Tornado Outbreak Kills 3, Causes Huge Damage, And Alters Storm Forecast In Northeast.

A tornado destroyed this school Monday in Alexandria, Louisiana
Image from KALB

Monday's tornado outbreak in the South killed at least three people and caused millions of dollars in property damage.  But as they always say, it could have been worse.

Warnings were excellent as the powerful tornadoes moved through, and those warnings saved lives.

One such example was in Alexandria, Louisiana, which was in the path of a strong tornado with a long track of 63 miles.  In that path was the Hope Baptists School and Church, where 18 kids and their teachers were in classrooms as the storm approached.

According to television station KALB, teachers in the school received phone alerts of the approaching tornado.  The teachers hustled the children to a safer church sanctuary next door. Moments later, the school collapsed in the tornado. The sanctuary was also badly damaged, but everybody was by then hiding in protected corners of the building.

The complex was destroyed, but nobody was hurt. Just after the tornado, emergency responders  took the kids to a nearby, undamaged building where parents picked them up.

Not everyone was so lucky. A husband and wife in Town Creek, Alabama were killed by a tornado and several others hurt, according to the Weather Channel, citing an Associated Press report. 

So far, there are 37 reports of preliminary reports of tornadoes in the Deep South.

There is a history of terrible December tornadoes in the South.  A twister hit Tuscaloosa, Alabama on December 16, 2000, killing 16 people. Several rounds of southern tornadoes in December, 2015 killed 20 people.  The deadliest December tornado on record killed 38 people in Vicksburg, Missisippi on December 5, 1953.  (That was the end of a terrible tornado year in which powerful tornadoes killed hundreds of people in Texas, Michigan and Massachusetts.)

The large number of tornadoes and violent thunderstorms Monday pumped a lot of latent heat into the atmosphere, which has helped pump up a high pressure ridge off the East Coast. That is affecting the snow and ice storm hitting the Northeast today.

It doesn't change the forecast much for the northern two thirds of Vermont (One to three inches north, three to five inches of snow south).  But the extra heat and moisture in the atmosphere might boost snow totals in southern Vermont and New Hampshire up to or even beyond six inches.

And that extra heat floating around as a "gift" from yesterday's thunderstorms are creating   more favorable conditions for a lot of freezing rain in parts of southern New England, New York, New Jersey and Pensylvania. It was already a total mess in these areas early this morning.

Here's a video of a close miss tornado to the video maker's house. Her name is Heather Welch. Early on in the video you can see large debris falling and trees toppling as the twister made its closest approach to the camera person.

I probably would not have been standing under those trees. When a tornado just passes, you get something called a rear flank downdraft, which can contain powerful winds that would easily topple trees and cause additonal damage, even away from the tornado's direct path:



Another large tornado near Bogue Chitto, Mississippi:



This aftermath video of the Hope Baptist School in ??? is scary because of what could have happened to all the kids inside. Video shows the destruction and children being evacuated:

So Far, So Good With Barry But Danger Remains. Also Uncomfortable Vermont Impacts

Flooding from Barry in Mandeville, La on Saturday.
Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

Tropical Storm Barry its winds no longer much of a factor, continued to plow through Louisiana this morning, dumping heavy rains and unleashing lots of floods, as expected.

That's the bad news. The good news is, although the threat of destructive life-threatening floods is still big time there, some threatened areas have been spared so far. New Orleans, for instance, remains in good shape this morning.

Storm surges were certainly damaging along the coast, but could have been worse. The surge overtopped some levees, causing some serious flooding. People reportedly had to be rescued from rooftops in Terrebonne Parish, which is south of New Orleans.

The heaviest rain had so far mostly missed Louisiana, until this morning, when heavier rain bands started moving in.  That's about to get worse as the day wears on.

Barry has always been a weird storm.  When it was first starting to form in the Gulf of Mexico last Wednesday, it threw tremendous rains into New Orleans, flooding much of the city.

Since then, the most torrential rains with Barry have remained offshore, to the south of the storm's center.  That was true even early this morning, when the dying center of Barry was over western Louisiana.

True, some heavy rain bands did come in, causing some significant floods in southern Mississippi and coastal Alabama.

Today, however, as the remnants of Barry slog slowly northward toward Arkansas, that heavy rain in the northern Gulf of Mexico will pull north along with it. That's when the real torrents of rain will come, especially across central and southwest Louisiana, according to forecasters.  The highest risk for flash flooding there with this storm is actually this afternoon, evening and overnight.

Tomorrow, the best chances of Barry flooding are in the mid-Mississippi Valley, say in eastern Arkansas and western Tennessee.

VERMONT IMPACTS

Although I don't think Barry will do many scary things here in Vermont, we will feel its impacts. Especially in the sweat department.

The remnants of Barry will move toward us, and that will make the humidity rocket upward, especially as we get into Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

It will probably be the worst spell of high humidity we've had so far this summer. Daytime highs will get into the 80s, with dewpoints probably in the low 70s. That's about as humid as it gets in a Vermont summer. Nights will be oppressively hot - too muggy to sleep without air conditioning.

One potential danger from Barry and all his wet air coming at us is the possibility of local flash floods. That risk is definitely iffy and may well NOT come to pass,  but we'll have to keep an eye on that as we get on later in the week.

We do know that the humid air, the remnants of Barry and stalled, weak weather fronts near the Green Mountain State will set off some fairly frequent showers and thunderstorms. With all the humidity around, some of these storms will surely set off some torrential downpours.

If these torrential storms slow down or stall over a certain area, or a string of several such storms goes over the same area, one after another, that would increase the flash flood potential.

Like other events this spring and summer, even if Vermont does get some flooding out of this, and that's a bif if, the trouble wouldn't be statewide. Some towns would get nailed, while most others would be fine.

A couple videos:

 News report of overtopped levee in Myrtle Grove, New Orleans. Looks ominous:

 

Storm surge flooding in Brathwaite, Louisiana. You can see in the drone video water overtopping a levee here, too:

Long, Hellish Weekend in Louisiana, Mississippi Due To Barry

Tropical Storm Barry was looking somewhat more organized
early this morning on satellite imagtes. 

UPDATE 11 a.m.

Tropical storm Barry briefly achieved hurricane status this morning as it moved into Louisiana, as it had top sustained winds of 75 mph.

These strong winds were only in a small area east of the center, and of course probably have already started weakening.

Plus, Barry certainly does not look like a hurricane on satellite photos. At least not a traditional one.

This brief hurricane status basically means nothing in real terms. The expected outcome is the same: Strong, gusty winds in southern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi, with the biggest impacts being flooding from the expected rainfall of up to two feet

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Tropical Storm Barry, that lopsided mess of a storm, was slowly inching toward the coast of Louisiana this morning, still destined to bring horrible flooding to Louisiana, Mississippi and perhaps beyond for the next few days.

Barry really is one of those storms that on paper, shouldn't be that big a deal. But, as we've pointed out for days, it's very slow and very wet, even by tropical storm standards, so the flooding still looks to be tremendous.

That flooding will begin today, if it hasn't already. Heavy rain was moving onshore early Saturday. Forecasters still expect an incredible ten to 20 inches of rain in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi.

Storm surges have been causing some coastal inundations at least since Friday morning at the times of high tide. Power is already out in many neighborhoods as winds pick up. Some exposed areas along the shore and up high, like in upper floor condos, have had wind gusts to hurricane force already.

Honestly, there's not much new to report on Tropical Storm Barry this morning. Everybody down in the storm zone is just bracing themselves, hoping for the best, and expecting the worst. Baton Rouge is expecting flooding that could easily rival the epic disaster of 2016.

That was just three years ago, and people haven't really recovered from that yet, and here they are getting hit again

For weather geeks, Tropical Storm Barry looks very weird especially for a tropical storm packing top winds of 70 mph and one that could still become a category 1 hurricane.

The northern part of the storm was still blown apart all day Friday by dry air and strong winds aloft, while the southern half of the storm looked intense to say the least. Tropical storms and hurricanes usually have a roughly circular shape. Barry looks more like a ragged half moon.

The storm on satellite looked a bit more like a traditional tropical system this morning, which tells me there's still some opportunity for strengthening as it nears the coast.

Still, because of the more disorganized northern part of the storm, the worst of Tropical Storm Barry will probably come a few hours after landfall. Heavy rain will come out ahead of it, of course, but it'll get really nasty once Barry is inland later today.

Flooding is obviously the big risk, but storms like Barry often spin off a lot of tornadoes, so that's a risk, too. Early this morning, tornado warnings went up in New Orleans, just a few days after another tornado destroyed a house near the city.

Anyway, Saturday morning is a time to watch and wait and see what Barry has in store this weekend. I'm sure there will be some bad news on this by Sunday.

Louisiana Braces For Barry Flooding; Northern Vermont Got A Needed Soaking

In this rainfall prediction map, areas in yellow could
see 10 to 20 inches of rain from Tropical Storm Barry

Residents of Louisiana and surrounding states are dreading what I rejoiced over last evening.

Downpours.

After nearly two weeks of mostly dry, hot weather parched my St. Albans, Vermont gardens almost into dust, heavy downpours rumbled through northern Vermont last night. It wasn't extreme by any means, but at least things out there are a little wetter.

What is extreme is the rainfall from Tropical Storm Barry, which we've been talking about for a couple days now.

Barry remains a disorganized mess in the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't even really look like a tropical storm when you look at satellite pictures of it.

Looks are deceiving. Tropical Storm Barry is still destined to unleash a horrible flood. Probably in Louisiana. Right now, it looks like the worst of the rain and flooding would hit the eastern half of Louisiana into Mississippi, though of course the exact placement of those downpours could change as Barry evolves.

Forecasters say up to two feet of rain could fall from the slow-moving storm and many places are at risk of 10 inches or more. Storm surges from the Gulf of Mexico could also add to the flooding. This still looks like it's going to be quite the disaster, unfortunately.

"There are three ways that Louisiana can flood; storm surge, high rivers and rain. We're going to have all three," Louisiana Gov. Bel Edwards said. 

Winds from Tropical Storm Barry aren't all that fierce, but are persistent, and will continue to shove Gulf of Mexico water into the coastline through the weekend, even as the heavy rains fall.

Tropical Storm Barry was a disorganized mess in this satellite
photo from yesterday, but don't let that fool you. There's
still a high risk of epic flooding from this. 

CBS also reports that the Army Corp of Engineers now does not expect Mississippi River to overtop levees and the mayor of New Orleans said water pumping stations are much improved since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Still, there's only so much water that can be pumped out.

As the downpours in New Orleans demonstrated two days ago, super heavy rains can still easily flood the city. "We cannot pump our way out of the water levels and the waterfalls that are expected to hit," said New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

New Orleans itself is not under an evacuation order, but some people are getting out of town anyway. Other low-lying areas of Louisiana are being evacuated.

This whole Barry thing is a weird setup anyway, given the already high river levels ahead of the storm, the long lasting storm surge and downpours, and the generally sodden atmosphere, possibly made worse by climate change.

According to Time:

"Peter Gleick, a Pacific Institute climate scientist, warns that Tropical Storm Barry is 'exactly a climate change story.'

'No climate scientist is saying these storms are caused by climate change. That's a difficult thing to show......What we're saying is that climate change is increasingly influencing these very damaging events. And it's that influence that's going to grow over time as we continue to fail to get climate change under control.'"

If the forecasts are correct with Barry, this will make it the fourth summer in a row in which some part of the nation got an epic, unprecedente flood from a tropical storm or a tropical system. Louisiana got nailed in 2016, Hurricane Harvey drowned Houston and other East Texas cities in 2017; Hurricane Florence wrecked the Carolinas in 2018, and now this.

And I'm not even talking about all the other floods that have been going on.

Up here in Vermont, we had our own epic flood disaster with Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.  I worry these events are becoming more frequent, and we might be due again for another Irene. Not with Barry, but it feels like only a matter of time.

Last evening's downpours had me rejoicing because it was alleviating a dry spell. Of course, a few places got too much, as there were and are pockets of damaging flash floods in northern New York, central New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts.

Here in Vermont, I figure it's inevitable thatone of these nights, the downpours won't stop, and then..........

Barry's Legacy Will Probably Be Another Epic Flood

Severe flooding in Louisiana in 2016 caused by a stalled weather system.
What is to become Tropical Storm Barry will also be moving
quite slowly, so it could unleash similar serious flooding
UPDPhoto by Bill Feig/The Advocate

UPDATE 1 p.m. 

s expected, that storminess in the Gulf of Mexico was upgraded to Tropical Storm Barry late this morning.

The National Hurricane Center says it now has a better defined circulation and has sustained winds as high as 40 mph, so Barry now qualifies as a tropical storm.

The system is still a disorganized mess though, with upper level winds and intrusions of dry air messing Barry up.

Still,  Barry is still expected to intensify, and might, MAYBE achieve hurricane status before landfall over the weekend.

That doesn't matter all that much, though, as all the rain with Barry is the real problem. Flooding is going to happen somewhere along the Gulf Coast. Probably Louisiana.

That said, the exact track of the storm is super uncertain. It could hit land anywhere between Mississippi and the upper Texas coast. Whereve it hits, the heaviest rain will come over and just east of where it comes ashore.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

The storm system that everybody's been watching in the Gulf of Mexico, the one destined to become Tropical Storm Barry, was still trying to get its act together this morning.

No matter what happens with this thing, though, it's almost guaranteed to bring somebody a terrible, epic flood. Once again, we'll have big time flooding in the news.

Wannabe Barry is still a wannabe because no real noticeable center of circulation had developed as of early this Thursday morning. Where that center forms will be key in where Barry goes. There's still questions on where precisely it will make landfall and at what strength it will do so.

Although everybody, including me, wants to know those particulars, in essence, it doesn't matter. The serious flooding from this is already almost locked in stone. It appears Louisiana or Texas and on up into probably Arkansas and Mississippi are at the greatest risk.

Yesterday, I mentioned how a storm surge from wannabe Barry pushing upstream along the already high Mississippi River could overtop levees. That's still a definite threat, but even if that doesn't happen, the flooding will be widespread and very dangerous.

One of the big reasons for that is wannabe Barry is in no hurry to get anywhere. Steering currents in the atmosphere are weak, so it won't move much. Which means the downpours will linger over a particular area for a long time, creating spectacular rainfall totals.

Current predicts are for at least a foot of rain in the areas especially targeted by Barry, and the latest best guesses are that would be Louisiana, possibly including the already flood-soaked New Orleans. Some areas could get up to 20 inches of rain.

This slow moving set of downpours sets up a potential disaster that has similarities to the stalled Hurricane Harvey in Texas back in 2017, or that no-name stalled August, 2016 storm that dumped up to 30 inches of rain on Louisiana, causing another epic flood.

Needless to say, flood watches are up along much of the northern Gulf Coast between the Florida Panhandle and central Louisiana.  I suspect those flood watches will be extended westward toward Texas, especially if it looks like wannabe Barry goes further west, too.

It's interesting that there is a hurricane watch up for coastal Louisiana even though wannabe Barry isn't even a tropical depression yet. At least as of this writing.  It's certainly possible this storm could reach hurricane strength by early Saturday morning, especially if it stays off the coast over the warm Gulf waters long enough.

This would add some wind damage to the mix from wannabe Barry. And be dangerous for very low lying coastal areas. Low, swampy areas south and east of New Orleans were already being evacuated this morning because of the risk.

Regardless of whether this turns into a hurricane or not, the inland flooding will be the real impact.  This year has been another in a series with devastating floods in the United States. And it's about to get worse, unfortunately.

Here's some video clips of the flooding in New Orleans yesterday that was probably a prelude to the upcoming, bigger flooding disaster:

May Was Second Wettest On Record As The Rains Keep Pouring Down

Green areas are parts of the nation that were wetter than normal
in May. The darker the green the greater departure from
nornal rainfall. 

It seems as if every day, floods capture the attention in weather news.

Yesterday, it was Louisiana and the Oklahoma City metro area that suffered through damaging, dangerous floods. It's just been a continuous drumbeat for it seems like a couple years at least now.

As if to prove that point, NOAA's National Centers for Climate Information released their summary for the month of May, which showed the month was the second wettest on record for the United States.

If you average it out. 4.41 inches of precipitation fell across the nation. Only May, 2015 was wetter and just barely - that month four years ago had 0.03 inches more rain than May, 2019.

The only dry areas of the nation during May, 2019 were in parts of the Southeast, western Washington and along the immediate Canadian border in Idaho, Montana and North Dakota.

Three states - Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri - had their wettest Mays on record. Twelve other states had one of their top 10 wettest Mays. (Here in Vermont it was the 18th wettest May out of the past 125 years, so pretty soggy, but not record breaking.)

Also, the 12 month period ending on May 31 was the wettest such stretch on record. The period ending April 30, 2019 (this year) was the previous wet record holder for a 12-month period. Records go back 125 years.

During that 12 month period, an average of 37.68 inches of precipitation fell across the nation, which is a whopping 7.73 inches above average.

This wetness is consistent with climate change. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor that cooler air. That added water vapor in the toastier air leaves the potential for heavier downpours.

The atmosphere in general has gotten warmer across the globe. It's interesting to note that six of the top ten wettest 12 month periods in the United States have been since 2016 and all of them have been since 1974. Remember, these records go back to 1895.

That said, month to month precipitation in the United States is highly variable. With or without climate change, a given month for the nation can be very wet, very dry, or just average.

But the overall trend has for wetter months overall, especially in the eastern half of the United States.

It's hard to say whether the rest of the year will be wet, but the first half of June is not proving to be particularly encouraging.

There were those floods yesteday in parts of the South. A slow moving collection of weather systems threatens quite a bit of flooding and heavy rain over the next several days in the Southeast. Many areas from Florida to Virginia could see five or more inches of rain over the next seven days.

Long range forecasts into the third week of June suggest that larger areas of the United States will be wetter than normal compared to those that will be drier than normal. (For the record, Vermont is forecast to be overall cooler and wetter than normal into the third week of June, despite an expected warm, dry weekend coming up.)  

Flash flooding in Tulsa, OK
Thursday. Photo via Twitter by
Jonathan Torrio

This next part will get confusing, but bear with me. The overall temperature for the nation as a whole was a little cooler than average during May.

This, after I just got done explaining that a warmer atmosphere holds more water, so that might help explain why we had such a wet national month.

Storms are at least in part a clash between warm and cold air. Although final numbers aren't in yet, May, 2019 was almost certainly in the top 10 warmest for the world as a whole. Warmer air feeding into the storms that affected the nation might have increased rainfall somewhat. Some of this warm air came from outside the nation.

And note the heaviest precipitation was in the middle of country. The Southeast was warmer than average in May, and that's where much of the humid air was coming from to feed the precipitation in those Midwest storms.

However, parts of the United States was on the cool side, bucking a worldwide trend in May, because the weather patterns during the month favored cool air flowing into the middle of the nation.

Some Cool Random Videos

A still from a video of a dust devil lifting chairs and
other items off the ground in Alberta recently. 

The weather is pretty quiet this week, so it's time for a few random videos.

In Alberta, Canada recently, a dust devil interrupted a softball game.

It was strong enough to lift chairs, jackets, even batting helmets high into the air. Some of these items dropped some distance away in a residential area when the unusually strong dust devil dissipated.

Nobody was seriously hurt. Here's the video:



It's spring, and that means pollen. It's quite a season in the East, as spring has come on suddenly. My nose is running and pollen is not usually an issue for me. This year it is, a little bit.

In Millvillle, New Jersey, somebody decided to tap a pollen-laden tree with some heavy equipment. Here's the result:



Lake Como, Italy, is probably one of the lovliest places to go in the world, but not on Monday, as this brief video snows. Those big splashes in the lake are giant hailstones coming down:



A tornado hit a Sonic restaurant in Louisiana Sunday. Check out the two cars in the parking lot, especially the one that goes flying. It's hard to see it in the dust and debris, but take a close look in this brief video from a surveillance camera.



Finally, here's a rather sad Vermont video. It shows quite a bit of damage to the Causeway path that juts out into Lake Champlain from Colchester. High winds during the storms Friday combined with rather high lake levels caused a lot of erosion.

Snow, Severe Storms, Tornadoes, Hail, Green Skies And Pecos Hank

Greenish clouds associated with severe weather. Photo by Nicole
Ubalducci, via Lifehacker 

The nation is getting into the heart of the spring severe thunderstorm and tornado season now, despite the mid-winter chill gripping much of the North.

Severe storms need warm, humid air to get going, so the areas that have gotten scary severe thunderstorms has so far been mostly, but not completely, limited to the South.

A quick interjection here for us Vermonters: After yesterday's snow, another snowfall will miss us by a long shot Sunday, and the chances of a snowy nor'easter on Tuesday or Wednesday keep dropping, which is good news for most of us.

Anyway, severe storms. There was another batch of them last night, including one that looked like a monster on radar that was about to destroy the city of Choushatta, Louisiana. Luckily, that tornado weakened some by the time it got into the city, so there was lots of damage, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Other spots had tornadoes and strong winds. Many communities had damaging hail. Plano, Texas had baseball sized, hail, for instance

I'm sure some people that that got hit by severe storms in Texas and Louisiana on Friday saw green skies as the storms approached.

Which leads me to a video by musician and storm chaser Pecos Hank. He's just about the best storm videographer out there, mostly because of his wonderful time lapses, and especially his storytelling abilities. Most storm chasers just video tornadoes and scream and yell.  Pecos Hank puts together video packages that are engaging and so well done, as he unfolds his story in a deep Texas twang.

You really need to check out Pecos Hank's YouTube page. 

A recent Pecos Hank video explains wonderfully why the sky sometimes turns green - an eerie greenish/bluish/ugly - when severe weather approaches. (The cliche has always been if the sky turns green, you're screwed.)

Pecos Hank explains how low angle sun in the late afternoon and evening, when severe storms are most likely, scatter light in storms that contain a lot of rain, hail and blowing dust from strong winds.

Next, watch his great video, then below that another video - not as good as Pecos Hank's, but still really dramatic showing the hail storms and severe weather in Texas and Louisiana yesterday.

First, Pecos Hank:



Here's a good overview of several Texas hailstorms on Friday:

Tornado Drought Interrupted: Severe Weather On The Gulf Coast Tomorrow

Tornadoes are possible Monday especiall in the yellowand orange
zones in this map, centered on Louisiana.

The autumn in the United States has been great in at least one respect: There have been very, very few tornadoes.

Most tornadoes are in the spring and early summer anyway, so it's not unusual to get fewer tornadoes in the fall and early winter.

But they do occur on occasion. This year, there have been far fewer twisters in what is already a normally slow season.

There were 23 reports of tornadoes in October, almost all of them early in the month, Usually there's double or triple that number.

Remarkably, there have been no tornadoes this November. I think this would have been the first November on record without an American tornado. (Again, on average there's usually a couple to a few dozen tornado reports in November.)

I'm saying would have been because I'm almost sure there will be a few tornadoes in the Deep South on Monday.

Things are coming together for a Louisiana tornado outbreak that might also affect parts of East Texas southern Arkansas and western Mississippi.

A storm system will bring oodles of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and strong winds, veering with height will create severe, rotating thunderstorms.

That's perfect to form tornadoes, and the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma says a couple of the tornadoes could turn out to be quite strong.

People in that neck of the woods will want to watch the skies Monday, and listen for tornado warnings. This time of year especially, tornadoes can move forward very quickly, giving people little time to take shelter.

The good news about this storm system is it's going to spread heavy rains across the Southeast, which is having a terrible drought. Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama have had their longest stretch of consecutive rain-free days on record.

A few inches of rain is likely to fall on the drought region this week, which won't end the drought, but put a dent in it and help control a lot of the wildfires burning in the area's forests.

The New England drought is still ongoing, too, but it has diminished a bit in recent weeks with rains and snows. This storm is going to spread more rain into New England this week, which will bring a bit of additional help to the situation.

Louisiana Post-Script. Storm Was Massive, Seven States Had 10 Inches Or More Of Rain

As we all well know, Louisiana took the brunt of that terrible flood last week with some areas getting two and a half feet of rain.

The widespread rains last week. Areas in deep red
had five or more inches of rain. Yellow areas had two inches
or more. Pink areas exceeded 10 inches. 

The intense moisture from that storm spread far and wide, though. Locations in seven states had 10 or more inches of rain, notes Jesse Farrell at AccuWeather. 

Flooding extended from Louisiana all the way to northern New England, though the flooding up there was definitely minor,  unlike the South.

Here's a list of top rainfall amounts in selected states from that storm last week, as noted from Farrell's blog post:  

Watson, LA: 31.39"

Gloster, MS, 22.84"

Ellsinore, MO: 17.50"

Panama City Beach, FL; 14.43"

Walnut Ridge, AR: 10.85"

South Bend, IN: 10.67"

Bonnie, IL: 10.10"

Gloster, AL; 9.94"

Lima OH: 8.38"

For that amount of rain to fall in such a huge area is truly remarkable.

The moisture from the storm made it all the way to Vermont, where I live.

Although nothing remotely like other places, we actually experienced a bit of flooding when nearly three inches of rain dumped onto parts of central Vermont in just a few hours.

Roads and culverts in Duxbury, Moretown and Fayston, Vermont were washed out during the deluge, which hit during an otherwise quite dry summer. 

By the way, the toll from the flooding in Louisiana keeps getting worse. The Advocate of Baton Rouge now reports that 110,000 or so homes were damaged or destroyed in the flooding, causing a huge $20 billion in damage.

 

Why Is Everybody Ignoring Louisiana?

Louisiana is experiencing the nation's worst
disaster since Superstorm Sandy. Why haven't we
paid more attention to this calamity? 

The question in the headline of this post is being asked more and more in weather geek circles.

The ongoing flood disaster in Louisiana has certainly been in the news, but it hasn't gotten the attention of other calamaties of similar size.  

Louisiana is probably on par with Superstorm Sandy in 2012 in terms of how widespread the destruction is.

The Weather Channel has the latest tally: 

So far, 11 people have died. The flooding had destroyed or damaged at least 40,000 homes. About 30,000 people and 1,000 pets have been rescued. So far, at least 40,000 people have sought FEMA disaster assistance.

In Ascension Parish (parishes are akin to counties in other states) at least 15,00 homes and businesses are flooded. In Livingston Parish, home to 138,000 people before the flood, it's estimated taht 75 percent of the homes are total losses.

I'm sure the death toll will rise. NOLA.com reports that they haven't even really begun door to door searches yet, and there are probably victims in some of these flooded houses.

Bottom line: This is huge.

So why has the media sort of yawned over this one?

Marshall Shepherd, writing in Forbes, has several theories.  Among them: The storm didn't have a catchy name like a hurricane, i.e Katrina.

The news cycle is full of other big stuff: Trump, unrest in Milwaukee, the Olympics are all competing for news viewers. Marshall also says the flood evolved over the weekend, when news organizations aren't nearly as staffed or engaged as they are during the workweek.

Marshall brings up a rather scary, sad reason Louisiana might have been downplayed in the national conscience: There have been so many huge floods lately that this one seems like old hat.  We've had a ever-lengthening string of enormous so-called 500 year floods. South Carolina. Texas. (twice!) West Virginia, Maryland.

And here we go again, another flood. When something becomes routine, it's not news anymore. Of course, if big floods become so common that they aren't news, something's wrong.

It's probably a combination of climate change, which makes epic rain storms and floods more likely, and the fact that we're paving over flood plains that is causing this. (If you pave over forests, marshes and fields with shopping centers and neighborhoods, the water will no longer harmlessly fill up a bayou. It will flow into people's houses instead. )

The fact that floods that wreck thousands of homes, affect thousands of people at one time has become routine and a "new normal" should be frightening to a lot of us.

If this "new normal" means all these victims are ignored, then they don't get the help they need. As NOLA.com put it in a headline: "National Media Fiddles While Louisiana Drowns."

People are doing heroic work in Lousiana to help flood victims. But it takes the glare of the national spotlight to force as much aid into the disaster zone as possible. If the general public is more aware of a catastrophe like Louisiana, the more likely they are to dig into their pockets to help.

Or as NOLA.com put it: "As Louisiana well knows, the loosening of the recovery purse strings is directly commensurate to the number of people who are made aware of the scope of the devastation. In this case, where national news coverage has been scarce, locals have every reason to worry that recovery funds will be just as scarce."

Let's just hope lots of attention, and relief money and supplies for Louisiana flow into the state faster than the flood waters did.





rce.

But broaden the focus a little, and some links appear. The frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events have increased globally, said Kenneth Kunkel, a climate scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

“Each decade, it has been higher than the previous decade, for about the last 30 to 40 years,” he said.

Both the land and the oceans have been warming up, which has increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, he said. The oceanic moisture feeds into the storms that form over land. It is likely that the storm in Baton Rouge last week produced more rainfall than it would have 40 years ago, Kunkel said.

Dramatic Flood Rescue Caught On Tape

The man on the right has just pulled the woman on the
left from a submerged Louisiana car, in a still
from the dramatic video in this post. Her dog was
also saved.  

The epic flooding in Louisiana over the past few days has claimed three lives, though 1,000 or so people were rescued.

One of the most dramatic rescues was caught on video: Rescuers on a boat came to a nearly submerged car. You can hear a woman inside yelling, "I'm drowning! I'm drowning."

The rescuers frantically try to break car windows and rip the convertible top off the car as it sinks.

Finally, the car completely submerges, but at the last second one of the rescuers pulls the woman - alive -- out of the car via the convertible top, which the men have ripped apart with a knife.

Bonus: They initially tell the woman her dog had been swept away, but then you see a rescuer has actually grabbed the dog and it survives, too.

You have to see this dramatic video:

Terrible Floods In Louisiana Now, And New Ones Coming, Hint At Climate Change

Flood chaos in Louisiana Friday, from television
station WBRZ  

Boy, this is a month of flooding in the Grand Ole USA, with Louisiana the latest big victim. 

Recently, we've seen some nasty monsoon flooding in the Desert Southwest, and other bad floods yesterday in parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

It got much worse Friday, with an epic flood ongoing in  Louisiana as thunderstorms and torrential rains have pretty much stalled over the area since Thursday night.

The Louisiana floods are epic, and joining a lengthening list of off the charts floods we've had in different parts of the nation over the past year. (Think South Carolina last October, Texas in the winter, West Virginia in June, Maryland a couple weeks back.)

The extreme misery in Louisiana is continuing today, and spreading into the western part of that state, and into east Texas, and eventually Arkansas.

A moisture plume eminating from this mess  -- an atmospheric river - is extending northeastward, prompting flash flood watches in a long stripe from Missouri to Vermont.

(Further down in this post, I'll have a specific Vermont-area update for my fellow Green Mountain Boys and Girls)

The Louisiana floods have killed at least two, but I'm sure the death toll will rise, unfortunately. Many homes that never before came close to flooding are inundated. There have been hundreds of water rescues.

In Livingston Parish, Louisiana, 911 dispatchers managed zillions of flood-related calls even as flood waters surged into the 911 dispatch center.' No fewer than 3,000 homes were flooded in Livingston Parish alone.

Some people were evacuated to two churches, but had to be evacuated again when the churches flooded.

A few areas received two FEET of rain, and some of those areas can expect up to a foot more today.

Even when the rain stops, rivers will keep rising. Many of them in Louisiana are going to have record high crests.

Precipitable water in the air,  a measure of how efficiently showers and storms can drop rainfall, was near record highs even for normally wet Louisiana. The stalled, semi tropical system overhead used this excess water in the air to deadly effciency.

The higher the precipitable water is in a given spot, the heavier the rain will fall if a shower or storm moves over that area.

One of many water rescues in Louisiana Friday.  

That the nearby Gulf of Mexico has record high water temperatures doesn't help, since the higher the water temperature, the more efficient the evaporation is into the air, and that means more water feeding into the sluggish storm.

As I've noted in the past, the number of extreme precipitation events is increasing in much of the world, including the majority of the United States.

With every new flood event I offer this disclaimer and it's appropriate here: While I can't conclusively blame  Louisiana floods - and the potential floods to follow soon elsewhere - on global warming, these events are consistent with what scientists say is happening.

As the world warms, these events will probably only get worse.

On top of all that, more and more of the landscape is getting paved over in many areas, so water can't soak in. That means less water can soak into the ground during storms, so it runs off into creeks, rivers, roads, houses and businesses instead.

Right now, most of the eastern United States has high levels of precipitable water in the atmosphere. As heat waves go, this one in the U.S. isn't that extreme as far as actual temperatures. But the extraordinarly high humidity covering such a wide area poses the potential for trouble.

Even in drought-stricken areas of the Northeast, this high humidity now in place can cause thunderstorms to unleash incredible amounts of rain. There's the risk that lines of these storms can repeatedly go over the same area, causing flash floods even in formerly dry areas.

One such storm unloaded four inches of rain on a few towns near the Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts border on Friday.

Another similar storm inundated dozens of cars and RV's at the Illinois State Fair Friday.

A slow moving weather front interacting with Gulf of Mexico wet air and all that super humid air in place will continue the risk of flooding in various places over the next week in the mid-Mississippi Valley, Ohio and maybe Tennessee Valley and parts of the Northeast.

For many, this isn't going away anytime soon.

VERMONT UPDATE

The nearly stalled weather front that I mentioned above sagged southward into Vermont Friday, creating some relief from the heat in the northern parts of the state, and triggered some much needed rain.

Bonus: Nobody got excessively heavy rain, so it was all good.

However, the front is still around, and has become more active today, so the risk of flash flooding in parts of the region is real today into Sunday. There is a flash flood watch in effect for the northern two thirds of Vermont and much of northern New York into Sunday evening.

That semi-stalled front is drifting back north, and we will be in the thick of the humid air again today and tonight. Most of Vermont already was in the soup early Saturday morning.

Given the previous dry conditions, not everybody will get flooded in Vermont today - this is no Hurricane Irene - but local areas might get some dangerous flash flooding..

Here's why: Remember that high level of precipitable water I mentioned in the above national summary?  It's here now in Vermont, too. So any showers and storms that get going will be efficient rain makers.

So the usual heavy rain in thunderstorms today will be doubly torrential. Worse, there's the potential for training: That's when a narrow band of thunderstorms follows one another over one spot, like boxcars on a moving freight train.

Anyone stuck under that narrow band can get many inches of rain, and a flash flood can develop in no time.

That's true even if the ground is dry and dusty right before it rains. If it rains super hard, the water will run off into creeks and small streams, and you get sudden blasts of fast moving water coming off the hills. Very dangerous.

Also, in urban areas, like the middle of Burlington, Rutland, St. Albans, Montpelier, Barre and other towns, streets can very quickly flood in the type of downpour that's possible today and tonight, so be careful there.

The time period with the strongest risk of very heavy rain and flash floods is this afternoon and tonight.

Major rivers in Vermont and eastern New York are running low. The areas that get the flash flood rains will be relatively small, even if the potential for three to six inches of rain is there in those local areas.

The majority of Vermont and eastern New York will only get about one to two inches of rain. The bottom line is the big rivers might rise, but they probably won't flood.

The risk of flooding will decline Sunday afternoon as drier air moves in from the northwest.

Though there may be periods of unsettled weather midweek, at this point, I think we're safe from flooding in Vermont after Sunday. But I still want to watch that midweek stuff: If things stall again, there could conceivably be more trouble.   

Here's a video from Louisiana showing a truck being swept off a road by floodwaters. The driver was later rescued.

Epic Louisiana Floods Are Part Of A Sad New Normal

Severe flooding in Louisiana. Photo from
Vernon, Louisiana Parish Sheriff's office.  

Once again, I find myself writing about unprecedented floods.

Rivers in and near Louisiana this weekend are cresting at record levels after as much as 23 inches of rain fell in just a few days. The rain, while still coming down, but it is finally tapering off.

However, flood crests will take some time to move downstream along rivers, so the already intense destruction will get worse.

At least six people have died in the flooding so far, the Weather Channel reports. 

Once again, we had the sad spectacle of people and animals being rescued from roofs, as television station WWL in New Orleans reports. 

You can watch an AP video of a helicopter flood rescue at the bottom of this post.

The flooding hit a wide area of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.

This flood is yet another example of the cascading trend of more and more frequent and extreme floods in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

As the Weather Channel notes, there have now been at least a dozen major flash floods in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri over the last twelve months.

We've had a series of so-called one in a thousand year floods that seem to come much more frequently than one in a thousand years lately. Last October, South Carolina drowned in record flooding.

In 2014, much of the Ohio River Valley got hit repeatedly. In  2013, it was large parts of Colorado. 

On and on it goes.

Climate scientists have long said global warming increases the chances of extreme floods, and they  have measured that increasing trend. 

Before you climate change skeptics jump on me, I'm not saying that all bad floods and solely caused by global warming.

Of course, every big flood is prompted by a specific local or regional weather pattern. Many of those weather patterns would occur with or without climate change.

For instance, the past week's floods in Louisiana were created when an upper level low pressure system parked itself over central Mexico. That's a weird place for one to set up, but it sometimes happens when there's a strong El Nino, like we're having now.

The upper low set up an atmospheric river of air from the deep tropical southwestern Caribbean Sea and sprayed that moisture like a giant firehose into Louisiana and surrounding states.

A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture than a cooler one, so as global warming continues the potential for storms to unleash heavier rain is higher than would otherwise happen decades ago.

The question you have to ask is, was this Louisiana flood, and the ones I mentioned earlier, made worse by global warming?

In the case of the Louisiana flood, I have no friggin' idea. Maybe, maybe not. People smarter than me will have to analyze that.

Scientists and most journalists have rightly included the disclaimer in their reports on specific extreme events, like the Louisiana floods, that you can't really prove global warming had a hand in these disasters.

But can you, sometimes?

Yes, I know, as noted above, no weather event has a single cause. It's usually a lot of causes.

However, the National Academy of Scienes last week issued a report called "Attribution Of Extreme Weather Events In the Context of Climate Change."

In this report, the scientists note a growing ability to figure out if some weather events were indeed influenced or made worse by climate change.

As the Washington Post reports:  "This can be done by observing how far a single event, like a heat wave, is outside the norm of prior events, or by using computer models to determine how often an event like it would occur with or without human greenhouse gas emissions, (which can be included or excluded from the model.)"

 This nascent scientific approach so far seems to work best when studying heat waves, floods and some large scale storms, and less well with smaller scale disasters, like tornadoes.

No, I don't know if this past week's Louisiana flood disaster was influenced by global warming or not. But it looks like some smart scientists will study it, and maybe give us an answer to this questions.

Here's that footage of the Louisiana National Guard rescuing people from the flood:

"Mayan Express" Poses Big Weather Risks In. U.S. South This Week

Torrential rains, with up to a foot expected in Louiiana,
are expected in a broad area of the lower Mississippi
Valley this week due to the "Maya Express" Another
zone of heavy, flooding rains are likely from norther
California to Washington. Red, orange, and yellow
zones are most at risk

A lot of us have heard of the "Pineapple Express," a stream of rich tropical moisture from near Hawaii that sometimes crashes into the West Coast, causing huge rains and floods.  

Ever heard of the "Maya Express?" It causes a similar type of problem, only in the southern and eastern United States. The reason I bring it up now because some areas in the South, particularly Louisiana, Arkansas and surrounding states, are under the gun for this so called Maya Express this week.

I'll set the whole thing up: The well-publicized, and welcome rain storms have arrived in California, where flash flood watches are up for many areas today, and several feet of snow are coming down in the Sierra Nevada.

Up to a foot of rain is forecast for parts of northern California over the next seven days. While this isn't technically the Pineapple Express, its still boatloads of rain, for sure. One person has already died in the California flooding, and there have been reports of dangerous mudslides and debris flows. The stormy California weather is expected to continue for the next few days.

One of these California storms is expected to move southeast into northern and central Mexico. Storms don't usually do that, but such a setup is a bit more likely in years with a strong El Nino, like this one.

This storm will set up a rich flow of very wet air from off the east coast of Mexico, from the western Caribbean and push it toward the western Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi Valley. Pieces of that Mexican storm will also move north into Texas, encouraging that south to north flow of wet air northward.

In a Forbes article this week, Dr Marshall Shepherd, Director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the Univeristy of Georgia, and host of the Weather Channel's "Weather Geeks" program, says the upcoming weather pattern this week is an example of the "Maya Express"

Shepherd, in Forbes, cites the work of researchers Paul Dirmeyer and Jim Kinter, who examined immense floods in the Midwest in 1993 and 2008. Although numerous factors went into those floods, a primary cause was a rather narrow but intense band of atmospheric moisture moving north from the western Caribbean into the United States.

The researchers dubbed this type of weather pattern the "Maya Express," based on its source region.

The Pineapple Express and the Maya Express are examples of atmospheric rivers, narrow channels of intense moisture that flow like a river, except in the atmosphere. These can obvious cause extreme rainfall events and floods.

Another disaster, the Great Memphis Flood of 2010, was also largely due to the "Maya Express."

So you can see why meteorologists are nervous about places like Louisiana and Arkansas this week. The flooding will probably extend into much of Missouri and on into the southern half of Illinois as well.

Thry've had a lot of wet weather this winter, so rivers are already running high there. Up to a foot of rain is likely later this week from the "Maya Express," so this will only cause a dangerous situation, both with flash floods and large, surging floods in the bigger rivers.

Some of these places that are in the path of the "Maya Express"  had a record wet 2015 and a soggy first month of 2016. They don't need the rain.

A secondary, but real risk from this weather pattern is severe weather and tornadoes. The greatest risk of that happening is in Texas and Oklahoma Monday, eastern Texas and western Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas Tuesday, and in and around Louisiana Wednesday.

Bottom line: Anybody living in the central and southern Plains, and the southern and central Mississippi Valley had better keep an ear toward the forecasts and weather warnings all week. It could get dangerous.

FedEx Worker Somehow Survives Tornado As Building Blows Apart Around Her

Kyra Johnson at the wreckage of the
Louisiana hardware store where she
tried to seek refuge in a tornado. She
was trapped outside, behind a soda machine,
but wasn't seriously hurt. Hardware store
owner David Sagora gave her the
shirt she is holding. Add caption 

Back on February 23,  when tornadoes were slicing through Louisiana, among other states, FedEx driver Kyra Johnson found herself confronting an EF3 tornado in Paincourtville, Louisiana.

She tried running into a nearby hardware store, but it was closed, it's doors locked. With no time for a Plan B as the tornado approached, she ducked behind a soda machine in front of the store and hoped for the best.

The surveillance video, as you see below, shows the store disintegrating in the tornado.

The video opens with Johnson trying the locked door, the  scrambling behind the vending machine. Clips that follow show other parts of the store getting demolished in the storm.

The videos were all from surveillance cameras around the store.

Remarkably, she only suffered minor injuries, even though the vending machine tipped over and large debris swirled around her.

She's lucky to be alive. Most people caught outdoors in an EF3 tornado with winds of 135 mph usually die because they are struck by debris.

Here's the scary video, but turn down the sound if you don't want the obnoxious music that accompanies it

No Rest For Storm Tossed Gulf Coast; New England Comes Later

Dark green and especially yellow and orange
areas are at risk for severe thunderstorms later
today, tonight into early Saturday.

We said last fall the Gulf Coast would potentially be in for a stormy, volatile winter, and that's certainly proving true

Once again, later this afternoon, tonight into early Saturday, there's a chance of severe weather in northeastern Texas and parts of Louisiana.

Big hailstones are the greatest risk, but there might be a tornado or two along coastal Louisiana and Texas.

It doesn't look as bad or as widespread as the Christmas week tornadoes in Texas that killed 11 people and destroyed or damaged more than 1,200 homes.

But any threat of severe weather is worth keeping an eye out for.

The storm that could produce the severe weather later today is very likely going to evolve into a strong storm that'll move northeastward through the eastern Great Lakes.

Since it will be so powerful, the storm is probably going to produce quite strong winds by Sunday over the Northeast, especially in parts of New England.

Gusts along the coast, and perhaps along some of the western slopes of some of New England's mountains, could reach 70 mph.

There's already a high wind watch for the western slopes of Vermont's Green Mountains on Sunday, as winds could gust to 65 mph or even a tad higher in spots.

It'll be warm enough so that most of the precipitation with this storm will come down as rain in New England, which is more bad news for the ski industry.

Colder weather will return after the storm, and several systems could bring periods of snow to northern New England much of next week.