Hot, Oppressive, Volatile, Potentially Dangerous New England Weather To Continue

Flash floods like this one in Montpelier, Vermont in
2011 could occur in Vermont and the rest of New England
this weekend. 

I cowered in my St. Albans, Vernont basement today.

No, there was not a tornado warning or any severe weather nearby.

But it was HOT, and my un-air conditioned home was torrid. So me, my husband and our dogs Jackson and Tonks huddled in the basement quietly. It was the only cool place in the house.

The high temperature in nearby Burlington, Vermont today was 96 degrees. That would normally be near record territory had not today been the anniversary of the hottest day on record in Burlington -- 101 in 1944.

Although storms did not drive me into my basement today, the hot air enveloping New England with heat indexes of over 100 in some places is contributing to some scattered dangerous storms. And will continue to do so over the next several days.

Although wind and hail are a threat, the biggest risk over the next few days is flooding, which is a switch from the drought or near-drought we've been in.

Yesterday, tornadoes touched down in North Haven, Connecticut and in eastern Long Island.

Around dawn this morning golf ball sized hail dented many cars and trashed crops around Caribou, Maine.

More strong storms erupted in Connecticut today.

Now, much of New England is in a drought, and most of the parts that aren't are damn close to it. In fact, part of the Merrimac Valley in northeastern Massachusetts has descended into severe drought.

So it seems strange that we're talking about the possibility of flooding, but there you go. Weather whiplash again. One extreme to another.

As mentioned previously, a weather front is going to sink slowly southward across New England over the next several days, and little storms will ripple along it.

That'll trigger lots of showers and thunderstorms. The heavy rains from some of this activity could produce flash floods. The risk is high enough so that the National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont has issued a flash flood watch for the northern two thirds of Vermont and northeastern New York Friday afternoon into Sunday.

You might be asking: What's the big deal? Doesn't is usually rain hard during a thunderstorm.

Well, yeah. But the air is so humid and the thunderstorms would have so much moisture to work with, that the rain could come down especially hard. Especially in highly localized terrain.

In fact, we're talking about near record amounts of available moisture in the air for August. This is brought to us by an "atmospheric river" of wet air from the Gulf of Mexico. Atmospheric rivers are especially dangerous when it comes to the threat of flash floods.

That's because it can cause a narrow band of thunderstorms to repeatedly go over the same area, dropping incredible amounts of rain

Another thing to consider: The ground is rock hard from the drought, and less able to absorb the water from torrential downpours. So more will run off into local streams, worsening the flood threat.

We're talking two to five inches, possibly in  jus ta few hours. That's more than enough to trigger a local flash flood anywhere in New England this weekend.

Most places won't have flooding. But those that do will have to watch out.

It seems the biggest threat is along the Canadian border Friday afternoon and evening, much of northern and central New England Saturday, and southern New England Sunday.

In general the rain will help ease the drought. But as noted, in spots, it will be too much of a good thing.

That means you should stay aware this weekend. No driving into flooded roads, please. No camping near stream banks, and if you must,  be ready to climb a hill at the drop of a hat.

Bigger rivers are running very, very low, so I don't think there will be flooding along those waterways. The water might rise in those rivers, but not enough to endanger roads, buildings and people.

If you still think we can't really get dangerous flash floods during dry summers, I will take you back to August, 1995 for a weather setup similar to this weekend's.

The summer of 1995, like this one, was hot and dry in Vermont. Then, Tropical Storm Dean made landfall in Texas. The weather pattern brought incredible amounts of wet air from Dean into Vermont, causing a very devastating flash flood in the Lamoille River Valley of Vermont.

This time, there's no tropical storm, but there is a weather disturbance along the Gulf Coast contributing to the atmospheric river of volatile wet air headed toward us.

These things are always uncertain. It might not be a big deal, and we'll just get some beneficial rains. But it could  be nasty, and there won't be much warning before any floods hit.

A few storms Friday in northern New England could be severe Friday afternoon and evening, with gusty winds and hail possible, but I don't expect a widespread severe outbreak.

It's not going to be 96 degrees anytime soon in Vermont, but it will remain very humid into Sunday in the Green Mountain State, and the rest of New England for that matter.

Heat And Downpours To Make For A Rough Few Days In New England

Much of the nation (areas in purple and red,) are going to
get a LOT of rain over the next week.  

Get ready for a little weather whiplash in New England, if you can stand the heat and humidity that will precede it.

After a string of nice summer days, it's going to get rough out there.

As I write this early Wednesday morning, showers and thunderstorms were marching across much of New York and into central and southern New England.

That's a good thing. The region has been in a drought, and we can use the rain.

I think most - but not all - of the rain will miss northern reaches of New York, Vermont and New Hampshire.

Which is too bad. Lawns are brown up here, and while walking around Burlington, Vermont last evening, a warm, dry breeze was knocking drought-browned leaves off some of the trees.

Don't worry, rain is coming to the North, too, but first the heat. Lots of it.

It will indeed be very warm and humid today between the showers and storms, especially south as noted.  But Thursday will be ridiculous.

Temperatures across almost all of New England will be in the 90s, with some mid to upper 90s possible in the south and broad valleys in much of the north. Couple that with very high humidity, and you get my nomination for the most oppressively hot day since at least 2013.

There's already a heat advisory for Thursday around Boston and they might issue one for Vermont's Champlain Valley.

Up here in Burlington, we won't set a record high temperature for the date. Thursday is the anniversary of the hottest temperature on record in the Queen City: 101 degrees in 1944.

The heat index might get close to that 101, but the actual temperature won't.

Then comes the rain. As I said, we need it, and most of New England is going to get one to four inches of it, maybe locally higher in spots.

The problem is how it's going to rain. You want a slow, long steady rain to ease a drought. Not snort, sharp downpours. But that's pretty much what we're going to get.

A slow moving weather front will slowly sink northwest to southeast across New England Friday through Sunday or Monday .

Little mini-disturbances will keep riding southwest to northeast along the front. And the air over us is going to be extremely humid.

That's a recipe for torrential downpours. So, ironically, amid a drought, there might well be some local flash floods in the Northeast, including much of New England over the next few days.

There's disagreement between weather models about where the front will be.  Some computer models have  it moving toward and into Vermont Friday, which would set up the heaviest downpours then and Friday night.

That camp of computers  then slowly takes the front into southern New England Saturday and Sunday, which would mean torrential downpours south with lighter and more scattered stuff up north.

The other faction of computer models  thinks the front will move more slowly, and it will still be up in northern New England Saturday. That would place the heaviest rains in northern New York and much of Vermont,New Hampshire and Maine.

My gut tells me the southern New England heavy rain scenario Saturday and Sunday is right this time,  but that's not very scientific, is it? We'll just have to wait and see.

By the way, some of the thunderstorms could be strong, with gusty winds being added to the mix.

If you hate high humidity, you better hope the front pushes into southern New England fairly quickly.   Because if that happens, we'll get some - but not complete - relief from the terrible humidity we'll get over the next few days.

By the way, New England isn't going to be the only wet spot in the nation over the next few days. A broad stripe from the Gulf Coast all the way northeast through the lower Mississippi Valley and Tennesse and Ohio Valleys are up for a lot of rain over the next week.

So is parts of the Desert Southwest. There, the monsoon season has already produced several flash floods, and more are likely there over the next few days.

Mudslides Triggered By Hurricane Earl Kill Dozens of Mexicans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, It's Been A Hot Summer In Vermont, Rest Of New England

Another nice summer day in what has been a warm, sunny
summer in Vermont. This photo was in Charlotte yesterday.
 

It's getting into the middle of August, and the weather is still quite warm here in Vermont.

And it's going to stay that way for awhile, too.

Checking out what's happened in the weather since summer started I can tell you what I'm sure you suspected: It definitely has been a hot summer.

Not the hottest ever, mind you, but still up there.

Actually, if it stays as warm as I think it might for the rest of August, we might end up in the Top 10 hottest list of summers, if you use the stats from the National Weather Service office in South Burlington, Vermont.

The hottest summer on record, which for climatological purposes runs from June 1 through August 31, was 1949, with a mean temperature of 72.2

June and July this year in Burlington were each about two degrees warmer than normal, give or take a few tenths of a degree. That's not record territory, but it's up there.  We'd need an incredible, record hot August to exceed the 1949 mark for hottest summer.

It looks like August could continue to remain warm, though.  If it does, then the consistency of the heat could give us a summer that, though not the hottest on record, it will be up there.

The temperature in Burlington this summer has so far reached 90 degrees eleven times. The normal for an entire summer is five or six such days.

It's possible we'll get a couple more 90s in this month, too. We'll see.

It's been consistently hot elsewhere, too. Washington DC had a record long streak of consecutive days that stayed at 70 degrees or warmer.

Southern New England had a stretch of a week or more in late July in which every day got to 90 degrees.

Back here in Vermont, as I'm also sure you're aware of, it has also been quite dry. We've been teetering on the edge of drought in northern Vermont all summer, and parts of central and southern New England have plunged right into drought.

We could use the rain.

These dry conditions were made worse by the fact that although it's been hot, we haven't had long stretches of very humid weather. Oh sure, a few days have been muggy, but it hasn't been ridiculous.

That lack of humidity has made the summer heat more tolerable than you would have expected.

However, things are going to change later this week. We're going to get the first multi-day spell of very, very humid weather starting midweek and probably going through the weekend.

That means oppressive nights and days that will feel awful, even as temperatures hold in the not-bad low to mid 80s.

The good thing about the upcoming spell of  awfully humid weather is it increases the chances of showers and thunderstorms. We need the rain.

While these storms will no doubt be beneficial, it won't be exactly what we need. It would be better if we get slow, steady rains, not sharp, relatively brief downpours that seem to be in the cards for later in the week and the weekend.

In fact, there's a chance the storms could be too much of a good thing. It will be so humid that storms can tap into that water and dump an enormous amount of rain in a short period of time in a few areas.

That could lead to local flash flood this weekend, which would be kind of ironic, given how dry it has been.

Another Week, More Scary Floods In The World

Aftermath of this weekend's deadly flood
in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia.  

Last week it was Ellicott City, Maryland that was devastated by a flash flood.

Since then in the northern hemisphere, there have been more such huge inundations in various areas.

Climatologists tell us extreme precipitation events are becoming more common in a warming world.

Judging unscientifically from the past couple week's news, those climatologists sure are right.

The latest victim of a terrible flash flood is Skopje, Macedonia.  

The BBC reports 15 dead there as walls of water swept through the city in an unprecedented storm.

As in Ellicott City, Maryland last Saturday, cars with people in them were swept away, but it appears Skopje was even worse than the Maryland flood.

Dozens of cars were swept off a ring road around Skopje and deposited in fields, the BBC says.  

Besides the 15 dead, at least six others are still missing.

There's more trouble coming elsewhere in the world. It's going to rain incredibly hard in Florida, especially the northwestern part of the state, and elsewhere near the Gulf Coast this week.

Some areas down there can expect up to 20 inches of rain (!!). There's sure to be more news about damaging floods from that part of the nation this week.

Some Lucky Breaks Saved Lives In Ellicott City, Maryland Flash Flood Disaster

Flood damage in Ellicott City, Maryland. 

Now that the water from that epic, very scary flash flood a week ago in Ellicott City, Maryland has receded, it's time to thank our lucky stars that more people didn't die.

As anyone who has seen the videos, the photos and the news reports, this was truly one of the scariest flash floods to affect an American city in recent years 

TERRIFYING WATER, LUCKY BREAKS

Judging from the videos we've seen of the Ellicott City flood disaster, it's amazing only two people died. The charming, historic downtown was bustling with restaurant goers, shoppers, residents and such when the torrential thunderstorms arrived.

As extremely tragic as this flood was, some lucky breaks probably saved lives.  Flash flood warnings from the National Weather Service were timely and strongly worded, giving people who heard them the urgency to get out of the way.

The 135 buildings affected by the flooding in downtown Ellicott were sturdily built, so none collapsed as hundreds of people fled to second floors. Even so, at least two buildings in Ellicott City are now on the verge of collapse because of the flood, but luckily held, sort of, during the flood.

A big lucky break is that the electricity stayed on in much of the flood zone during the disaster.  That meant rescuers could see victims in the water and get them out of danger. It would have taken much longer to find them in the dark, light up the area where they were, and get them out.

The longer people would have been in the raging torrent, the more likely they would have died.

For people caught in buildings, the flood would have been even more terrifying had the lights gone out.  The more scared people are, the more likely they are to do dumb or impulsive things. That could get you in trouble in a hurry during a flash flood.

People also might have unknowingly stepped out into raging water had there been no lights.

EXTREME RAINS:

Rainfall rates in and around Ellicott City Friday evening were off the charts, notes the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang. The Maryland city had 0.8 inches of rain in just five minutes. A little more than 3 inches in a half hour. 4.5 inches in an hour -- which, by the way, is about what would normally fall over the course of a month in Ellicott City.

With that rainfall rate, you can see why torrents formed so quickly.

The inevitable question comes next: Did global warming cause this?


Another view of severe flash flood damage in
downtown Ellicott City, Maryland.

The short answer: We don't know. The National Weather Service regarded this as a one in a thousand year event.

That means that in any given year, there's a one in one thousand chance such a big storm would hit the area. It doesn't mean that Ellicott City is safe for the next 1,000 years. It's all the role of the dice.

As the Capital Weather Gang explains, a combination of incredibly high humidity, converging air flow in Maryland and atmospheric instability unleashed the terrible flood. (By converging air, I mean winds in the atmosphere came from different directions and collided over that part of Maryland. When this happens, the air rises, and rising air can set off intense thunderstorms in this kind of air mass.)

I'm not sure if anyone will ever be able to say whether global warming caused this. The best we can do is say that scientists know the frequency of extreme rainfall events is increasing in many parts of the world, including most of the United States.

According to Grist:

"As the temperature of the atmosphere rises, it can hold more moisture, meaning the storms of the future will have more available to turn into torrential rains.

This trend is already visible across the United States, as well as in Maryland. Between 1958 and 2012, the heaviest 1 percent of all rainfall events rose 71 percent in the northeastern part of the country."

Given that, it follows that the Ellicott city disaster might have been influenced by climate change, but we'll probably never know for sure.

There might be another human dimension that might have made the disaster worse. . As Marshall Shepherd notes in Forbes. a lot of the country is urbanized now, covered with asphalt, concrete, streets, parking lots and the like.

Those surfaces are impervious, as opposed to fields and forests, which can absorb some of the excess water that comes with torrential downpours.

All that concrete means water will rush into gulleys and rivers much faster, worsening floods like the one that hit Ellicott City last Saturday.

Just remember, as the people of Ellicott City learned, that every flash flood warning should be taken seriously. As the name implies, these disasters sneak up to you on a moment's notice.

Earl Update: Likely To Be Hurricane When It Hits Belize

Tropical Storm Earl this morning entering the Bay of Houndoura
and heading toward Belize ( left side of satellite photo)
Earl is expected to strengthen to a hurricane
by the time it reached Belize. 

Tropical Storm Earl was still chugging westward, and it's on a collision course with the Central American coast, most likely Belize.

The National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Earl this morning had top winds of 70 mph and was still strengthening.

By the time it hits the coast in or near Belize tonight or Thursday, it will likely be a hurricane, with sustained winds of at least 75 mph.  

Belize is hit by hurricanes on average once a decade.

This won't be the strongest hurricane ever in the region, but there's still going to be a lot of trouble with damaging winds, a storm surge and flooding. There will surely be a fair amount of damage in Belize an surrounding areas.

Even before Earl became a tropical storm, it brought strong winds to the Dominican Republic. That downed power lines, one of which set a bus on fire, killing six people. 

Earl will plow inland into Mexico and fall apart. The storm poses no threat to the United States.

At the moment, there's no other tropical storms threatening to develop anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean, but I'm sure that will change as we keep moving through the month of August.