Sept. Weather Pattern Gorgeous For New England; But For Rest Of Nation, Not So Much

Gorgeous sunset over northwestern Vermont last Sunday. This is a photo
I took from a hot air balloon.

We here in Vermont and the rest of the New England have been blessed by what has so far been a gorgeous September.

With few exceptions, we've had lots of sunny, pleasant days. Temperatures have generally been a tad cooler than normal, but not by much. Aside from a couple windy days that brought down a few branches, nothing bad has happened. 

This pattern is going to continue, except with some re-arrangements that will make warmer than normal temperatures more likely into early October. There will be episodes of rain and or wind thrown in for the next couple of weeks, but the sunshine seems like it might dominate.

This weather situation has been great for us. For much of the rest of the nation, not so much. On two occasions already this month, the pattern has steered two tropical systems into the United States, with destructive results.

After leveling the northern Bahamas, Hurricane Dorian sideswiped coastal North Carolina, causing a major storm surge flood on Oracoake Island. Then, as we've been talking about all week, Tropical Storm Imelda unleashed another epic flood disaster in Houston and other parts of eastern Texas.

The pattern has also emphasized storminess in the central and northern Plains. Record flooding hitting parts of South Dakota and Iowa earlier this month, and tornadoes swept through Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

It's not getting any better out in that part of the nation. The remnants of Isabel, plus moisture from tropical storms off the west coast of Mexico, combined with a cold front, are expected to unleash more dangerous flash floods today in the central United States, especially in parts of Kansas and Missouri.

Flash flooding and a possible tornado hit eastern North Dakota overnight. Meanwhile, the remnants of now-Hurricane Lorena, which is near Baja California, could unleash flash floods and severe thunderstorms in Arizona early next week.

A big, fat ridge of high pressure mostly centered in the east-central United States has been responsible for this pattern. Under this ridge, in the South and Tennessee Valleys, heat has broken hundreds of records and many cities look like they will have their hottest September on record.

(The fact that the high pressure ridge in the jet stream has been generally centered just west and south of New England has allowed cooler pushes of air to sneak down the front side of the ridge through Quebec and Ontario and on into New England).

With the ridge in the east, there's a corresponding dip in the jet stream over the western United States. That has produced some rare thunderstorms in places like Seattle this month.

There are signs that the jet stream dip in the West could sharpen in the coming days, opening up the possibillity of unusually strong rain storms for this early in the season, and an odd amount of early season snow in parts of the Rockies.

So yeah, us Vermonters can really rejoice in the great weather we've had,  considering we've been almost surrounded by all kinds of yucky and even dangerous conditions.

Enjoy it while you can, because I have an adage that has always worked: No great weather in Vermont goes unpunished. We will get our comeuppance soon enough. What form that will take is anybody's guess.

Houston's Misery: Another East Texas Flood Calamity

Vehicles stuck in the latest Houston flood disaster. Photo by
Elizabeth Corley/Houston Chronicle 

They knew parts of eastern Texas were going to be in trouble days before Tropical Storm Imelda came along this week.

I think few people believed it would be this bad.

Up to 42 inches of rain deluged some East Texas communities as what became Tropical Storm Imelda sat over the region Wednesday and Thursday.

The area, still suffering PTSD from the epic floods of Hurricane Harvey two years ago, had to live through the same thing again.

Enough is enough.

Two deaths have been blamed on the storm so far.  I imagine spirits are crushed, too.  People who barely got their homes back after the inundations of Harvey lost them again.

Houston meteorologist Matt Lanza @mattlanza has a great Twitter thread about how heavy these repeated floods are for the people of a city he loves.  The thread is definitely worth the read, but here's a snipped:

"I feel soul-crushed. For us in Houston (and the Golden Triangle) the last 4-5 years have been a never ending hell for so many people. It's cruel. It's depressing. It's weather, and sometimes it sucks. At some point it becomes an existential problem for SE Texas."

It looks to me like Imelda took Houston and other areas by surprise. At least more than Harvey managed to do..

As the day began, areas northeast of Houston, towns like Beaumont and Winnie were inundated as rain fell for hours at a rate of one, two, three even four or five inches per hour.

Things weren't as bad in Houston proper to start. It was raining, but no biggie. There were forecasts that it would get worse, but people headed off to work. Schools weren't canceled so the kids all left.

Then the thunderstorms with their incredible rains moved south and enveloped Houston. Several inches of rain came down in two or three hours. It was all over. The roads all flooded. People were trapped at work or school. Or they had to be rescued from suddenly flooded cars on the freeways and service roads.

I guess we now live in a climate world in which the weather will take us all by surprise much more frequently. I certainly don't know to what extent climate change influenced this latest disaster in Houston. Other factors are certainly at work, such as poor land use, poor drainage and just plain bad weather luck.

As worse-than-expected disasters keep piling up, I guess we have to be more and more on guard for when the weather turns on us in deadly and catastrophic fashion.

It's not a great feeling.

Videos:

An overview of the flooding via ABC 13 in Houston:



An even more eye-popping video from the same television station, showing aerial views of the traffic
nightmares in Houston from the flash flooding. Note the many cars and trucks flooded, and the many thousands of other vehicles stranded behind them on higher ground. But they certainly weren't going anywhere:



KHOU-TV reported on a freeway that took on water so fast that people were trapped in their cars. Good Samaritans carried people from the cars to temporary refuge on a flatbed truck. Then, others on an overpass flagged down a truck with a long ladder, so people were able to climb to safety:



Also from KHOU, havoc in Winnie, Texas. In some of the clips in this video, notice how incredibly torrential the rain is.

Epic Flooding In Texas As History Repeats Itself

A television station in Beaumont Texas was evacuated due to
extreme overnight flooding.

Once again, a slow, slow moving tropical system has unleashed another huge flood disaster.

It seems to be happening more frequently, and the results are catastrophic.

This time, it's in and around the suffering city of Beaumont, Texas.  Houston got most of the headlines from the immense rains and inundations of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. But Harvey also badly buried Beaumont in water.

In a scene reminiscent of Harvey when television station KHOU had to be evacuated mid-broadcast due to rising waters, television station KBMT, 12 News Now in Beaumont, was evacuated early this morning as water poured into offices and studios.

Television stations are often a lifeline during disasters because of the information they broadcast, so this isn't good at all.  The town of Winnie is reportedly almost entirely under water.

Rainfall rates this morning have been as high as five inches per hour in parts of the area. Rainfall totals early this morning were closing in on 30 inches.  Beaumont Police early this morning reported at least 250 water rescues and 270 requests for evacuation. They urged people to call 911 only for dire emergencies since they are so swamped with calls.

The remains of Imelda were inland over northeastern Texas this morning. It was pulling in bands of deep moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. The airflow with these bands was converging toward each other, increasing the lift in the atmosphere, intensifying the thunderstorms and unleashing incredible rains.

Early this morning, forecasts called for this situation to continue for several more hours, dropping as much as ten additional inches of rain on the flooded Beaumont area and environs.

This is the second time this hurricane season we've had a stall, with disastrous results. You'll remember Hurricane Dorian coming to a halt over the northern Bahamas, blasting them with as much as Category 5 winds for more than a day, instead of just a few hours like most hurricanes.

We had Hurricane Harvey stall in Texas two years ago, as mentioned. Florence stalled near the Carolinas in 2018, creating another flood disaster. A no-named storm in 2016 sat in Louisiana, causing record floods.

The Independent reports that NOAA and NASA researchers have seen a decrease of 17 percent in forward speed of North Atlantic tropical systems. The used to travel at a rate of 11.5 mph in 1944, but they were down to 9.6 mph by 2017.

Scientists are trying to figure out to what extent, if any, these slower storms are due to climate change. Some studies hint that the fact the Arctic is warming faster than lower latitudes is slowing upper level wind speeds, and thus slowing tropical storms, notes the Independent. 

In any event, this is the latest in a string of major flood events that have savaged parts of the nation in recent years.

Oh, by the way, flash flooding was happening again this morning in parts of Nebraska and Iowa.

Tropical Trouble All Over The Place: Texas Now The Focus

Gorgeous but dangerous Hurricane Humberto approaching Bermuda
this morning.

Tropical storms and hurricanes seem to be popping up all over the place, so I'm sure the people at the National Hurricane Center are wicked busy!

With the glaring exception of the upper Texas coast, there is no immediate threat to land in the United States, but plenty to watch. 

IMELDA

First let's get to that situation in Texas. As I mentioned a few days ago, it has been rather dry in and around Houston, Texas lately, so residents there at first were gratefully watching a weather disturbance move westward across the Gulf of Mexico toward them, promising some drought-busting rains.

However they do things big in Texas and the rain has become way too much of a good thing.

As the disturbance neared the Texas coast in the past couple of days, it looked more and more like a tropical storm trying to form. Things escalated quickly on Tuesday, even with prior forecasts warning of heavy rains and floods with this thing.

At around noon Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center noted the definite circulation of the storm just off the Texas coast and declared it a tropical depression. Within 45 minutes, it strengthened enough, with top winds of 40 mph, to be declared Tropical Storm Imelda.

Less than an hour after that, Imelda made landfall near Freeport, Texas.  Since it went inland, the winds weakened and it soon was back to being a tropical depression. So this was one of the shortest lives I've seen for a tropical storm in a long time.

But Imelda's rains are lasting a long time, and that's the problem.  People in Houston and much of the rest of coastal Texas are always jittery when there are flood alerts, given the extreme havoc Hurricane Harvey caused in 2017.

This situation is no Harvey, but the flooding from ex-Imelda is definitely ramping up.

According to Houston meteorologist Matt Lanza (@mattlanza) Houston as of early this morning has escaped with little flooding, though areas south of the city have had torrential rains and flash flooding.  A few spots received up to five inches of rain in an hour. Reports out of Matagorda County indicate up to 20 inches of rain already.

The rain could ramp up in Houston itself later today.

There is a flood risk in eastern Texas from the former Imelda through tomorrow.

HUMBERTO

Hurricane Humberto has really cranked up with top winds of 115 mph. It looks like it will come very close to Bermuda tonight or early tomorrow, blasting them with hurricane force winds. Then it will thankfully keep heading northeastward, further and further away from us. Good riddance!

This is a large storm, with hurricane force winds extending out 60 miles from its eye. Tropical storm-force winds go out 175 miles. Despite the fact it's missing the United States by a wide margin, there will be dangerous swells and rip currents for the next few days.

JERRY

Tropical storm Jerry formed overnight way out over the central Atlantic, way east of the Leeward Islands. It is expected to grow into a hurricane and could threaten those islands in a couple days. Beyond that, it's not known yet where it will head. Earlier indications are it will turn north before reaching the United States, but that is definitely not guaranteed.