Possible Wet Late Week Storm Threatens White Christmas

This forecasted large storm on Friday and Saturday might
prevent much of New England from having a white Christmas.

It finally warmed up in northern New England, and many valley locations suddenly find themselves with very little snow on the ground. It's just nine days before Christmas.

For many of us here in Vermont, it's beginning to look a lot like another brown Christmas.

We've had quite a few of them in recent years. Although last Christmas I admit we had a nice covering of powdery holiday snow.

But this year could follow a recent trend of sometimes white Thanksgivings and even Easters with brown Christmases sandwiched in between.

There is some hope for a little fresh snow between tonight and Tuesday morning. Periods of snow should bring one to four inches of snow to most of us, with a half foot or more of additional accumulations in the higher elevations.

It'll be cold enough to maintain that snow until about Thursday night. Things could change, but right now it looks like a large, wet storm will move northward through the eastern third of the United States Friday and Saturday.

If things play out as expected, the storm would bring another round of heavy rain to the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic States. These areas are having a record wet year and December. They don't need additional flooding, but they might get it.

Photo taken on Christmas Day last year in West Rutland, Vermont. Last
year was surely a white Christmas.

Unlike the storm that is moving off coast today that will give us Vermonters only light precipitation, the Friday storm looks like it will bring a good slug of rain through the North Country Friday and Saturday. Not good for the ski areas, which had a great start to the season.

It also calls into question whether we'll have a white Christmas. I don't mean to say that's so important. It's certainly not the be all and end all. But people tend to like snowy Christmases.

I imagine colder air will filter in behind next weekend's storm on Sunday, December 23 and Monday, Christmas Eve, so we still have a shot of a white Christmas. The back sides of this type of storm tend to bring snow showers especially up in the mountains.

So we'll see.

North Carolina Can't Catch A Break From Flooding

It rained wicked hard in North Carolina Friday and Friday night

This just days after it snowed really hard in interior North Carolina and poured rain along the coast, one to three inches of rain came down on the state's saturated soil.  Coastal Wilmington got 1.84 inches of rain while snow was burying communities further west and north last weekend.

Flooding in Lumberton, North Carolina from Hurricane Florence
this past September.

Rivers are flooding again in North Carolina this morning. At least the flooding isn't as bed as the epic, record flooding from Hurricane Florence earlier this year.

I mentioned the other day that many places in the eastern half of the nation are experiencing their rainiest or close to rainiest year on record this year. Ground zero is North Carolina.

By the time you read this, Wilmington, North Carolina will have had 100 inches of rain for the year. By midnight last night, Wilmington was up to 99.72 inches. Another 0.08 fell in the five hours ending at 5 a.m. and a slug of moderate to heavy rain was on the city's doorstep.

The city will beat its previous record for wettest year by at least 16 inches of precipitation. In the rare cases when a city beats its annual rainfall record, it's usually by an inch or two at the most.

Each of the past five years in North Carolina have been wet. They could use a break.

According to some of the flood warnings up this morning in North Carolina, some houses that were devastated by flooding from Florence are going to hit again. That is if any of those houses still exist after Florence.

Flooding is pretty widespread this month in the Southeast. Last weekend, up to 11 inches of rain fell on southern Georgia and northern Florida, flooding homes in Waycross, Georgia and other cities.

High water was also reported around Charleston, South Carolina.

Up here in Vermont, the worst of the storms continue to miss us in December, much as they have for a lot of 2018. The southeastern storm will clip us a bit Sunday night, dropping a very modest amount of rain and snow. A little more snow will come with a cold front Monday and Monday night, but again, it won't be a huge deal.

We'll finish the year a little wetter than normal, but nothing record breaking, nothing spectacular.

NOAA Releases Newsworthy, Accessible, And DIre 2018 Arctic Report Card

Fractured sea ice in the Arctic. Photo was taken in 2017 northwest of
Greenland by NASA 

NOAA just released its annual "report card" of how the Arctic is doing under a changing climate. At best, they give it a "D-" , probably an "F."

The best way to see and hear the NOAA report card is a YouTube video NOAA put out, which you can see at the bottom of this post.  

Before we get to that, here's some highlights from the report that are important:

For the past 12 years, including in 2018, sea ice extent was near record lows. Also, old ice, which has survived several years without melting, is at extremely low levels. Only 1 percent of the ice in the Arctic is four years old or older.

This is important because newer ice is much more prone to melting in the summer than the old stuff.

You might be getting sick of the next thing they point out, but it's intriguing me and it really gets to the heart of why we should care about climate change.

NOAA scientists seem to have signed on to the notion that because the Arctic is warming faster than te midlatitudes, the jet stream is getting wavier and slower. As the New York Times puts it:

"The jet stream normally acts as a kind of atmospheric spinning lasso that encircles and contains cold air near the pole; a weaker, wavering jet stream can allow Arctic blasts to travel south in winter and stall weather systems in the summer, among other effects."

Given that, it seems that because Arctic ice is getting so lame, we here in Vermont and elsewhere in our "southerly" latitudes will have to get used to more occasional severe Arctic blasts, even if winter temperatures overall are rising.

That leaves me with the impression we'll have more "boomerang" winters. Record cold, followed by record heat. Kind of like last winter, when it was 20 below on January 7, and just five days later it was 61 degrees with heavy rain and ice jams and flooding, followed two days later by subzero temperatures again.

Finally, the report says there's no indication that the Arctic will ever revert to its icier, colder former self.

I'm glad there are still some independent scientists in the U.S. government. I know our Dear Leader Trump would say this report is "fake news." But until somebody comes up with some credible evidence that these scientists are wrong, I'll go along with it.

Here's the NOAA video:

Most Of Eastern Two-Thirds Of United States Had Incredibly Wet 2018.

Record spring rains in 2011 sent waves from a flooding Lake Champlain
crashing onto Route 2 in North Hero, Vermont. 

Up here in northern Vermont, it has only been a slightly wet 2018. In Burlington, for example, there had been a grand total of 37.13 inches of rain and melted snow and ice through December 12th. That's about an inch and three quarters wetter than normal.

Not a big deal, really. With only half a month to go in 2018, we won't come remotely close to the record wettest year, which was 2011, with 50.92 inches. We won't even come close to cracking the Top 10 wettest.  

We're an exception to the rule for much of the United States. Many places have been incredibly wet.

According to Climate Central:

"Of 2,800 stations analyzed by Climate Central, 133 (across 21 states) saw record precipitation totals this year, and 685 saw yearly totals that were among the top 10 on record. 2018 is already the fifth wettest year on record in the contiguous United States."

By the way, yes, I know Climate Central is an advocacy group that is trying to call attention to global warming and its effects. But the reporting here appears to me to be pretty solid. 

It's just normal to have a few places to report their wettest or driest year on record. There's always going to be extremes somewhere, that's just the way it goes.  

However, that so many places are having their wettest or close to their wettest year on record is indeed unusual. 

A great number of locations extending from the central Plains to the East Coast, with the exception of North Dakota, northern Minnesota and northern New England, have had an extraordinarily wet year. 

You can't blame one particular city's wet year on climate change, but when this sort of weirdness gets so widespread, you have to wonder.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS

Warmer air holds more moisture. As the atmosphere warms, this added moisture can dump out in the form of heavier downpours than would occur in a cooler world.

Damage from flash flooding in Barre, Vermont during the record wet
year of 2011.

Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground's Category 6 blog had an interesting tidbit on this subject recently. Says Masters:

"Preliminary research by precipitation expert Dr. Kenneth Kunkel of the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies announced in September that the three highest-volume rainfall events for the U.S. in the last 70 years occurred since 2016."

Those events were Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Hurricane Florence earlier this year in North Carolina and a March, 2016 storm in Louisiana.

Adds Masters, echoing what I said above: "It is highly unusual to get three such extreme events in one three-year period, and the odds of this occuring were increased by global warming, which boosts the amount of water vapor in the air and increases the frequencey and intensityof heavy precipitation events." 

Only three of the Top 10 precipitation events over the past 70 years uncovered by this research occurred before 1994 - just 25 years ago or so.

Climate change skeptic Joe Bastardi acknowledges the increased water vapor in the air in a recent Patriot Post article, at least in how it played out in the nation during early December.

Atmospheric moisture has been generally quite high overall this month. This tends to make overnight low temperatures warmer, and afternoon high temperatures cooler. Sure enough,  nightime lows for the nation as a whole were warmer than normal in early December, while daytime highs have been mostly cooler than normal.  

Here's where Bastardi and climate scientists disagree. Bastardi says a narrower temperature range means less volatility. He also says the temperature gradient between the poles and temperate regions in the mid-latitudes has decreased with this atmospheric moisture, deceasing clashes and thus dangerous storminess.

However, many climate scientists are coming around to the idea that the subsiding contrast in temperatures between the poles and the mid-latitudes is screwing around with the jet stream, making it much wavier and prone to getting "stuck" in position. That would increase storminess, or at least increase weather extremes.

By the way, Bastardi attributes the increase in atmospheric water vapor not to greenhouse gases but the oceans. He said natural cycles temporarily increased overall water temperatures, which then increases water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere. The water vapor warms up our nights, so that's what's causing what he sees as a temporry increase in Earth's atmospheric temperature.

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that the increased water vapor in the atmosphere is created by warmer oceas. But the oceans are warmer because of  increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the oceans won't cool noticeably through natural cycles. They'll just keep getting hotter.

DROUGHTS, TOO

Not everybody is wetter, of course.

Smoke from wildfires in the drought-stricken West helped create
this otherworldly sunset, as viewed from  St. Albans,
Vermont this past August 

With natural variability, often augmented by climate change, you can also get some serious and weird droughts in areas outside the "wet zones."

There were, of course, some weirdly dry sections of the nation as well. California and some other western states saw near record dryness in 2018, which helped fuel this year's extremely destructive wildfires in California. 

Also, parts of southeastern Alaska have "only" had 95 inches of rain this year. For most of the United States, that amount of rain would make things by far the record wetttest.

But southeastern Alaska is basically a rain forest (except for the mountain peaks, which of course are too high and too cold to support forests.)

The Weather Channel reports:

"Ketchikan, Alaska has recorded 96.62 inches of precipitation (rain/melted snow) in 2018 through December 10. In many parts of the United States, that would be an extreme amount, but in Ketchikan, that's 35.94 inches below average."

 It's going to be this Alaskan city's fourth driest year on record. 

Even in places that are extremely rainy, a shortage of precipitation like this can cause real problems.  Despite the heavy but still-subnormal rainfall, the region has been declared to be under a drought this year. 

According to the Weather Channel:

"The Metiakatla Indian Communityh on Annette Island was at risk of losing power after it had to stop hydroelectric power turbines due to low water levels. In early October, streamflows in the region were at much below to record low levels. 

Ketchikan had to switch to supplemental diesal fuel for power instead of cheaper hydroelectric power in late September."

It finally rained enough in November for Ketchikan to go back to hydroelectric power.

CIRCLING BACK TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Again, I want to be careful, because droughts have always happened. Areas of drought could easily be due to natural variability. It's a roll of the dice. One roll might give you a wet year, another might give you a dry year.

However, climate change might he weighing the dice to make one outcome more likely than the other. As Climate Central reports:

"Just as climate change has made heavy rainfall more common in some areas, so has it encouraged droughts in other. As temperatures continue to climb from increased greenhouse gas emissions, evaporation rates also increase. The higher evaporation rates dry out land surfaces faster, making droughts worse. Warmer temperatures can also cause more winter precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow, diminishing the store of snowpack whose slow melting many communities rely on for their water."

Up here in Vermont, we missed out on having an wicked wet year because a long-lasting weather pattern in the late spring and pretty much the entire summer steered moisture away from us 

Persistant high pressure off the East Coast and in southeastern Canada steered a steady flow of deep moisture up the East Coast, then steered it either westward or eastward a little south of us, so we missed out.

That same weather pattern created a lot of hot weather in our neck of the woods. The heat combined wth the relatively dry pattern triggered a drought over northern Vermont.

It took just two months of above normal precipitation in October and November to largely erase the drought. A wet early spring combined with the soggy late fall gave us our slightly wetter than normal 2018.

We are skewing wetter in Vermont, though. In Burlington, six of the top 10 wettest years have been since 1983. (Records go back at least to the 1880s). Meanwhile, all but one of the top 10 driest years in Burlington came before 1964. (The year 2001 made it into the Top 10.)

So in general, we might get our occasional Vermont drought, but for the most part, I see mostly wetter times ahead.  

Another Wintry Blast, Then A (Sort Of) Break

The raised beds in my St. Albans, Vermont uard are deep in winter
dormancy, and nothing green will grow in them for a long time yet.

This has been one of the most persistently cold and wintry and early introductions to winter here in the North Country that I can remember.

In Burlington, Vermont, 18 of 30 days in November were colder than normal. So far, eight of 11 days in December were chillier than normal.

Burlington has had two feet of snow so far this early seaso, more than twice the normal for the date.

This isn't the most extreme early season cold in history, but given the many very mild Novembers and Decembers in the past decade, this year is surely a frigid slap in the face.  Several slaps for that matter.

We're getting another cold slap today, as an Arctic front came through early this morning, depositing another fluffy inch or two of snow on many of us Vermonters.

After yesterday's "toasty" 30 degree readings, it's cold again. Temperatures fell rapidly after midnight with the Arctic cold front. It was in the teens and low 20s by mid-morning, and it won't really get any warmer this afternoon.

As skies clear for most of us tonight, it's going to be another deep freeze night, much like it was this past Friday night and Saturday morning. Temperatures in areas away from Lake Champlain will get below zero again, and the colder spots will reach the teens below zero. Ugh.

There's a glimmer of temporary hope still on the horizon, however, It'll start to warm up a bit tomorrow afternoon, and thawing will set in, at least in the valleys, Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday.

It won't be incredibly warm, but 30s to near 40 isn't that bad compared to what we've often had since mid-November.

Bonus: A few days ago, I said that this warmup would probably be accompanied by a wet, windy storm that also might contain mixed precipitation, too. But, nope! It tuna our the storm will miss and slide by to our south.  There will probably be some light rain or snow showers around Friday night and Saturday but it won't be a big deal.

Beyond this coming weekend, it looks like we will trend chillier again, but it's unclear at this point how cold it will get and how long it will last.  As I've said before, we're settling into a long winter, so we'll take whatever little breaks we can get.

Wild, Icy Optical Effects In New Hampshire Wows Meteorologists, Sky Watchers

This photo by Alex Kotzias, taken from a New Hampshire
ski lift recently shows at least nine really cool sky
and light effects caused by ice crystals. To have so
many effects at once is extremely rare.

Interesting things can happen in the sky when it's cold and snowy and ice crystals dance in the atmosphere like countless tiny diamonds.

Such was the case recently around Franconia, New Hampshire when ice crystals and sunshine combined to create some surreal optical effects. Hat tip to "Scoop" Cronin for alerting me to all this.

Some of these effects in the sky are common, some are pretty rare. And it's almost unheard of to have nine - count them, nine - of these effects going on in the skyh at once.

The Washington Post Capital Weather Gang took note of this and the reporters involved couldn't believe the great photos. Neither can I. They got one photo from a New Hampshire Department of Transportation worker who caught a photo of the remarkable sky, but "only" captured seven of the atmospheric events.

Capital Weather Gang ran a story about it, and the original photo was topped by another, taken by Alex Kotzias as he road a chairlift at Cannon Mountain Ski Area.  All of the odd things in the sky depend upon the presence of ice crystals.

A common but beautiful phenomenon in the photos is a halo which is a multi-colored band forming a 22 arc around the sun.

Then there's a parhelic circle, which the Capital Weather Gang describes as a monochromatic Hula-Hoop piercing the sun itself. These thigs form at the same height in the sky as the sun itself.

Where the parhelic circle and the 22 degree arc of the halo intersect, that's where you get a sun dog, which is a brighter spot of light. They sort of look like small companions of the sun. Kind of like a dog next to its human companion.

The light show elements described above are fairly common, but other things in the photo are not. One is called a Parry arc and the other is an upper tangent arc, both located above the location of the sun.

Another photo from New Hampshire shows seven of the effects
caused by ice crystals. Capital Weather Gang labeled
them for us. 

Parry arcs were first observed during William Edward Parry's naval search for a Northwest Passage in the Arctic on April 8 1820. Accompanying the Parry arc in the photos is an upper tangent arc. The Capital Weather Gang says both of these flatten out as the day progresses, and eventually merge.

Above these two things are a superlateral arc and a circumzenithal arc, which are above the Parry and upper tanget arcs. The superlateral arc curves down, while the circumzenithal arc looks like a bowl.

On top of everything else, the photo from the ski lift shows diamond dust. Those are little white specks which are ice crystals closer to the photographer.

The photos from New Hampshire are filled out by two more common light displays. A shaft of light called a sun pillar extends directly upward from the sun. Clouds low to the horizon cast bands of shadows from the sunlight. These bands of shadows and light are called crepsuscular rays.

I'll never remember the names of most of the things Capital Weather Gang describes and neither will you. The important thing is how cool and beautiful all these are. It's a good reminder to look toward our rare bursts of sun in our dark winters to see some really gorgeous stuff created by something as simple as ice crystals.

I've noticed all of these things described with the sun except for the Perry arc and upper tangent arc numerous times. But mostly you see only a couple of these at a time. To have nine in one photograph is just stunning.  Wish I was in Franconia, New Hampshire that day.

Leave It To A Vermonter To (Try) To Get Southern Snow Motorist Unstuck

Jim Cantore, in blue coast crouched in front of car, tries to get a Boone,
North Carolina car unstuck from deep snow this weekend. 

As you might have seen recently on the news, the Southeast has been hit with an unusually severe snowstorm.

Some areas in North Carolina were hit by a foot and a half of snow. Of course, the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore was there, because he's always there for any big storm.

There's one video circulating that's just typical. In hard-hit Boone, North Carolina a car got stuck in deep snow. Southerners aren't used to snow, so you can tell they were a bit flummoxed.

Cantore, though, is originally from snowy Vermont, orchestrated a rescue of the stuck car. Talk about taking charge!  You do this, you do that, he's instructing people on camera.

By the end of the video, the car is not quite yet unstuck, but all I could think of while watching the video is an old curmudgeon but secretly kind Vermont farmer trying to get some skier flatlander's SUV unstuck from a snowy rural road on the way to Killington.

You just can't take the Vermonter out a Vermonter, no matter where they end up, can you? Here's the oddly entertaining video: