Sunday Update On Severe Storm, Flood Threat In Northeast

Aftermath of severe flash flooding in Barre, Vermont in
May, 2011. There remains a flash flood risk in Vermont
and most of the rest of New England Monday, but let's
hope it doesn't get as bad as in this photo. 

Flash flood watches are flying for a big area of the Northeast today through Monday as a slow moving batch of severe storms with torrential rains still seem like a great bet.

The flood watch zone extends through much of New York, and from New Jersey up through all but southeastern New England.

This potential flood alert zone includes northwestern Connecticut, western Massachusetts, all of Vermont, all but eastern New Hampshire and the all of Maine except a zone within roughly 40 miles of the coast

Not every town in this zone will get a flash flood today or tomorrow, of course, but some storms will repeatedly bulleye some towns and regions, resulting in flash floods.

Yesterday, I noted there would be some adjustments to the forecast position and timing of the strongest storms and sure enough there are.

Broadly, the forecast is on track. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has at least a slight risk of severe thunderstorms today along the entire western half of the Appalachian chain.

We're still expecting strong and severe thunderstorms to develop in New York State this afternoon, but they'll move a little faster toward the east than I thought yesterday.

This puts Vermont in play for severe thunderstorms later this afternoon and evening, especially the western half of the state. (Had the storms come through later, after daytime heating had ended, the storms would have been weaker.

The Storm Prediction Center has nudged the risk zone of severe thunderstorms into Vermont.

The upshot is across northern New York and Vermont, there could be some strong, damaging winds and torrential rains with the storms this afternoon and evening. The best shot of severe weather in Vermont is probably toward evening.

The only thing that could limit severe weather is that temperatures don't cool all that much with height. (That's called the lapse rate and would increase instability in the atmosphere.)  That could get in the way of a lot of storms forming, which means this evening wouldn't be that big a deal.

But don't count on such a reprieve.

As the National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont notes,  there are plenty of examples when conditions are like today's: A so-so lapse rate, but relatively strong upper level winds, hot and humid conditions and an incoming weather disturbance that have touched off a lot of severe storms. So beware.

And we ain't done after this evening.

I broader chance of severe thunderstorms exists in New England Monday.  The flash flood threat rises Monday afternoon almost regionwide, too.

If enough sun breaks through for a time Monday morning, the storms in Vermont and eastern New York could quickly become severe by afternoon. At this point I think the biggest risk of severe thunderstorms, mostly with damaging winds, would be across the eastern half of Vermont, western New Hampshire and western Massachusetts.

I actually wouldn't be totally surprised if there were a brief tornado spin up in western or central Massachusetts.

The broader threat remains localized flash floods on Monday. The air in the Northeast has far more moisture in it than normal, and the deep moisture extends high up into the atmosphere.

That means any storms that do form could contain torrential rains that come down at a rate of one to two inches per hour.

Here in Vermont, the threat of severe storms might diminish during the course of the afternoon, but there will probably still be thunderstorms around with those torrential downpours.

Since the parent cold front is moving so slowly and the air flow is parallel with this weather disturbance, we'll get into that dreaded "training" that I've referred to in past spells of flash flood threats.

As a reminder of what training is, thunderstorms often form into a line. These lines usually move generally west to east perpendicular to the orientation of the line. That means any one spot would only get a thunderstorm for an hour or less. No biggie.

When training happens, thunderstorms within the line move parallel to that line, which often stalls out. The effect of this is one thunderstorm after another moves over the same spot, like a long line of box cars on railroad tracks.

This can last for a few hours, and can result in six inches or more of rain falling in that time, leading to a local flash flood.

Some of Vermont's worst recent flash floods, including a May, 2011 disaster in and around Barre and the epic flash floods during the summer of 1998, were brought on by training thunderstorms.

There's no guarantee there will be any training box car type thunderstorms in Vermont or the rest of New England Monday, but it's something to watch.

Things start to calm down Tuesday, though the threat of heavy rain and flash flooding might linger over eastern New England.

Severe Storms, Risk Of Floods Coming To Northeast Sunday, Monday

Flash flooding, Jericho, Vermont, July 2013. A few
towns in Vermont and the rest of the Northeast could
have trouble like this on Monday.

Heads up people in the Northeast, including here in Vermont: Some rough weather looks like it might be on the way Sunday and especially Monday.

Some towns might be hit with damaging thunderstorms and local flash flooding during this period.

Let's unpack the details:

Sunday, the severe threat extends from northeastern Texas, through the northern Gulf Coast states and especially on up the western side of the Appalachians into northern and western three quarters of New York.

Western and central New York seem to be in the bullseye Monday for strong straight line winds in some storms.

More dangerous might be the very heavy downpours with these storms. Moisture levels through a thick layer of the atmosphere will be high. Storms will move slowly, or "train," meaning one storm after another might move over the same areas

The New York storms will move into Vermont and the rest of western New England Sunday night while weakening. There might be some gusty winds, and especially  heavy downpours, which could prime the pump for some possible flash floods Monday.

Before that happens, a few rogue thunderstorms might pop up in Vermont, New Hampshire and western Massachusetts, but there won't be many of them. It's just that it will be very warm and very humid, so that could be enough to trigger a storm or two.

MONDAY DANGER?

Monday looks like it will be a very busy day across the Northeast,with fairly widespread severe storms, at least by the standards of the Northeast.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center already has an enhanced zone of predicted severe storms from about Washington DC to southern Vermont.  That they would say there's an enhanced risk this far in advance indicates there's quite a bit of confidence that there will be severe storms.

They'll fuss with this forecast between now and Monday. A lot of factors will go into who is most at risk of strong storms Monday.

Like these: Where will the cold front be? How fast will it move? Will sunshine break out in the unstable air ahead of the front, increasing the instability further and increasing the strength of the storms? Where will the fastest upper level winds be, and where will they most likely veer with height, raising the risk of supercell storms?



Damage from flash flooding in Jericho,
Vermont in July, 2013. There's a chance
we could have trouble like this on Monday.

So yeah, lots of questions.
Just be prepared on Monday for the threat of severe storms, maybe even a few supercells, with the potential for very strong winds, maybe even a quick and brief tornado spin up or two almost anywhere in New England, eastern New York and down into the Mid-Atlantic states.
Again, the usual caveat: It's impossible to tell this far in advance which towns will get severe storms and which ones will have nothing much.   
During all this, but especially Monday and Monday night, flash flooding will become a rising concern in Vermont and elsewhere in the Northeast.

 As already noted, the air will have lots of water in it, and this moisture extends way up in the atmosphere. At this point, Monday afternoon and night could feature areas of very torrential downpours with some areas getting repeated dousings during this period.

In mountainous and hilly eastern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and southwestern New England, some areas face the risk of damaging flash floods

This is one of those situations where a few towns are hit hard by severe weather or floods, and a lot of other towns get away with just some bad weather.

The forecast will inevitably change somewhat as the Monday event gets closer, with adjustments in the forecast timing and strength of the potential bad weather.

However, this is just a heads up that we're in for some very active - and maybe locally dangerous -  weather over the next few days.

Southwest U.S. Deserts Are Hot, But This Will Be Ridiculous

Let's hope the air conditioning works well at the Furnace Creek
Inn in Death Valley, California as temperatures there early
next week are forecast to soar to the mid and upper 120s. Yikes!

For many, many reasons, I will not travel to visit the fine community of Bullhead City, Arizona early next week.

The principal reason is the forecast high temperature there is expected to be 122 degrees. Ouch!

Could be worse. As of this morning the forecast for Furnace Creek, California in Death Valley for next Monday is 127 degrees.

It will get "colder" there Tuesday through Thursday, when the forecast highs are only 126 degrees.

Northern Hemisphere deserts are hot in June, of course, but even by the standards of southern California and Arizona, this is going to be ridiculous.

This might end up being a heat wave for the record books in the Southwest.

As The Weather Channel points out, Phoenix might approach its all time record high of 122 degrees early next week.

Tucson, Arizona has only been up to 114 or more eight times since around 1900. They might get a few days next week to add to the total.

Of course, all this is a dry heat, but still wicked, horribly hot.

If you're going to get an extreme heat wave in the desert Southwest, it would be in the middle of June. The sun is at its maximum angle of the year to bake the Earth's surface in the Northern Hemisphere.

Also, the seasonal monsoons, which draw moisture into the Southwest from the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean, don't usually start until July. That moisture usually tamps the heat down.

When it's dry, the temperature can really soar until clear skies.

How dry is it out there? Yesterday, the relative humidity in Tucson was 1 percent. For comparison's sake, here in Vermont, Wednesday was delightfully dry and free of humidity, and even so, the relative humidity was around 30 percent.

The extreme heat will extend early next week up into central California and into Utah, so it is going to be pretty widespread.

By the way, all this heat is extending up into the Sierra Nevada mountains, where there's still a lot of snow left from a very stormy winter.

This snow will melt very fast in this weather, so there might be some flood problems in rivers that come off the mountains.

Vermont Heat Deaths Show Risk Is Not Just A Southern Thing

Two elderly Vermonters died early this week in the Brattleboro area during the brief but intense heat wave we had, and officials tied those deaths to heat exposure.

At two separate houses, an 87 year old woman and an 87 year old man were found outdoors near their houses, according to the Brattleboro Reformer and VTDigger.

While the medical examiner has not announced an official cause of these deaths, the fact that it looks like they're heat related offers us a warning:

We can get in trouble during hot weather even up here in northern New England.

In fact, in some ways, the problem can be worse. Many homes don't  have air conditioning. (Hey, some parts of New York and Vermont were in the 30s last night - in June!)

Still, the overall trend has been for more summer hot spells and especially hotter, muggier nights, and that can take a toll on  us.

Any hot afternoon can be risky if you don't take care of yourself. That's especially true among the elderly and people who have health problems.

Even healthy, young pups need to be careful, though.

Back in September, 2015, Vermont State Trooper Kyle Young, 28, died of heat exhaustion during a training exercise on a very warm, humid day.  And a younger man who was a logger died while working during record heat in July, 2012 in northern Vermont.

And a study has shown that emergency room visits in New England increase exponentially during hot spells.

More hot, humid spells are inevitable this summer. It's only mid-June, after all. In fact, it will be muggy with temperatures flirting with 90 degrees Sunday afternoon.

So remember these tips for the rest of the summer:

Check on the elderly. Often. Make sure they are in a cool place or take them there, like to the mall or a movie. Make sure they're drinking a lot of liquids.

Take care of yourself, too. There's no need to mow the lawn at 3 p.m. in the afternoon in the sun when the temperature is 95 degrees. Keep drinking that water, and maybe even throw in a sports drink or two.

If you or someone you're with is in hot weather and start experiencing things like heat cramps, nausea, confusion, dizziness, get to a cool place now if not sooner and drink non-caffienated liquids. If it starts to progress to heat stroke, (super high temperature, dry skin, fainting, call 911 pronto.

Take care of your pets, too. Dogs cool off by panting, and there's only so much they can do. My house is not air conditioned, so when it gets too hot, our dogs and I retreat to the cool basement and hang out down there. We make a day of it.

Also remember: If you take your kids and pets on a car trip, don't leave then sitting in a parked vehicle in the sun for even a couple minutes while you run your errands. And when you get home or do your destination, please, please always remember to make sure you've retrieved your kids and pets and anyone else from the car.

There have been too many deaths in hot cars across the country already this summer.

No Big Storms Here, But Plains States To Take Battering Today For 3rd Day.

Quincy Vagell tweeted this photo of a tornado and
lightning near Grover, Colorado Monday. 

The brief heat blast here in northern New England is slowly coming to an end today, without many fireworks.  

We did have more record highs in Vermont Monday. The temperature of 94 degrees broke a record high in Burlington for the second day in a row.

The day's minimum temperature of 71 set a date record for the warmest minimum temperature for June 12.

Montpelier on Monday had a record high of 88 degrees. So did the summit of Mount Mansfield, at 76 degrees.

Often, when a heat wave ends, as is currently happening, severe thunderstorms break out. But the timing of the front, as noted yesterday is all wrong, so we didn't get severe storms and won't.

There were a few isolated thunderstorms as the cold front sagged south from Canada, but no big deal.

The cold front is moving more slowly than earlier thought, and as of mid-morning the humidity hadn't cleared yet. Plus, an area of showers and thunderstorms along the front will affect portions of Vermont later this morning and early afternoon, especially from about Montpelier south.

Further south, there might be some strong storms in southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic states as the cold front invades the hot weather still sitting over those locations this afternoon.

Aftermath of a big hail storm in Coon Rapids,
Minnesota on Sunday.

While we had nothing scary in terms of storms, the Northern Plains and Front Range area of Colorado and Wyoming and Montana have had lots of bad weather lately.

Sunday, a storm complex and derecho formed in South Dakota, raced across Minnesota, including the Minneapolis area, and on into Wisconsin.

The hail and wind damage was wild with that one, as you can see in the video of the storm below, in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, northwest of Minneapolis.

On Monday, there were 32 preliminary reports of tornadoes, mostly in Wyoming and Nebraska. Luckily, no deaths have been attributed to the twisters, though there were a few injuries and some houses were destroyed in strong tornadoes.

There's a video at the bottom of this post of a destructive tornado in Harrisburg, Nebraska on Monday.

Today the action moves back to the northern and central Plains, especially the eastern halves of the Dakotas (watch the skies, dear relatives of mine in Yankton, South Dakota!) and eastern Nebraska and much of Minnesota and northwestern Iowa.

Not everyone in this region will get severe weather of course, but there is the risk of tornadoes, huge hail and damaging straight line winds.

Back east over Vermont, it'll actually feel almost chilly Wednesday behind the cold front with highs only in the 60s and low 70s and lows in the 40s to around 50.

It'll turn more humid again over the weekend with the risk of showers and storms, but it won't turn super, super hot like it's been the past couple of days. Still maybe uncomfortable on Sunday, though, depending on the timing of weather fronts

Here's the incredible hail and wind storm in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota on Sunday (The filmmaker replaced the cacophony of hail with a nice song:



Next, a news video of so much hail in Coon Rapids, Minnesota Sunday that people had to get their snow blowers out to clear it:



Finally, a destructive tornado in Harrisburg, Nebraska Monday:

"Blowtorch Sunday" Fries Vermont; Just As Hot Today

For those of you who want to cool off from this June
heat wave, here's a giant snowbank after a March
blizzard in Richmond, Vermont.

Boy, Sunday afternoon in Vermont felt like a blowtorch, didn't it?

Record high temperatures, a sun angle as high as it can possibly get (it is June after all) and a hot south wind really made for an impressively hot day.

The temperature reached a record high of 95 degrees in Burlington, besting the old record of 92. Sunday also featured the hottest temperature for so early in the season

Yep, there was a breeze, but at that temperature, the gusts as high as 32 degrees felt like an overactive forced air heater.

Montpelier, Vermont also hit a record high of 88 degrees Sunday. The heat extended far to the north. Caribou, in the northern tip of Maine, had a record high of 91 degrees Sunday afternoon. Bangor, Maine also had a record 91 degrees.

I noticed that, a bit like cold weather in the winter, there weren't all that many people out yesterday, except at the beach, and places like the creemee stand I drove past in Milton.

As you might have noticed, we woke up to a warm morning, and it's breezy. Today looks to be similar to Sunday, with just a couple subtle differences.

A weather disturbance was passing through southern Quebec early this morning. It had a package of showers and thunderstorms with it. A few showers might graze far northern areas this morning before the batch moves on into northern Maine, where a few storms could be strong to severe there this afternoon.

Far northern areas, because of the clouds, could be a degree or two "colder" than Sunday but even there, clearing skies later this morning guarantee another hot day.

Today's record high of 92 degrees in Burlington is definitely under threat.

Like the brief two-day blast of heat that brought record high temperatures in mid-May, we're going to quickly cool off, much like what happened after that May heat.

Unlike the May heat wave, we're not expecting the heat to end in a blast of severe thunderstorms. Atmospheric conditions don't really favor strong storms this time. Plus the cold front is expected to come through Vermont early Tuesday morning, at a time of day that does not favor storms.

Thunderstorms tend to fire up more intensely near cold fronts in the afternoon, when the heat of the sun adds instability to the air.

Even so, a thunderstorm or two could fire up near the Canadian border and on into southern Quebec this evening.

Tuesday morning might start off feeling a bit muggy and warm, but a freshening north wind will make the afternoon feel noticeably more comfortable.

Wednesday's highs, under sunshine, will only be in the 65 to 75 degree range. Cool, but not all that unusual for this time of year.

But with low humidity and cool nights by midweek, expect to have much better sleeping weather midweek.

Did Someone Say Snow? Relax, NOT For Us In New England

Sunset atop Mount Washington, New Hampshire Tuesday as
seen through a railing coverd with ice and frozen snow.
No more snow there in the foreseeable future, but the
mountains of northwestern United States look like they'll
get some over the next several days. 

As we head into summer, it seems all my nightime dreams involve snowfalls.

No, I'm not pining for snow right now, but it seems I've got snow on my brain.

Maybe it's because I've been watching the weather patterns and see signs of snow for the next few days - for the northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, not for us, so relax.

It's true it did snow atop Mount Washington the other day, but the jet stream flow has changed and we can expect a few days of summer weather here in the Northeast and through most of the eastern two-thirds of the nation for that matter.

It's another story for the Cascades of Washington and Oregon, the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, and parts of the high country in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

A deep dip in the jet stream is drawing cold, stormy air from northwestern Canada, and the result will be some June snow in these mountains. 

It's actually not all that unusual for it to snow in the mountains in the part of the country in June, but still, people are worried about early season hikers and campers that aren't ready for cold temperatures and wet snow.

Already, a winter weather advisory - in June - is up for the Lassen Park area of California for four to eight inches of high elevation snow. Other advisories might go up for the northwestern United States mountains over the weekend and into early next week.

There was already a LOT of snow in many western mountains from a stormy winter. In Wyoming, things have gotten ugly, and the turn to colder weather toward Tuesday there could actually help.

Ahead of the approaching cold front it is quite warm in Wyoming and surrounding parts of Idaho and Montana. That has created some serious snow melt flooding and things will probably get worsre today and Saturday as thunderstorms unleash heavy rain atop this melting snow.

Forecasters are urging voluntary evacuations in some river valleys of central Wyoming. Also,  the Wind River at Riverton, Wyoming has reached a record crest.

Although people in this area will be relieved at the colder weather by Tuesday, I'm sure they won't appreciate the additional snowfall in the mountains, which will eventually have to melt.