's an even better video in the same neighborhood as a guy captured the tornado dancing past his house. :



Here's the even better video. Quite wild!

Very Odd Southern Snow To Become Normal Eastern New England Snow

Students at Texas A&M in College Station, northwest
of Houston, were able to make this large snowman
amid a very rare snowstorm last night in that
part of the country

Overnight and this morning it snowed in southern Texas and northeastern Texas, and this there are winter storm warnings from southern Mississippi to northern Georgia.

This wildly early snowfall so far south comes when northern areas are still waiting for snow. There was more snow on the ground in southern Texas cities like San Antonio and Corpus Christi than there is at my house not far from the Canadian border in Vermont.

The season's first snow accumulations hit Laredo, Texas and the Houston metro area earlier in the month than cities like Boston and Des Moines.

In fact, Corpus Christi has more snow than Denver, Boston, Caribou, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit combined!

Thunder snow was reported in Corpus Christi, Texas, perhaps for the first time on record. Baton Rouge also got thunder snow this morning. And last evening, it was colder in Corpus Christi (35 degrees) than it was in Fairbanks, Alaska (36 degrees). Fairbanks normally hovers well below zero this time of year.

Jackson, Mississippi has had 2.5 inches of snow so far, the most since 2010. It snowed in Brownsville, on the southern tip of Texas, for the first time since 2004. It also snowed across the border in Mexico. So far, Lake Charles, Louisiana has had 2.1 inches of snow, the most in a single storm since 1973.

The culprit was a storm that took a far southern route through near the Rio Grande and into the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. That path allowed the storm to draw cold air far south into Texas and the Gulf Coast states, prompting the early season snow.

The storm will zip northeastward, off, but parallel to the East Coast later today and Saturday.  It will lay down a stripe of snow from the Southeast, through the southern Appalachians, and basically all the way up Interstate 95 to Maine. Boston, still waiting for its first snow of the season, will probably, finally get a few inches.

Most places along the path of the storm will get two to six inches of snow, with locally higher amounts in the central Appalachians and the eastern half of New England, where upwards of eight inches might fall in some spots. At least once you get to the Northeast, it's normal to have snow in December. The Texas snow thing is definitely weird, though.

Here in Vermont, the snow will clip the state, but it won't be a huge deal. Maybe a couple inches in the Connecticut River valley and less elsewhere. However, this will have to be watched. So far, this storm is overperforming, causing more snow and havoc than expected. It's possible we could get a little more than what's forecast now.

Even if we don't get much of anything from this one, fear not, winter lovers: It's been snowing off and on in the mountains since Wednesday night, and Vermont will get frequent bouts of light snow and snow showers through next week as a series of weak storms and fronts repeatedly hit us amid chilly, subfreezing temperatures.

What snow we get here in New England will stay on the ground for days or longer. Not so in Texas. San Antonio is expecting highs in the 50s today, and in the 60s to around 70 through the weekend.

Another Weird Heat Wave Coming To Arctic, Grounding Santa's Sleigh?

Record warmth in the Arctic is expeted in the
next several days as this global map shows.
Iage is GFS modeling via the University of Maine
Climate re-analyzer 

For the second winter in a row, forecasters are expected a bizarre warm spell up in the Arctic that could bring temperatures to near the freezing point right around the North Pole.

In the darkness of winter, the Arctic is normally a wicked frigid place. It's usually way, way below zero and pretty damn inhospitable.

But over the next few days, temperatures at the North Pole could be very similar to those here where I am in Vermont.

The immediate cause of the likely upcoming Arctic heat wave is a strong storm near Greenland that will pull warm air up toward the Arctic.

Relatively warm air sometimes does get pushed into the area around the North Pole if the wind is right, but I'm talking single numbers and teens above zero. Not near 32 degrees. That's something like 40 to 50 degrees warmer than normal.

In this case, there's more open water in the Arctic than usual and less ice. The ice tends to act as a buffer to chill many incoming bursts of warm air, but with the relative lack of ice, this frozen buffer isn't nearly as effective as it ought to be.

Many scientists are saying this has the fingerprints on climate change on it. As you've read here previously, the Arctic has been particularly toasty warm this year. 2016 will end up by far. Temperatures in the Arctic in November and December were especially hot.

That's in part because of the relative lack of sea ice up there. Starting in early autumn, the amount and thickness of sea ice in the Arctic expands greatly as winter sets in. That expansion continues into the spring.

This year, the ice has indeed gotten more extensive day by day as winter progresses, but the process has not been nearly as fast as usual. In fact, some of the sea ice started to melt back for a few days in November, which is a super, super rare occurence.

Scientists tell The Guardian newspaper that the only explanation for the extreme warmth in the Arctic is global warming. Oh, sure they get spells of relatively warm air up there, but not like this.

There's data that shows big winter warm surges have pushed into the high Arctic on average twice a decade since at least the 1950s and probably well before that. But the extreme nature of the warmth is what fascinates and worries scientists.

Scientists are also still trying to figure out whether the surges of warm air into the Arctic are becoming more frequent, says the Washington Post. 

The fact that this is the second year in a row the temperature will have flirted with 32 degrees near the North Pole is doubly shocking.

The fact that the cold air was displaced from the Arctic, possibly due to warm Arctic seas, the cold air that's normally at the North Pole has to get shoved somewhere. In November, it settled over northern Asia and Siberia, which had recofd cold weather.

Eventually, some of that frigid air sloshed into North America, helping to cause a spate of record cold in the middle of the United States last weekend. 

The cold air again shoved into Siberia, and may find its way into the United States in the form of another spell of brutal colld air in January.

I said maybe on that one. Time will tell.

Julia The Weirdo Continues To Confuse Forecasters

Tropical Depression Julia was still a disorganized mess
off the Southeastern U.S. coast Sunday morning
but the weird little storm still has life in her.  

When last we left Tropical Storm Julia, we were remarking how weird it was that a cluster of thunderstorms that pretty much no chance of developing into a tropical storm did so.

And Julia did form into a tropical storm. Over land, which almost never happens. Over northeastern Florida, to be specific. Almost all tropical storms and hurricanes form over warm ocean water.

We thought Julia would live its entire short life over land, which would be unprecedented. But nope, she fooled us again, jumping to just offshore Georgia and dumping heavy rain on the coasts of that state and South Carolina.

Next, we were assured that strong upper level winds would tear Julia apart and it would be a nothing burger by now.

Wrong again!  Tropical Depression Julia, downgraded from a tropical storm a few days ago is still east of Georgia and South Carolina, just further offshore now, and showing signs of making a comeback.

Julia is still a disorganized mess, with those strong upper level winds keeping thunderstorms well away from its center. Tropical systems don't develop or get stronger when this kind of thing happens.  You want the powerful thunderstorms to fire up near the center of the storm.

Usually, when the upper level winds keep up, the thunderstorm production finally dies, and so does the wannabe tropical system.

Julia is still firing up thunderstorms, though. Persistent little devil. And now, those strong upper level winds might relax, and that would give Julia a chance to restrengthen. Also some signs point to Julia drifting north toward North Carolina.

Julia has confused and put eggs on the faces of just about every hurricane forecasters since she formed last week. I bet she will continue to do so. Which means anything could happen with Julia. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile Tropical Storm Karl is out there in the middle of the Atlantic. Unlike Julia, Karl's generally behaving, taking a very typical path from the west coast of Africa and traveling westward across the tropical Atlantic.

He's expected to be upgraded to a hurricane in a few days, which is not unusual for this type of system. It's also expected to recurve to the north, away from the East Coast. Again, this happens a lot.

However, a small number of forecast models nudge Karl a little closer to the East Coast eventually. Doubt that will happen, but it's worth keeping half an eye on anyway.

Tropical Storm Julia Might Be Sneakiest, Weirdest Tropical Storm Ever

Satellite photo of Tropical Storm Julia forming
over northeastern Florida Tuesday afternoon,
confounding just about every forecaster and tropical
storm expert. 

UPDATE: During the day Wednesday, the center of Tropical Storm Julia jumped to a position just a bit off the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia.

Which means, that unlike earlier estimations, it won't oddly live its entire life inland. In other words the pesky little storm was continuing to be unpredictable.

Julia weakened to a tropical depression Wednesday night, but will still cause heavy rain along the southeastern coast as its remnants meander a little offshore.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: 

Early yesterday morning, I mentioned in passing a weak disturbance off the coast of Florida that would never amount to anything.

By the end of the day it had confounded forecasters and experts by becoming Tropical Storm Julia. 

The storm produced, and is still producing winds of 40 mph along the U.S. southeast coast, along with torrential rains.

The tropical storm unexpectedly formed even though winds high over head were strong enough that they would normally preclude such a system from forming.

Much weirder, Tropical Storm Julia formed while just inland in northeastern Florida.

Virtually always, tropical storms form over the water, where the feed of the warm moisture in the late summer oceans. They never form over land, where there's too much friction from the rough terrain to help spin up these things.

Not Julia. It formed barely inland. Turns out it formed over very low country, and was close enough to nearby ocean water to feed off that warm moisture and form into Tropical Storm Julia.

The forecast track of Julia takes it further inland this morning and will eventually dissipate over Georgia. Before it does, it will continue to dump heavy rain over mostly coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina. There's definitely a flood threat there.

If the forecast direction of Julia  holds, it will be something I've never seen before: A tropical storm that spent its entire existence inland. Some tropical storms have formed over land in the past, like the notoriously destructive Hurricane Agnes in 1972, but I've never seen one stay over land through its entire life.

Julia is a very, very, very weird tropical storm.

Vermont's Temperatures Have Been Breaking All The Rules

A rainy, warm Leap Day commute to work this morning in
St. Albans, Vermont, following a chilly, wintry
Sunday afternoon --backwards weather  

The temperatures in Vermont have totally backwards and weird in Vermont the past couple of days.

We've been having high temperatures for the days in the early mornings, low temperatures in the afternoon, and situations where, if you drive a few miles in the Green Mountain State, you go from deep winter to spring.

Yeah, I'm confused, too.

As all of us know, the coolest temperature of the day almost always comes in the early morning, because the sun has been gone all night, and heat was lost to outer space.

And the day's highest temperature pretty much always comes in the afternoon, after the sun has heated the atmosphere for hours.

Sometimes, especially in the winter, storms and weather fronts can overrule this regime, and that's happening in Vermont, big time.

We'll use Burlington to demonstrate how this is playing out. For instance on Sunday, Burlington had its high temperature of the day of 38 degrees early in the morning, when it's normally coolest.

Then the temperature fell for the rest of the day, reaching the low 20s by early evening. Overnight, temperatures rocketed upward, reaching a record high tying 50 degrees by early afternoon. During the day the temperature will start to fall again rather than rise as it normally should.

All this happened because a cold front slipped southward across the Champlain Valley Sunday morning. It ended up stalling a little north of Rutland. Then it came back north as a warm front overnight, passing over Burlington early this morning and putting the Queen City back into the toasty air.

A cold front will come through later today, making temperatures go in reverse again late this morning and early afternoon.

This wavering weather front has really caused some wacky temperature differences in Vermont, too. At mid afternoon Sunday, temperatures in Vermont ranged from  about 20 near the Canadian border to the mid-50s around Bennington.

At the same time, Burlington was in the mid 20s and Montpelier, just 38 miles away, was in the mid 40s.

It got even more extreme this morning. At 5 a.m. at my St. Albans house, with a stiff south wind blowing, it was 48 degrees. Just 10 miles away in Highgate, at a lower elevation protected from the south wind, and in a place where the warm front still hadn't quite made it through, it was still 28 degrees

Quite an incredible difference.

There might be more weird temperature gyrations coming.

 Another storm is coming Tuesday night and Wednesday, which at this point looks like will sock us with a mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain. Looking for winter storm watches or winter weather advisories to be issued for late Tuesday and Wednesday.

As it looks now, it appears temperatures might rise overnight Tuesday, then fall back down Wednesday afternoon. Our backwards weather looks like it wants to continue.

Wednesday Evening Update: Rapid Fire Tornadoes, Other Quick Moving Dangers Eastern United States

Large Midwestern style tornado near
Evergreen, Virginia this afternoon. 

Today has been as active a weather day in the eastern United States as I can remember, and it's been pretty exciting here in my home base in Vermont as well.

This excitement - and danger - will continue much of the night and into Thursday morning in many areas of the East, including Vermont.

Vermont might not be nearly in as much danger as the core of the tornado threat areas in the Mid-Atlantic states, but you'll still want to pay attention to the weather.

As of mid and late afternoon, tornadoes were firing up in the Carolinas and Virginia, and the situation will continue to worsen into the early evening there.

Tornado watches extend from South Carolina all the way north to central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. 

I'm sure I've never seen tornado watches so far north in February. Especially along the Eastern Seaboard. This might have happened before but I don't remember when. This is quite an odd storm.

Major tornado damage this afternoon near
Appomattox, Virginia.  

I'll combine this evening's storm update both broadly, taking in what's happening with the huge storm system's tornados, storms, floods and wind, with what's going on here in Vermont for my Green Mountain State readers.

This situation kinda warrants doing one of my live blogs, in which I continuously update things as events progress, but I have commitments elsewhere this evening,

Follow my Twitter account, @mattalltradesb, for updates I can sneak in when I'm able to.

More importantly, if you're in an area under tornado watches, or warnings, or flood, severe thunderstorm or other weather danger watches, pay attention to the National Weather Service or your most trusted weather source for the latest information.  

As noted, tornadoes were spinning up left and right in the Mid-Atlantic states. Some of them will be brief spin ups. A few will become long lasting, destructive, strong tornadoes.

I've seen numerous tornado warnings, coming one right after another. Some of the radar signatures I've seen are downright scary, with strong evidence of tornadoes headed toward heavily populated cities and signatures that suggest a lot of debris, like broken up buildings and trees, lofted into the air.

 A nasty looking wall cloud, with a potential for a tornado
approaches the Universith of North Carolina Wednesday
  

The tornado threat in the Carolinas will end later this evening as the strong storm's cold front pushes off the coast.

But the threat will come later as you move north, as the cold front won't come through until later in those regions.

While the biggest threat of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes is from central New Jersey south, New York and New England isn't completely out of the woods.  

There could even be some rotating supercells as far north as the southern half of New England.

While very highly unlikely, it's theoretically possible for a brief tornado to touch down as far north as Bennington, Vermont or Keene, New Hampshire.

VERMONT WEATHER THREATS

Here where I live in Vermont, this morning's snow turned into a cold, steady rain today. Temperatures remained below freezing in much of eastern Vermont, so it's been freezing rain. Roads there are slick, and will be through the evening, before temperatures rise.

As of 3 p.m, Montpelier, Vermont had a good seven consecutive hours of freezing rain. Some of it came down moderately. Not only are the roads bad there and elsewhere in the northeastern quarter of Vermont, there's a chance a few tree branches and power lines could break before temperatures this evening warm above freezing and melt the ice.

I've been impressed by how much steadier and heavier the rain in Vermont has been today compared to many forecasts. The ground is frozen, so between the snow that fell this morning and the rain this afternoon, there's starting to be a lot of standing water.  

Snow, them a drenching rain falling on frozen ground
created a lot of slush and flowing water in
my yard today in St. Albans, Vermont. 

Also, small streams are on the rise. There could be localized flooding anywhere in Vermont tonight and Thursday, especially I think in the northern half of the state where rain has been heaviest.

The most interesting weather in Vermont will come late tonight, mostly after midnight, and going into the early morning hours Thursday.

That's when the storm's cold front will be approaching, then passing the state, pretty much southwest to northeast.

As I noted, the dynamics that can cause severe thunderstorms are being flung much further north than is normal for late February.

There will be a surge of warm air coming into Vermont overnight, though it won't be as strong as more to the south. Still, temperatures in some areas will climb into the 50s by dawn.

Even worse, the storm system will create what is known as a low level jet, which is essentially a band of very strong winds a few thousand feet overhead. Winds up there could reach hurricane force, although we down on the ground don't have to worry about that.

HOWEVER:

This type of weather set up is conducive to form at least a few scattered thunderstorms embedded with the rain coming in ahead of and with the cold front.

The thunderstorms could "grab" some of that high level wind and bring it to the surface, which would create some damaging wind gusts. This could happen anywhere in Vermont with this system, but most areas won't have that problem. I just want to alert you to the possibility of it happening.

The weather set up also encourages thunderstorms to spin. There's a small chance this set up could create some rotating supercell thunderstorms as far north as perhaps Rutland and White River Junction.

Now before you panic, the chances of what follows is highly remote. Believe me, it's NOT something you should count on.

But there is a theoretical possibility that a brief tornado could spin up in far southern Vermont with this. I strongly doubt this would happen, and even if it did, nothing would be remotely as destructive as what's going on in the South.

But, tornadoes are rare in Vermont to begin with. We average one a year, if that. I've never heard of one in February, as Vermont twisters invariably happen in the warmest months of the year. Wouldn't it be wild if a brief tornado touched down in Vermont in February? That would be one for the record books.

I do see one computer model that has a very strong squall line of thunderstorms approaching western Massachusetts and Bennington County, Vermont just after midnight tonight.

With the possibility of rambuctious North Country thunderstors in mind,  NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has a marginal chance of severe thunderstorms extending as far north as Rutland and White River Junction. 

Though as a noted, there could be a localized strong thunderstorm wind gust all the way to the Canadian border.

After morning highs in the 50s, which could challenge records for the date Thursday, temperatures will start to fall into and through the 40s Thursday afternoon. By then, rain showers will become much lighter in Vermont.

Temperatures will continue to fall to below freezing levels Thursday night, and there could be a few snow showers around then and on Friday.

Which is perfectly normal weather for Vermont this time of year. Imagine that. Normal weather in a Green Mountain State winter that has been extraordinary in its weirdness and extremes.

"Hairy Panic" Of Australian Tumbleweeds Buries Part of Town

"Hairy panic" tumbleweeds engulf the entrance
to this Australian house. 

Combine a really nasty drought and a farmer who doesn't maintain his property very well in Australia and you get something called "Hairy Panic"

According to the BBC, people in a row of homes in Wangaratta, in northeastern Victoria province in Australia, have been spending several hours each day cleaning the tumbleweeds from their homes. Sometimes the "hairy panic" reaches to roof levels

Hairy panic is one species of a grass found throughout Australia. This species has long hairs along the edges of its leaves, hence the name.

Under the drought conditions, the hairy panic dries out, forms into tumbleweeds and blows around until caught by obstructions, like houses.

Property maintenance can be a chore, but imagine having to spend several hours a day cleaning up the mess of hairy panic? And what do you do with this stuff?

A woman stands waist deep in
"hairy panic" tumbleweeds at her Australian home.

And we were I live in Vermont thought shoveling snow off the driveway can be a pain in the ass. Besides, the snow here eventually melts away. You can't say the same for hairy panic.

"It's physically draining and mentally more draining, said resident Pam Twitchett in an interview with Prime7 News in Australia.  

The local town council said it can't help because the hairy panic is not considered a fire threat. (Judging from the pictures, I beg to differ. Imagine what it would look like if you put a lighted match to this stuff?)

No word from the farmer, either, on whether his lack of property maintenance is contributing to the problem.

Here's a wild news report of the wild panic drought tumbleweed crisis:

"It's physically draining and mentally more draining," resident Pam Twitchett told Prime7 News Albury.

Also known by its Latin name Panicum effusum, it is a grass that is found in every Australian state 

It's called "hairy" because while there are a number of other Panicum species, none have long hairs along the edges of their leaves

It grows rapidly and can form tumbleweeds which are dead grass with seeds inside designed to disperse them for reproduction

It can cause a potentially fatal condition called "yellow big head" in sheep if eaten in large quantities

Wangaratta veterinary surgeon Richard Evans told the BBC the weed would lose its toxicity once it dried up.

"The important thing is it's not going to kill people's dogs and cats, it just makes a hell of a mess," he said.

Authorities are unable to help with the clean-up because the tumbleweeds do not pose a fire threat, reports say.

Maybe She Shouldn't Have "Commanded" The Tornado To Go Elsewhere

Sabrina Lowe said she "commanded" God to divert
last weekend's tornado away from her house
If that's true it hit these dozens of houses
instead, destroying them. 

A woman named Sabrina Lowe of Rowlett, Texas is lucky in that one of those big Texas tornadoes last weekend just missed her house, and it's still standing, all good and secure.

But now, she's is - fairly or not - facing an even bigger tornado on social media for her comments to NPR.

I almost drove off the road while I was listening to NPR on the way to work the other morning. They interviewed her and she said this:  

"We actually went outside and started commanding the winds because God had given us authority over the winds - the airways. And we just began to command this storm not to hit our area. We - we spoke to the storm and said, 'go to unpopulated places.' It did exactly what we said to do because God gave us authority to do that."

I'm probably too cynical, but I have a lot of problems or questions about this quote.

First of all, you don't go outside when a tornado is approaching to "command the storm." Despite Lowe's heartfelt religious beliefs, the tornado missed because it just wasn't exactly on a path to her house.

I'm glad it wasn't. Because:

You could easily get killed by flying pieces of sheet metal, trees, and all sorts of fast moving debris while "commanding" a tornado to go away. Especially if the tornado isn't listening to you. Tornadoes never listen to you.

Too many people died in this tornado. We didn't need additional casualties.

Even if you believe God made it turn away from her house, why would He make it hit other houses? Like the 101 destroyed ones and 345 others damaged in Rowlett.

Lowe said she and her friends commanded the storm to go to unpopulated places. Which would have been great. I love it when tornadoes miss towns and cities and spin harmlessly over abandoned fields.

But, as noted, this tornado didn't exactly hit just unpopulated places. It mowed down what looked like what had been perfectly pleasant neighborhoods.

Maybe Lowe didn't think of this, but if she really had the power to tell God what to do with tornadoes, why didn't she tell him to make it just fall apart? Then nobody would have gotten hurt, and nobody's house would have gotten wrecked.

Plus, there's what? 7 billion or so people on the planet. Why would God give Lowe the power to divert tornadoes and nobody else gets that power?  I don't want to steal Lowe's thunder, but would God give me some lesser power to wield?  Something more modest than changing the course of EF4 tornadoes?

Like maybe melting the ice off my Vermont driveway after yesterday's snow/sleet/freezing drizzle storm? Just askin'

Of course, social media lit up after NPR aired Lowe's story about commanding the tornado. Most called her an idiot. Or worse.

To be honest, maybe we're being too hard on Lowe. Everybody, including Lowe, must have been scared to death as that tornado approached Rowlett and Garland. She might have just been acting out of fear.

Nobody is the most rational person in the world when they're terribly frightened.

Anyway, now that the tornado has destroyed a bunch of homes near Lowe's house maybe she can ask God to restore those wrecked houses to the way they were before the storm?

Or at least lets hope she's donating money, material or time to help those unfortunate tornado victims recover from this disaster.

December Thaw At North Pole Worrisome, And Has All The Weather Geeks Talking

The area of green you see curling up from the Atlantic
Ocean up to the North Pole indicate the rare
thaw this week at the top of the world.
The pinks and purples represent the more typical
minus 20 or so readings up that way 

This morning, it's was just a degree or two above freezing at the North Pole.

It gets above freezing there in the summer all the time, but in Dark December? Most observers have never seen such a thing.

Writing in Slate, Eric Holthaus quoted James Morison, the principal investigator of the Nortn Pole Environmenal Observatory, who said he never heard of temperatures above freezing in the wintertime there.

Its usually about 20 below at the top of the world this time of year. The North Pole is deep in winter darkness, so the sun surely can't heat things up.

After all, when we get our worst cold waves here in tropical Vermont and elsewhere in the good ole' USA, the air comes straight down from the North Pole.

So what the hell?

There's an incredibly strong storm in the North Atlantic, fed in large part by the massive storm that unleashed tornadoes and flooding in the United States in recent days. It's so strong that it flung a warm front all the way to the North Pole. Air from near Spain ended up there, and so it's warm.

It's one of the strongest storms on record in the North Atlantic, and is pummeling Iceland with hurricane force winds, and slamming flood-weary Britain with gales and more heavy rains. (The British Met Office names winter storms. For the record, this one is named Frank.)

Of course, scientist, climate change experts and plain old weather geeks like me want to know why this storm is so special, and why it made it so warm at the North Pole. It's warmer there than it is Oklahoma City this morning.

El Nino, that cyclical patch of warm water in the eastern Pacific Ocean, gets blamed for everything, including Donald Trump, so why not blame the North Pole heat wave on that?

The current El Nino is the strongest on record, and probably contributed to that epic storm in the United States. Since that big U.S. storm was a key ingredient in the giant storm in the Atlantic Ocean, the El Nino connection is plausible.

However, El Nino usually doesn't influence the weather in the North Atlantic and Europe as much as it does in the Americas, so the connection here is possibly iffy.

Environmental blogger Robert Scribbler worries the severe storm and the push of warm air far into the Arctic is a symptom of atmospheric changes wrought by global warming.

Ice melting off Greenland appears to be helping change ocean currents and creating a zone of colder than normal water in the North Atlantic. This, in turn, might be shifting atmospheric currents to create stronger storms in the North Atlantic, and sometimes causing those storms to fling warm air toward the high Arctic, goes the theory.

Additionally, some scientists think climate change is weakening the jet stream up north, allowing storms like this to punch through some warm air, or displacing the "polar vortex" southward on occasion, causing issues like the big New England arctic freeze and snow attack last winter.

This idea is still being tested and debated in the scientific community, but signs are pointing in this direction.

Of course, we have to be careful about blaming global warming on individual weather events. All kinds of forces drive individual storms and weather systems. This could well be a fluke, just a weird moment of Arctic heat driven by a strong storm and maybe El Nino.

However, there does seem to be a rising tide of more and more frequent weird weather events. This North Pole thaw certainly qualifies as weird. These trends could be pointing to global warming messing around with the already chaotic physics that is the world's weather.

Tony Perkins Wins Award For Nuttiest Global Warming Theory

Tony Perkins has some interesting theories
about climate change activists.  

Congratulations goes out to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who has the motivations behind the people worried about climate change.

See, people who are telling us that global warming is a threat are part of a gay agenda to depopulate the world. 

According to Right Wing Watch, Perkins said gay people don't have kids. (Tell that to same-gender couples who adopt or get surrogates.)

On a radio talk show,  "Perkins told his caller that his suspicions were 'absolutely correct' and that he had warned before about how 'climate change alarmists and those who are pushing population control' promote homosexuality because 'there's no procreation there.'"

"They deny it but it's footnoted in my book," Perkins said.

Well, there! There's the proof right there. If Perkins wrote it in a book, his theory HAS to be true.

Perkins doesn't get into why these activists want to depopulate the Earth, and how climate scientists came to conspire with gay people to come up with climate change science, but maybe he's just not a detail kind of guy.

You have to admit Perkins' theory is more entertaining than the main climate conspiracy meme, that climate scientists invented the "hoax" of global warming to get oodles of cash from the government for fraudulent studies, or something.

And ever notice any time there's a problem, The Gays did it, at least in the world inhabited by Perkins and his ilk.

I have my own conspiracy theory as to why the planet is warming. It's because of all the hot air coming out of Perkins and his whackadoodle extreme right wing, scary but ever-entertaining nutcase contingent.

Video: Really Bizarre Little Tornado In India

What appears to be a very skinny weird "landspout"
tornado in India.  

A video turned up on YouTube that showed what appears to be a strange little tornado in India.

It takes the form of a little cylinder, about as big in circumference as a person.

It could be just a dust devil, but judging from the clouds overhead, I really do think it's a small tornado. The headline on the video calls it a landspout, and that's probably a fair description.

A landspout is indeed a tornado, but they form differently, and usually look different from the funnel or wedge-shaped tornadoes that you commonly see in storm videos.

Unlike a typical tornado, which lowers from the base of a storm until it reaches the ground, a landspout usually starts to form near the earth's surface, or a few hundred feet up, then extends upward toward the thunderstorm clouds.

Landspouts usually get going when shifting winds merge near a developing thunderstorms. When the boundaries of shifting winds collide, sometimes they start to swirl.  If the swirl is under the thunderstorm, it could eventually make a connection with the clouds overhead.

At that point, a landspout tornado is borne.

Landspouts are usually weaker than tornadoes that form from supercell thunderstorms, the ones that form in the clouds and then extend toward the surface.

But anyway, here's the video. It is a strange one:

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:

TV Weatherman Dies of Laughter During Boring Forecast

Judging from the graphic on the weather report during a WGRZ newscast in Buffalo, New York, the forecast indicated some pretty ho-hum weather for the following few days.

The VERY happy WGRZ weatherman
Andy Parker  

But weatherman Andy Parker was amused. Either by the boring weather or something (presumably) hilarious somebody said off camera.

The giggles, however, were in the Catagory 5 zone, and I wonder if any viewer actually figured out whether they should take an umbrellla with them or not.

Watch:

British Potholes Making It Harder To Catch Drunk Drivers

There's another hazard to add to the litany of woes caused by the potholes and frost heaves that I wrote about the other day.   

Are people swerving around these like drunken drivers?  

In Britain, where a winter of flooding had caused a lot of road damage, the BBC reports that the potholes make it harder to catch drunk drivers.

Sober drivers are weaving and swerving around the holes in the road, the BBC reports. 

They look like drunken drivers.

According to the BBC, quoting an inspector named Richard Mallett:

"Yes, the conditions of the road are a concern because there is a likelihood of it causing crashes, but people need to take some responsibility when they're behind the wheel.....Anecdotally, it makes it more difficult for us to spot the drunk drivers as everyone is weaving about around the potholes.

Here in Vermont and in the rest of the northern parts of the United States, frost heaves and potholes are everywhere after a long, tough winter. So there's plenty of bumps and holes to swerve around as we're driving out there.

Still, I don't think weaving around the potholes would be a good excuse to tell an officer if you're driving drunk. They could just whip out the Breathalyzer to determine what's going on.

Besides, if weaving around potholes is unsafe for sober drivers, imagine a drunken driver trying to pull that off.

Stay safe out there, people.

 because there is a likelihood of it causing crashes, but people need to take some responsibility when they're behind the wheel.

"Anecdotally, it makes it more difficult for us to spot the drunk drivers as everyone is weaving about around the potholes."

More Proof Of Bizarre Winter: There Were Wildfires In the Arctic In January

This somehow escaped my attention earlier this strange weather winter, what with the intense cold waves and snow in the eastern U.S., the California drought, the epic British storms and floods, the Australian and Brazilian heat and the Alaskan mega-thaw keeping me totally busy.  

One of the big, bizarre Arctic wildfires
rages in Norway in January (!!)  

Apparently, there were wildfires in Arctic regions of Norway. In January. You know, when there should be plenty of snow and ice around to keep anything remotely like that from happening.

But a huge drought, along with a super warm December and a lot of wind touched off the fires, which destroyed a number of homes in Norway.

I wonder what bizarre weather event will happen next. At this rate, the only thing we'll consider bizarre is normal weather. All the extremes will seem like par for the course.

He's a video of the midwinter Arctic fire. Pretty impressive in size:

One Of Strongest March Cold Waves in U.S. History Continues

This cold wave across much of the nation and southeastern Canada is one for the record books. It's been awhile since a number of U.S. cities set not just daily record low temperatures, but record lows for an entire month.

In this visible satellite image taken above
the Texas/Oklahoma border yesterday, those whitish
streaks you see are bands of sleet accumulated
on the ground, left by strong thunderstorms
Sunday that happened in near record cold air.  

That happened this week. We already mentioned the 21 below in Billings, Montana the other day. 

Now it's the East Coast's turn. Fresh snowpack in the Mid-Atlantic states from yesterday followed by clear skies last night set the stage for some incredible cold for this time of year.

Baltimore, Md. got down to 4 degrees above zero, setting a new low for March. The old record was 5 degrees in 1873 (!!)

Charlottesville, Virginia and Dover, Delaware also set record lows for the month of March. 

Down in the Houston, Texas area this morning, winter storm warnings were flying because of freezing rain. That's happening in a place with a normal low of 50 and a normal high of 70 this time of year.

For my friends here in Vermont, the freezing rain in Houston is the same depressing extreme as if we had an ice storm on Memorial Day weekend.

Up in central and northern Quebec some of lowest temperatures on Earth were reported this morning, with readings in some spots near 50 below.

This incredible cold is part of that extreme jet stream pattern that has plagued much of the northern hemisphere since before the start of winter.

A huge area of higher pressure has caused a band of incredible warmth from California, north through western Canada in Yukon, Alaska and on up to near the North Pole, and even over to Greenland at times.

Then, the jet stream heads back south, coming from the North Pole and blasting south into the eastern half of the United States. There's usually curves to the north and south in the jet stream, but not often to the extremes we've seen this winter.

The Climate Prediction Center outlook through March 17
shows continued deep chill in the eastern U.S.
with more warmth in the West and in Alaska.

The remarkable thing about this pattern is how persistent it has been. It's been going on with only brief breaks since about the end of November. Usually things change around a bit, but not this year.

Up until this week, the cold has been intense, but not unprecedented. But now that it's persisted into March, we got a true record cold snap.

The persistence of the weather pattern has meant a few places in the Midwest, particularly in Wisconsin and and Michigan,  had their coldest winter on record. 

Meanwhile, under the warm western ridge, Las Vegas had its warmest winter on record, as did a few towns in Alaska.

The extreme jet stream that has set up this pattern shows no sign of breaking down much for the rest of March. The cold will relax, of course, as the next batches of cold air from Canada won't be as frigid.

Also, as the month goes along, it will have to warm up some, only because the cold will ease in tandem with the rise in normal temperatures this time of year.

However, for the Midwest and Northeast, it looks like we're in for a delayed spring, with below normal temperatures likely most days through the month of March.

I have no idea when this weather pattern will become "unstuck" from the way it's been. It makes you worry it's permanent, but of course that's not the case. 

We'd better have a nice warm rest of the year to make up for the first three months of 2014, though. 

Rare "Roll Cloud" Wows Texas, And Then The Rest Of Us

A rare "roll cloud" rolled right over the community of Timbercreek Canyon Texas this week, and it's getting a lot of attention because it was so dramatic.

The dramatic, rare, scary but harmless and beautiful
roll cloud over Texas this week.  

Bonnie Mack took what is becoming a viral video of the roll cloud as it passed over her Timbercreek Canyon home, not far from Amarillo.

You can see the video at the bottom of this post. The cloud stretches as far as the eye can see.

Roll clouds look freaky and scary and otherworldly, and something like a horizontal tornado but they're never dangerous.

They often form some distance from a thunderstorm, when a cool air downdraft blowing out of the storm hits the ground, kind of rises again and puts a horizontal spin in the air. That horizontal spin sometimes forms into what are known as roll clouds.

The air needs precisely the right amount of spin and moisture to make a roll cloud. Almost always, a cool downdraft doesn't form a roll cloud. In rare instances, it does.

You don't necessarily need a thunderstorm to make a roll cloud. But as rare as roll clouds are, they are even more infrequent when there's no thunderstorms around.

You do need an influx of cold air and that's what you see in Bonnie Mack's video. There were no nearby thunderstorms as she filmed.

A cold front apparently came in and displaced some warmer air, and the atmospheric conditions were just right to produce the horizontal spin the air that became the roll cloud.

Mack reported that a gust of cool air blew through her property as the roll cloud passed overhead, which is to be expected near such a phenomenon.

After all the weather disasters the world has seen lately, it is refreshing to see a dramatic weather phenomenon caught on tape that did no harm to anybody, and is not a sign of anything ominous to come.

Here's the roll cloud video: