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| A foggy Champlain Valley, Vermont commute home Friday afternoon. Strong winds are clearing out the fog once and for all today. |
She first popularized the song "Stormy Weather," and that's on the agenda today. Wind, rain and even snow will pummel the region today. There's even the slightest chance of yet another brief tornado or two in eastern New England.
The Champlain Valley of Vermont has been in dense fog since Friday afternoon. The good news is wind will finally clear out the fog this morning, where it hasn't already.
The bad news is that in many areas, the wind will become strong enough to toss down a few branches, and cause some scattered power failures.
The wind will be strongest along the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains today and this evening, and stronger yet across eastern New England. More on that in a bit.
As of early this morning, most of the rain avoiding northwestern Vermont. That's temporary. The storm center was around Connecticut this morning and strengthening rapidly as it moves northeast across New England.
That will cause rain to blossom back up over northern New York and pretty much all of Vermont by afternoon, if not sooner. Radar trends as of 6:30 this morning already showed increasing rains in New York, heading toward northwestern Vermont.
The rain is the least of our problems, at least in Vermont. The rest of New England will have local flooding problems as the rain will really come down there. There were already a variety of flood advisories and watches out for that region, and that trend will continue all day.
The front, warm side of this storm is particularly dynamic. The stormy weather pattern of late has produced at least 30 tornadoes since Halloween from Texas to Florida. (See a video at the bottom of this post of a Florida tornado that happened Friday.)
As this storm got going, at least one other twister reportedly touched down in Mount Airy, Maryland. Another possible tornado partially collapsed an Amazon distribution center in Baltimore, killing two people. There were also a couple of tornado warnings in southeastern Pennsylvania overnight, but I don't know if anything touched down
Before dawn this morning, there were already a couple of severe thunderstorms in southern New England, racing toward the northeast. There's enough spin in the atmosphere to potentially make some of these storms rotate. So there's a very slight, but non-zero chance of brief tornadoes today in eastern Rhode Island, eastern Massachusetts, coastal New Hampshire and the eastern half of Maine.
Yep, New England seems intent on holding on to its new, tornado alley reputation.
As the storm rapidly strengthens today, so will the wind. Most of New England and eastern New York are under either wind advisories or high wind warnings today. The wind will blast in from the west.
The wind flow is such that the gusts will ride up and over the mountains. As the wind crests the Green Mountains in Vermont the air flow will grab stronger winds from up above the ridgelines and bring them down to the surface in many areas along the eastern slopes of the mountains. Gusts in those areas could easily reach 55 mph.
On the highest mountain summits of the Adirondacks and in New England, I wouldn't be surprised to see gusts in the 75 to 100 mph range. Maybe even stronger than that atop Mount Washington.
Winds will be somewhat lighter in the Champlain Valley than elsewhere, but gusts over 40 mph are still a good bet later today.
These gusty west winds will bring in colder air, so rain will change to snow in many areas of northern Vermont later this afternoon and evening. By then, the storm will be departing, so there won't be anything heavy.
Best guess is a dusting to two inches above about 800 feet in elevation in the North Country. At this point, I doubt there will be any accumulations on the lowest valley floors, but you never know. In any event, this won't be a big snowfall by any stretch of the imagination.
The strong storm is moving right along, so it will be out of our hair on Sunday. That means we have a shot of at least some sun, and the winds will die down as the day goes on.
There's no rest for the weary, though. Another very strong storm will get going in the middle of the country, then move into the Great Lakes as a huge wind maker. Here in New England, I don't think it will be awful. There will be some rain Tuesday, maybe some heavier showers along the storm's cold front on Wednesday. It will get windy again, too.
This week's storm spells a lot more trouble for the middle of the nation, however.
There's a real risk of another tornado outbreak in the lower Mississippi Valley Monday evening and in the Southeast Tuesday, election day.
Very strong winds will develop by Wednesday in the Great Lakes, sort of a "gales of November" situation popularized by Gordon Lightfoot's famous song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
After that, the overall November weather pattern continues to look stormy across much of the United States.
Here's that video of an SUV accidentally driving through a Florida tornado Friday:
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