The "Desert Southeast": Drought Intensifies In Alabama, Georgia

As I sit and write this Thursday morning, it's starting to rain outside my home in St. Albans, Vermont.

A rare, intense drought is hitting parts of Southeast
Image from U.S. Drought Monitor.  

We're going to get another half inch to an inch of rain today, which will further ease the drought in the Northeast.

Today's rain if affecting most of New York and New England, which has been the epicenter of a drought that developed in the spring and lasted all summer and fall.

This drought is far from over, but at least we're getting a little wetting.

The Northeast drought has been getting all the attention, but a worse one has taken shape in northern Alabama and Georgia.

They can't seem to catch a break, as all the rain storms have missed them this fall. Rains from Hurricane Matthew missed. Tropical systems often move inland from the Gulf of Mexico in the summer and fall, dumping torrential rains on the South.

Not this year.

The lack of rain has been building for months. Now, in the fall, a strong high pressure system has been pretty much stuck over the Southeast, deflecting rain away from the region. Worse, that high pressure system has been causing an incredibly long streak of record high temperatures.

The record warmth increases evaporation, making the drought intensify even faster. That dry, hot weather is expected to remain over the region for at least another week.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, about 75 percent of Alabama is in at least severe drought, and 14 percent is in exceptional drought, the highest category you can get on the drought scale.

No measureable rain  has fallen on Birmingham, Alabama since September 18. Only a trace fell there in October, a month that usually brings about 3.5 inches of rain. Temperatures in Birmingham in September and October were five to seven degrees warmer than normal.

The drought in the Southeast is worse than the one in New England. The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore has taken to calling the region the "Desert Southeast."

So far, the Southeast's principal crops, including cotton, peanuts and peaches, have not suffered too badly because the main growing regions are outside the worst drought zone, says the Insurance Journal. 

Still, other crops have suffered, and the normally green, wet region of the nation is having rare forest fires.

Unfortunately, drier than normal conditions are expected to continue through the winter in the Southeast, according to admittably dicey long range outlooks.

Let's hope that's wrong and plenty of winter rains hit the Southeast. (Lots of winter snow in New England wouldn't be too upsetting, either.)

Is Warming Arctic Making Our Winters More Miserable

Boston during the winter of 2015. Will a warming
Arctic paradoxically give us more winters
like the one pictured?

Another study is telling us that the warming Arctic might not be doing us in the Northeast if we hate cold winters, and hate paying big heating bills.

As the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang reported this week, we're going to have to talk about the polar vortex again, that weather system that became such an internet sensation a couple winters back.  

The polar vortex is always up in the Arctic in the winter. It's a tightly wound circulation of frigid air that is perfectly normal, not the monster it was made out to be in the winter of 2013-14.

But a warming Arctic might be screwing around with that polar vortex.

Says the Washington Post:

"Occasionally (the polar vortex) fragments and pieces of it plunge into eastern North America, carrying bitter cold air. The winters of 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 witnessed several such polar vortex disintegrations and resulted in record setting cold snaps."

The polar vortex has showed a weakening trend over the past three decades, says the study in Nature Climate Change, making it easier to fragment and sent cold air into parts of Europe, Asia and North America, especially in the late winter and early spring.

Other studies have shown this overall polar vortex weakening, but the latest study takes things a little further. It's complicated, but an oversimplified version of it is this:

There's more open water in the Arctic in the autumn and early winter in recent years. That means more evaporation, and more water vapor in the air that falls as snow in Siberia and other high latitude locations.

The snow cover up there is thus, counterintuitively, more widespread than usual, which helps sets off weather pattern changes that make the polar vortex more likely to fall apart.

Additional complicated weather patterns favor fragments of the polar vortex to unload on eastern North America in late winter and early spring, mostly March, so we would be more prone to terrible cold snaps during that time of year, which prolongs winter.

Or at least give us weather whiplash. There have also been notable heat waves in recent years during March when the polar vortex isn't unloading on us. Remember the 80s in mid-March, 2012. And 70 degrees plus in early March last year?

The hints of spring might be prone to getting clobbered by these cold waves. Which screws ups and freezes early budding plants and fruit trees, causing crop losses, and less importantly, aggravated gardeners. It's a situation we saw last year, I know.

Of course, this doesn't always happen. A strong El Nino last year kept the Arctic air pretty much bottled up over the far north, and many of us in the Northeast enjoyed (or cursed) the warmest winter on record.

Even then, a brief very sharp cold wave around Valentine's Day brought some daily record low temperatures, and there was a temporary chill down in the second half of March and early April before the warmth returned. Which created the above mentioned havoc with frozen flowers on fruit trees.

As Scientific American notes, this is just another piece of evidence that global warming can cause more extremes in weather. Occasionally, those extremes are bitter cold, despite the overall warming trend.

This new study the Washington Post cites is not the final word, as there is controversy among scientists as to what Arctic thawing means, exactly how it affects the polar vortex, and howwe might feel the effects down here where we live.

We just know that things are getting screwed up with climate change, and we're only beginning to understand the picky details of how this will play out.

By the way, as I write this on a mild early November morning, there is much above snow cover in Eurasia, including Siberia, and much below normal Arctic sea ice, the Weather Channel notes. 

Many forecasters are saying this will lead to a bitter winter this year. Starting as soon as just before Thanksgiving, according to some predictions.

Bundle up and stow cash for those high winter heating bills!

October Was Another Very Warm Month In Vermont

Decent fall foliage and even some green leaves on
trees around my garden shed in northwestern Vermont
this morning. Usually, the woods are dull and gray by
November 1, but foliage lingers after a warm autumn

Given the chilly, damp weather of the past week or so, it doesn't seem like October in Vermont was all that warm.

However, the first three weeks of the month were totally toasty, so at least at the National Weather Service office in South Burlington, Vermont, we managed to tie for the 10th hottest October on record.  

The mean temperature for the month was 52.3 degrees or 4.3 degrees warmer than normal. We tied with 1946 and 1897 for tenth hottest October.

This continues what has been an extraordinarily warm year in Vermont so far. In Burlington, the first ten months of the year averaged 3.1 degrees warmer than normal. That's pretty extreme for a ten month period.

If November and December are normal to mild, we could easily end up with our hottest year on record. (Though some long range models suggest a frigid second half of November and December, we'll see about that.)

The warmth is still visible around us. Though foliage is definitely past peak in Vermont's Champlain Valley, there are still some very nice splashes of color on November 1, something I've never seen before.

Sure, we usually do have the occasional yellow larch and late season birch with bursts of yellow, and we usually have sad rust colored oak leaves clinging to the trees November 1.

But there's still a few green leaves out my window, and some lovely red and orange sugar maple leaves still brightening the hillsides around my northwestern Vermont house.

I don't know exactly what all of November will bring, but the first few days will be mild. It could hit 60 Wednesday before near normal temperatures return this coming weekend. Still no Arctic blasts on the immediate horizon, though.

Hot Times For Halloween Season Trick Or Treaters As Heat Records Fall

At least one computer model has the entire nation
warmer than normal on November 3 except California.
Many areas in the South and northwestern Plains
should expect record highs on that date. 

We up here in New England are largely missing out on this, but much of the nation is closing out October with many, many record high temperatures, and that trend of record heat will continue into the opening days of November.

Pretty much everybody except  New England and the Pacific Northwest is sharing in the warmth, though the record highs have mostly been in the southern half of the nation.

On Thursday, Phoenix, Arizona had its latest 100 degree on record.

Numerous record highs were set across the South and East Coast as far north as Islip, New York on Long Island, though as you know northern New England escaped the warmth.

It hit 91 degrees in Garden City, Kansas on Friday, an area that had odd 100 degree weather earlier in October. It got up to 86 degrees Sunday in Atlanta,the hottest there for so late in the season.

The Weather Channel says some cities in the South might set record highs pretty much every day this week.

Several American cities will almost certainly have their hottest Octobers on record. Among them are Dallas, El Paso, Tucson and New Orleans.

We here in northern New England, which has had a foretaste of winter over the past week to 10 days will warm up this week, with temperatures definitely above normal, but I doubt we will have record heat.

If you think we've been talking about record heat all this year and not record lows, you're right.

The Weather Channel notes that through October 27, there had been 4,861 reports of daily record high temperatures across the nation but only 482 reports of daily record lows. Normally, you'd expect a nearly equal number of record highs and lows in any given month.

According to Bob Henson at Weather Underground, the number of days when U.S. cities have hit daily record low temperatures is on trend to be the lowest on record this year.

Through October 25, the number of record low temperature reports this year ws 3,920. That's less than half of the second lowest number of record lows through October 25, which was 9,107 in 2012.

Of course, that doesn't mean that trend can quickly reverse if weather patterns change. You can have as many as 10,000 record lows in a single month, as we did in November, 1991.

There are signs in long term forecasts that the weather pattern will change, and it could turn intensely cold in much of the nation in late November and December, which would lead to a big spurt in record low temperatures.

Stay tuned on that one.

Sadly, Extreme Weather Just Killed A 600 Year Old Tree In New Jersey

This 600 year old oak tree in Basking Ridge, New Jersey
died this summer, in part because of extreme weather

There's been an ancient oak tree in Basking Ridge, New Jersey for as long as anyone can remember.

Judging from its size, experts estimated it was about 600 years old. George Washington is said to have rested under the then nearly 250 year old or so tree during the Revolutionary War.

The tree, however, finally died this summer amid some pretty bad weather.

A spate of extreme summer weather killed the tree. Like people, older trees are more likely to succumb to extremes and injuries than the spry young fellas and gals.

In Basking Ridge this July, there was two weeks worth of extreme 90 degree heat. It was one of the hottest stretches on record, and was accompanied by very little rain.

As the New York Times notes, trees compensate for such weather. According to The Times:

"(Arborist Rob) Gillies said the tree responded to the initial 'heat stress' by closing off the pores in the rings deep inside, behind the bark. 'These shut down, so it doesn't transpire,' he said. 'Then it was inundated' by almost 12 hours of heavy rain. 'The roots were soaking because it couldn't process the water,' he said."

In other words, if the heat wave weren't quite so intense, and had it ended in light to moderate rains, things might have gone OK. But the weather whiplash - heat and drought to deluge - was too much for this iconic oak.

People in Basking Ridge and in particular the Presbyterian church where the tree is are devastated by the death. When new of the tree's death broke, people who had grown up in Basking Ridge and moved away called the church and town officials, offering condolences.

The church is actually holding a community memorial service for the tree on November 6.

Crews have already removed dead branches from the tree that threaten historic gravestones and nearby old buildings. But the bulk of the tree will come down in the spring. The church will use the wood for an as yet unspecified use.

While some outlets were quick to blame climate change for the tree's death, it probably isn't that simple. True, the odds and frequency of having long torrid hot spells in New Jersey and elsewhere have increased. And extreme rainfall events have also gotten more frequent, and all this is likely due to climate change.

However, the tree was old, and eventually, a inevitable confluence of adverse weather that might have come with or without climate change  killed the tree. The tree had clearly been in decline for several years before it finally succumbed this year.

We'll never know if climate change caused its demise earlier than it would have.

Power Failures Hit As Surprising Amounts Of Snow Fall In Vermont High Spots

From Twitter: Rina Knapp snapped this
midwinter looking photo at Mad River Glen
in Vermont on Friday. 

It snowed again Friday in parts of Vermont and surrounding states, and some of the high elevations picked up some incredible amounts of snow in one week.

At least by October standards.

Jay Peak had about 30 inches of new snow since last Saturday. The Bolton Valley Ski Area had at least 19 inches.

That would represent a pretty golden week in the middle of winter, never mind October.

Although only one Vermont ski area has officially opened (Killington) a lot of people hiked up to the the summits to enjoy some very early season skiing.

The snow came at a price for some people. At mid elevations, the latest dump of snow deposited three to six inches of slush in some spots.

Due to what had been a very warm autumn up until a week ago, there's still a lot more leaves on the trees than there normally are at the end of October.

I can't believe how many colorful sugar maple leaves are still up around my St. Albans, Vermont house at the cusp of Halloween, though only traces of snow fell on my relatively low elevation property over the past week. I've never seen such decent fall foliage so late in the season.

Generally, lower elevations across the North Country did not receive any unusual amounts of snow for October. Just typical Vermont stuff.

Higher up in elevation, the wet snow collected on all those remaining leaves, and that tugged down trees, branches and power lines.

Green Mountain Power reported as many as 32,000 homes and businesses in Vermont without power at various times Thursday night and Friday.

Had the leaves been off the trees, I'm sure the power failures would have been much fewer and farther between.

We're now about to get into a warmer and somewhat drier pattern, so this early shot of love for snow enthusiasts is just about over. (There might have been a little snow falling on the mountain peaks this morning, but it would change to rain.)

The snow lovers will cry to see all their high elevation snow melt, but they'll surely get their chance later this winter.

With the weather turning a bit milder again, it looks like we can finish putting our gardens to bed and buttoning up for the winter without battling snow and bone chilling winds. That will be a nice reprieve.

Antarctic Sea Ice Is Having A Rough Year, Too

A mountain near the western coast of Antarctica with a fractured
ice shelf to the left of it on the water. Ice shelves
are deteriorating in Antarctica, and that could mean
more global sea level rises. 

We've been watching the Arctic sea ice extent off and on all year in this here blog thingy because it's been struggling along at record lows, or near record lows most of the time.

That's not good news, of course, because the sea ice up there has been diminishing for decades, thanks in large part to global warming. That ice loss, in turn, might screw up northern hemispheric weather patterns.

For the record, the Arctic sea ice minimum for the season did not set a record low as some people expected, but after a quick start to the re-freeze season up there in September, lots of warm air has pushed into the Arctic in October, so the re-freeze has slowed down to a disconcerting crawl. 

There's a chance, perversely, that the low sea ice extent might be partly responsible for changes in the jet stream that have brought occasionally brutally cold and snowy winters to parts of North America and western Europe.

And now, let's take a look at the Antarctic, where things this year are not going so great, either. Ice extent there is among the lowest on record, which is a switch because the overall trend has been for increased ice extent around the Antarctic in recent decades.

Oh sure, some of the outer ice shelves have been eroding dangerously, but the overall sea ice has expanded somewhat, thanks to atmospheric circulation changes that caused upwelling of colder water around Antarctica that have promoted more easily freezable waters, notes Bob Henson at Weather Underground. 

Also, summertime melt water has increased from the Antarctic continent, reducing the salinity of the ocean water around there, making it easier to freeze.

This year, though, brought another shift in the weather patterns around Antarctica. It might be a one year deal, but it did break down the ice at the bottom of the Earth, that's for sure.

It remains to be seen if this year's low Antarctic ice extent is a one year shot, or the beginning of a trend.

A more worrisome development around Antarctica is the stability of the ice shelves.

Warmer ocean water seems to be chewing up the undersides of ice shelves along the coasts of Antarctica. These ice shelves act as dams that keep glaciers in place, or at least slow them down so they move at, um, a glacial pace down Antarctic slopes.

In the past, there's been basically an equilibrium. Some glacial ice makes it to the ocean and melts, but new ice is manufactured in the cold Antarctic interior, so all was good.

Since the ice shelves are melting more, that opens the door for the glaciers to move faster, going off into the sea and eventually melting.

The ice that comes down from the land and ends up in the ocean to melt is bad, because that contributes to global sea level rises. The new ice manufacturing process in Antarctica's interior can't keep up with the ice loss created by the newly speedy glaciers.

The problem can keep escalating because the more ice at the bottom of the ice shelf melts, the more is exposed to the warmer ocean water, and the melting just rolls on.

Still, the melting might have recently slowed a little bit, at least temporarily. The most intense ice shelf melting in Antarctica seems to have occurred between 2002 and 2009, notes NPR.

Even so, the fear is the melting will continue and the ice shelves in coastal Antarctic waters will collapse entirely, and the glaciers will flow toward the sea in a gallop. A gallop by glacial standards anyway.

That, in turn would accelerate sea level rises.

So yeah, people in toasty Miami and countless other coastal locations ought to care about what's going on in Antarctica.