High Winds Rake Great Lakes, Northeast, Will Still Hit Us In Vermont

High winds pushed his immense pile of ice onshore
from Lake Erie Sunday. Photo via Twitter from
Erie County ESU 

As of 6 a.m. this morning, the wind that we anticipated in Vermont really wasn't  bad at all. They were gusting into the 25 to 30 mph, which is something we see all the time.

However, the strong, gusty winds are still coming. They've just been delayed a bit

Behind the cold front that came through last night, a very subtle, barely noticeable and transient little bubble of higher pressure temporarily kept the winds at bay.  That's little weather feature is passing by to our east.

With that gone and daylight bringing better atmospheric mixing, it will get windier during the day.

By atmospheric mixing, what I mean is stronger winds aloft will be better able to sneak down to the Earth's surface at times during the day, leading to stronger wind gusts down where we live.

In fact, as we got past dawn in St. Albans, Vermont, the wind began to pick up noticeably. Winds have started to increase elsewhere in the Green Mountain State as well.

The wind in Vermont today won't be as bad as they were in places like western New York and southern Ontario, where gusts exceeded 70 mph and caused a lot of damage. (More on that in a moment, including some wild, wild video.)

Still, most of the Green Mountain State will see gusts to around 50 mph today. In some open areas, and in some spots along the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains, winds could reach 60 mph.

Ice shove from Lake Erie threatening shoreline homes in
Hamburg, New York Sunday. 

Since these strong winds will persist all day and overnight, that gives ample opportunity for tree limbs and power lines to snap. This probably won't rival the big wind storm of October, 2017, but I'm sure there will be issues with the electricity being out in many parts of the state from time to time.

Even though Vermont's winds won't be as bad as some other places in the Northeast and the Great Lakes, I'd keep the phone charged and the flashlights handy, because you could still lose power today.

The strongest winds will skirt most of Vermont, heading across central New York, and screaming through southern New England and parts of New Hampshire and Maine. There, gusts will go as high as 65 mph.

There's a couple other factors to consider with this windstorm. A little snow fell overnight. I received about a half inch here in St. Albans. Higher elevations got two to four inches. The snow showers wil persist today, especially in mid and high elevations. The snow will be powdery and blow around a lot.

Even though we're not talking about much snow, the strong winds will blow it around, creating areas of white outs in exposed areas along roads and highways.

The other factor is wind chill. It wasn't that cold early this morning, with temperatures in the 20s. But readings will fall all day and into tonight. The strong winds tonight will create some pretty nasty wind chill as actual temperatures sink to near zero.

That state of affairs will continue Tuesday. The wind won't be as bad - only gusting to 30 or 35 mph. But temperatures will struggle to reach the low teens at best during the afternoon, so wind chills will stay in the teens to near 20 below zero. Brrrr!

We'll finally calm down Wednesday but stay very cold - definitely more like mid-January than the cusp of March. Things will temporarily turn somewhat milder by the weekend, but by then, another storm will come in.

At this point, it's looking like another round of mixed precipitation and wind. But computer models wildly disagree on the strength and path of the potential storm. Could be weak, could be relatively strong.  This forecast will get a fine tuning later in the week.

WILD WINDS ELSEWHERE IN THE NATION

Web cam image from near Kassan, Minnesota on Sunday shows
what strong winds and snow can do to a highway.

Vermont has been relatively calm with this storm so far, but that's not true elsewhere.

Power outages are a good measure: Only 500 or so outages were reported in Vermont at 8:30 this morning, before the wind really started gaining strength.

By contrast, more than 600,000 homes and businesses in the Great Lakes and Northeast were without electricity this morning.

Probably the most spectacular effects of this storm has been the ice shove along Lake Erie. Southwest winds gusted to near 75 mph over that lake, which before the storm was mostly covered with fragmented ice.

The wind shoved that ice toward the shore in western New York and southern Ontario. A boom had been across the mouth of the Niagara River, which was meant to keep the ice from blasting upstream. But the boom was no match for these crushing winds, and the ice chunks came rushing in.

The result was these sudden piles of ice that in some places were at least the height of a two story building, if not higher. There's an incredible video of this whole thing starting at the bottom of this post. It's quite a scene!

Similar ice shoves, as they're called, prompted evacuations on lakeshore communities like Hamburg, near Buffalo.

All that ice jamming the Niagara River also blocked the flow of water, causing a weird flash flood - one that was created without heavy rain, but an ice shove.

Further north, there wasn't as much ice on Lake Ontario, so ice shoves weren't as big a problem. But the open water created lake effect snows. That combined with gusts well over 60 mph, is creating a blizzard on the New York shores of Lake Ontario.

High winds gusting to near 80 mph in spots caused lots of tree damage and some structural damage in southern Ontario. A blizzard struck areas west and north of Toronto.

In the Midwestern United States, blizzards struck Iowa, Minnesota and surrounding areas as winds gusted past 50 mph. Many highways were closed due to zero visibility, and a number of motorists had to be rescued.

Here's the video of the ice shove along the Niagara River:



Another video showing the force, speed and danger of this ice shove along the Niagara:



News video showing wind damage around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: