Storm Damage Widespread In Vermont; Now The Heat

Severe warned storm on approach to Sheldon, Vermont Wednesday.
The storm toppled trees and power lines in this and other
Vermont towns. 

We had the wildest storm outbreak of the season on Wednesday here in Vermont, with some welcome rains, but also some pretty substantial damage from severe weather.

Most of the damage involved trees and power lines, but siding was damaged on a house in Essex, there were reports of structural damage around Danby, and sidiing damaged by hail the size of ping pong balls in Fair Haven.

The pattern of damage in New England almost exactly matched the area that was under a severe thunderstorm warning.  The warning, and areas of damage were almost exclusively across Vermont, New Hampshire and western Maine.

In northern Vermont, the main swath of damage seemed to go on a long track starting in Alburgh and Swanton, continuing to through Sheldon an into eastern Franklin County around Bakersfield and Fairfield. It continued on through eastern Chittenden County,especailly around Essex, Jericho and Bolton, then into the Fayston/Moretown/Waitsfield area in central Vermont.

At least the storms brought some welcome rain.  I was on the edge of the damaging swath that went from Swanton through Sheldon and on into the Bakersfield area.  There was no wind damage on my St. Albans property, but my rain gauge collected a healthy 1.3 inches of rain in less than an hour. I noticed a fair amount of street flooding in downtown St. Albans.

CITIZEN SCIENTISTS HELP

Another view of the severe  thunderstorm in Sheldon, Vermont
on Wednesday 

By the way, the damage reports are a great example of how citizen scientists can help the National Weather Service improve forecasts.

Yesteday was a great example.  NWS meteorologist can't be all over the state, observing ongoing thunderstorms.  

They looked at radar trends with these storms, and issued severe thunderstorm warnings when radar images they were looking at indicated danger in these storms.

If you report damage from a storm to the National Weather Service, it helps verify their forecasts and  improves warnings.

For instance, if a bunch of damage reports come in from an area under a servere thunderstorm warning, that helps meteorologists understand there really is danger if they see similar radar trends in the future.

On the other hand, if a certain radar pattern seems to indicate dangerous storms, but that particular pattern never seems to yield real-life damage reports, then maybe that radar pattern doesn't really reflect threatenin weather.

There are a few general ground rules when reporting storms. First of all, do it only when it's safe. Don't go outside to measure the size of the downed tree if the wind is still blowing a million miles an hour and the hail falling is the size of canned hams, as David Letterman would put it.

When reporting the storm damage, be specific. To the best of your ability, tell the National Weather Service exactly what happened and where, and what time. If you have GPS coordinates great, report those, but most of us don't have that ability.

So report something like this:  "Large tree down on wires at 25 Main Street, Funkytown, Vermont, power is out. Occured at 4:15 p.m. ."  Sending along photos helps.  Don't bother reporting minor damage, like a three inch long dead twig coming off the old maple.

Definitely have a "just the facts ma'am" attitude when reporitng.  Don't complain that the power outage interrupted the season finale of "Real Housewives of Enosburg Falls"

It's probably wise not to telephone the National Weather Service office when they're busy issuing warnings -- too distracting. Call though, if it's an extreme issue, like a tornado touchdown happening in front of you.

I tend to tweet my reports to the National Weather Service office in South Burlington. It's @NWSBurlington.   The more citizen reports of legitimate storm danage reported to the NWS the better.

Reporting on storms isn't limited to summer thunderstorms. Also report wind damage, snow, ice, flooding during any season.

ON TO THE FORECAST

As we have been advertising, it's going to be a really hot, oppressive couple of days. Yesterday's storms freshened the air last night, but that's over. Expect high humidity and temeratures in the low 90s both today and Friday.   Tonight will be stuffy for sure.

The weather people are still watching a disturbance that's now near the coast of North Carolina. There's a good chance it will turn into Tropical Storm or Subtropical Storm Fay.

Wannabe Fay will track northward just off the East Coast, but the devil is in the details.  We know it will affect southern and coastal New England, but that's about it.

It leads to what the National Weather Service in South Burlington calls a tricky weekend forecast for Vermont. Some computer models take Wannabe Fay just off the east coast of New England, or over Providence and Boston.

A few computer models take it inland in New Jersey, then up New York's Hudson River Valley and through Vermont. That path still seems rather unlikely, but would give us a good, benefitical soaking rain.

Remember, even if Wannabe Fay develops into a tropical storm, it won't be a powerhouse in terms of wind  Heavy rain is a threat, not wind.

Meanwhile, another weather disturbance will be approaching from the west. That will dance with either Wannabe Fay or the deep tropical moisture it brings north into New England.

How this plays out is anybody's guess, but at least it gives us a high chance of showers over the weekend.  We certainly could use more rain, even after yesterday's storms.  If the rain is locally torrential, though, there could be a couple spot instances of flash flooding.

Although clouds and showers will keep temperatures below 90 degrees over the weekend, the humidity will still be awful.  Remember, Wannabe Fay is bringing deep tropical air north into New England.

On top of that, once all the showers clear our early next week, we're still definitely at risk for another hot, dry spell late next week.

Calgary, Canada Battered By Massive Hail, Floods

Lots of hail and hail damage last evening in Calgary, Canada. Note
the siding damage in the house across the street. Photo by
Cadenza Langan, via CBC

Imagine a quiet Saturday evening in your home.

Then imagine a storm destroying your car, breaking your windows and making mincemeat of your house siding all within a half hour.

That's what happened in Calgary, Alberta, Canada Saturday evening, when a storm, severe even by their standards, surely caused millions of dollars in damage. The main show with this event was just an incredible artillary battery of hail.

The area around Calgary, Canada is no stranger to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.

It's kind of a northern version of Denver, where severe storms develop along the Front Range of the Rockies when winds blow uphill from the east, giving a boost to the storms.

Calgary's topography is similar, so they can have destructive storms, too.

But this was one for the record books. Also the location this time was bad.  There are wide open plains in much of Alberta, and these storms often hit sparsely populated areas, so there's no great harm.

Calgary, however, has a population of 1.3 million, so there's plenty of homes, businesses, cars and other property that hail and flooding can target, if the storms roll over the city and not a few miles out into the Plains.

One of the many homes damaged by hail Saturday in Calgary, Canada.
Photo by Khalid Mahmood 

Which is what happened Saturday.  Not all the city was wrecked, but a good chunk of the northeastern part of Calgary was certainly smashed.

The wind driven hail, some golf ball sized or even tennis ball sized, came down in such density and force that it destroyed a huge number of cars, ripped the siding off countless homes and shattered many windows in some neighborhoods.

We don't have an estimate in the amount of damage yet.

Nearly 2 inches of rain mixed with the hail came down in just one hour, adding some damaging flash flooding to the hail wreckage.

Here are some videos from Calgary

This compilation shows a remarkable shot of large hailstones pounding cars in a badly flooded parking lot:



Aftermath video shows severe damage to siding and windows in a residential neighborhood:



More damage and wrecked plants and gardens in Calgary:

Cristobal Bubbles, PA/NJ Slammed, Norway Slides

Badly damaged house in New Jersey following yesterday's derecho.
Photo by Jessica Beym, NJ Advance

While tropical weather geeks keep their eye on Tropical Storm - now Tropical Depression - Cristobal, there's been plenty of weather ation in the United States and elsewhere.

Dramatic videos are the botoom of this post. One of the shows an incredible landslide in Norway I'll get to in a minute,  

DERECHO AND SUPERCELLS

In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, a derecho swept southeastward from near Lake Erie across the Keystone State and finally off the Jersey shore during the late morning and early afternoon Wednesday.  This was followed in the late afternoon and evening by supercell thunderstorms that prompted a tornado warning in Philadelphia.

Winds gusted to 65 mph or so both during the early afternoon derecho and the evening tornado warned storm.  I don't think Philadelphia had ever previously had two 60+ mph storms on the same day.

A derecho, by the way, is a long lasting, fast moving line of severe thunderstorms that almost always cause severe wind damage. That was the case yesterday. The official definition of a derecho is a line of storms that survives over a distance of at least 240 miles and produces peak winds of at least 58 mph over most of its path.

This derecho produced winds of up to 89 mph in New Jersey, with gusts in the 65 to 80 mph range thorugh a long swath of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The derecho killed at least three people, including one at a golf clubhouse that was hit by an immense falling tree.  Many homes were damaged, most by falling trees. A large apartment complex lost its roof.

A derecho usually stablizes the air immediately behind it, so it was remarkable that the atmosphere recovered enough to produce those supercells over Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the evening.  Those storms just added to the damage and the power outages.

Tornado-warned storm over Philadelphia last evening. Photo bu
Ashley Corin 

And - just what they need - more severe thunderstorms are possible today in parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

CRISTOBOL

Cristobol has been downgraded for now to a tropical depression as it meanders inland over souther Mexico.  It's still expected to take a northward turn, emerge over warm Gulf of Mexico waters, and strengthen somewhat as it moves north toward Louisiana by early Monday.

Intensity forecasts are really, really uncertain, but at least for now, it's not expected to reach hurricane status before landfall.

LANDSLIDE

The following isn't directly related to weather, but wet weather could have contributed to it.  A huge landslide 2,000 feet wide and 500 feet wide swept at least eight houses out to sea along the northern Norway coast.

Miraculously, nobody was injured, as most of the houses were vacation places and people had left after the weekend.  A dog was rescued in the afternmath of the landslide.  Scroll down a ways for the incredible video.

Here are some videos, first with scenes from the Pennsylvania storms:



Another view of the storm's intensity



Let's go overseas to Chcchnya, which had its own battle with severe weather:



Here's the Norway landslide. I was oddly rooting for the big white house to survive, but I knew that was impossible

As Expected, Severe Storms Roll Through Vermont; All Over Now

 Thunderstorm menacing Colchester, Vermont Friday evening. 

The forecast for Friday was pretty much nailed.

We were told several rounds and clusters of thunderstorms, some severe, would roll through Vermont during the afternoon and evening, and that's just what we got.

Despite my speculation that they might upgrade the slight risk of storms to enhanced, the level of activity pretty much exactly matched the criteria for the "slight risk," which is level two out of five in the alert level.

Slight risk means a few storms would become severe, but most of the area would be unscathed, and that's pretty much what happened.

Still, there were pockets of fairly substantial damage.

Poultney, in southwestern Vermont seem to take the brunt of the damage as two severe storms hit that down. The first, in mid-afternoon, knocked down numerous trees and cut power in South Poultney in the mid-afternoon.

Thunderstorm structure over Georgia, Vermont Friday evening

A second severe storm hit Poultney around 6:30 p.m., taking down many more trees and power lines.

Elsewhere, I saw photos on social media of a damaged barn in Westford. Numerous trees were down in places like Cambridge, Sheffield, Island Pond and Barton.

Down in Glens Falls, New York, there was a tornado warning. The storm produced a very pronounced wall cloud, a type of rotating storm structure that often produces a tornado.  However, no tornado is known to have touched down in that area.

At least most of us received some much needed rain.  I wouldn't call it the quality, slow, soaking rain we could have used. Instead, there were gullywasher downpours.

There was a lot of available moisture for these storms, so many of the downpours were especially heavy.  I know there was some street flooding in Burlington, and I saw a little bit of that in Milton and Colchester, too.

Burlington received just under an inch of rain from this storm. My unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans, Vermont caught 1.3" of rain, most of that in a torrential downpour that hit around 8 p.m.

Overall, the damage patterns, the downpours and the fascinating thunderstorm cloud structures out there made this pretty much a classic Vermont summer severe storm weather day.

The calm after the storm last evening in Georgia, Vermont. The
sun was trying to break through with light rain still falling
after a torrential thunderstorm has passed. 

As you got up this morning, I'm sure you noticed that wonderful change in the air.  It is so much less humid.

Today is a transition day, as we still have another cold front to get through later.

The front might be enough to set off a few more evening showers, but they will be light and scattered.  We certainly won't get any more loud thunderstorms to frighten the dogs.

That second cold front, as previously advertised, will bring us a shot of pretty chilly air for the last day of May and the first of June.  Clouds might, just might protect the cold spots from frost Sunday and Monday night, and the rest of us will get chilly, but not frosty.

Highs Sunday and Monday will barely make it to 60 degrees, as opposed to the low 70s we usually see this time of year. As far as I'm concerned, low 60s during the day are a LOT better than the mid-90s we saw n Wednesday.

There will be a warming trend later in the week, but it won't be anything extreme.  We'll probably get into the seasonable 70s.

We won't be getting much more rain, either.  There might be some light showers here and there during the week, but very soon, it's back to irrigating dusty gardens, I'm afraid.

Worst Storms Were In Central New York/New England; Unknown If Tornadoes

Radar image of a dangerous storm heading into southwestern Vermont
last evening. Where the blue line and arrow is drawn in, the apex
of the backward "C' shape likely had damaging straight line
winds.  The red box was a tornado warning as radar
detected some spinning in the northern part of this storm. 

The severe weather in the Northeast materialized pretty much as expected yesterday, cutting a swath through western and central New York and finally through central New England.

A tornado watch was in effect for this event, and some of the storms were definitely rotating. However, it's unknown whether any tornadoes touched down.

 I'm sure National Weather Service offices in Albany, New York and in Massachusetts and New Hampshire will look into this.

The most interesting and dangerous cluster of storms got going north of Utica, New York. It promptly triggered a tornado warning.  A house in the path of this tornado warning lost its roof in the storm, but it's unclear if it was a twister or straight line winds.

The storm continued to cause damage, and occasional tornado warnings as it moved eastward into Saratoga, Washington and Warren counties of New York, just west of the Vermont border.  There were a lot of trees down, some damaged houses and roads blocked by debris. At least 36,000 people lost power in that area, according to the Glens Falls Post Star. 

The Post Star posted a photo of what they said was a tornado in Wilton, New York, but I'm not convinced by the photo. It could also be a downburst or a hail shaft, in my opinion.

The Glens Falls Post Star displayed this photo taken by Adam Colver
of what they said is a possible tornado in Wilton, New York. (Behind
the red brick part of the building). This feature in the storm could
also be a shaft of falling hail or a microburst. 

The line of storms then moved through Bennington and Windham counties, triggering tornado warnings around Sunderland, in southwestern Vermont, and the Brattleboro/Dummerston area in the southeast.

Again, it's unclear whether there were any actual tornadoes. The rotation on radar images in this storm did not look particularly intense. But this area is pretty distant from radar sites, so the quality of the storm images wasn't great.

There were reports of trees and wires down along the path of this storm and particularly where the tornado warnings went off. But this damage could easily have been caused by straight line winds and not anything tornadic.  If it was a tornado (which I kind of doubt) it would have been a fairly weak one.

The cluster of storms moved on into southwestern New Hampshire. I think slightly flatter ground there helped the storm intensify, and damage to trees and even buildings was greater than in Vermont.

On the southern end of this cluster of storms, high winds tore the roof off an apartment building in Holyoke, Massachusetts, displacing about 140 people. Again, it could have been straight line winds. I imagine weather experts will examine the damage in Holyoke to determine what caused it.

Further north in Vermont, there were strong to severe storms from about Middlebury to Montpelier to Bradford and points south, exactly as forecasters expected. There were reports of some trees and wires down with these storms. The storms in central Vermont were not tornadic. No tornado warnings were issued for this area, and there is no evidence of any kind of spin up that I could see.

Further north, in the quote, unquote more stable air, the parent storm system created a pretty good punch.  The line of heavy downpours, with some embedded thunder, managed to produce a wind gust to 47 mph in South Burlington. That's not severe, but still was kind of impressive.

The same storm system did more good than harm around my area in St. Albans, Vermont.  I got 0.88 inches of rain, with most of it coming within an hour during gusty showers.  We needed the rain, so I'm grateful that came through.

There's no severe storms in the forecasts now, but the predictions are pretty uncertain as to what will happen with our weather over the next few days.

A storm system will set up and sort of sit and spin over the central Appalachians over the next few days.  An early season subtropical storm seems to be forming off the coast of Florida and will get absorbed by that sitting and spinning storm

Meanwhile, fair weather high pressure will want to sink into northern New England from Quebec.  This will want to clear the skies over us.  So which wins? The rain to the south or the fair weather tothe north? Hard to tell, but as it looks now, we might get a period of rain Monday, then things will start clear out for the rest of next week. No promises, though.

Also, don't worry about any new outbreaks of late season chill if the Canadian high pressure system wins. Yes, it is from Canada, but it's not a cold batch of air.  Also, this fair weather system is, or will be, sitting over southern Quebec.

That's far enough south so that the warm May sun will keep raising the temperatures within this zone of fair weather, The upshot for us is we'll get near normal,  to perhaps slightly above normal temperatures by the end of the upcoming week.

The Mayuary Snow And Cold Just Keeps Coming in Vermont

Web cam image from the Vermont Agency of Transporation
shows a wintry, hazardous high elevation Route 17 in
Buels Gore, Vermont around 6 p.m. Monday. 

Boy, we really added insult to injury in parts of Vermont on Monday!

We knew were in the midst of a remarkable May cold wave.

We also knew a quick moving storm would drop a little snow on some of the high elevations yesterday, but the snow overperformed once again.

North central Vermont seemed to be in the sweet spot for snow, far enough north to get into the best cold air for snow but not so far north to escape the moisture from the storm, which was crossing southern and central New England yesterday and last evening.

The result was a surprise snowfall, even at pretty low elevations.  Parts of eastern Chittenden County seemed to be one bullseye, with one to three inches of snow reported at elevations of about 600 or 700 feet. Pretty low. So this wasn't just a high elevation snow.

The snow fell so heavily at times that roads gots slush covered and slick. That's an incredible rarity for a mid-May snowstorm that hit during the day and early evening. Pavement temperatures, and weak warmth from the sun getting through the clouds would normally largely prevent that.

Some snow reports from yesterday in Vermont include 4.4 inches in Hyde Park; 3.2 inches in Greensboro, 2.6 inches in Underhill, two inches at an elevation of just 600 feet in Huntington and 1.5 inches in Hinesburg.

Looks like this Vermont landscape photo was taken in January, but it
was taken by a Vermont back country skier in northern Vernont
this morning. Photo credit to @NewEnglandTommy on Twitter. 

Mountain peaks are buried in snow along the spine of the Green Mountains. By yesterday, the stake near the summit of Mount Mansfield measured a snow depth of 58 inches, and it kept snowing after that measurement was taken. Normally the snow depth there should have dwindled to 30 inches or so. 

Back country skiers are reporting excellent conditions way up there, at elevations above 3,000 feet.

I guess if we can take any solace from this precipitation, northwestern Vermont has been dry and needed the moisture.  Forecasts called for less than a tenth of an inch of rain in the central and northern Champlain Valley.

Instead, in  Burlington, where it didn't snow, there was 0.64 inches of rain.  It also didn't snow on my parched, chilly gardens up in St. Albans, but I did receive a solid half inch of rain. So there's one glimmer if good news.

In a way, the worst is yet to come, unfortunately. The problem going forward for the next day or two will not be snow, but frost and freezes.

There will be a some scattered rain, and yes, light snow showers around this afternoon and evening, but unlike yesterday, they won't really amount to anything.  Today will be a chilly and blustery day for May, with highs only in the 40s, despite a fair amount of sun.

Tonight's a real trouble maker. There will be a harsh freeze in most places.  Continued overnight winds might prevent a lot of frost from forming, but that doesn't matter.

Almost all of us, though, will be in the 20s overnight. Temperatures will drop around Vermont to close to record lows. For instance, the record low tomorrow in Burlington is 30 degrees, and the forecast low is also 30 degrees.

With a little wind, that's enough to possibly freezer burn a lot of the tender new leaves on trees that are leafing out.  I hope that doesn't happen, because brown leaves going forward for the rest of the spring would be terribly depressing.

Early apple crops could also be damaged with this.

By tomorrow afternoon, you might be led to believe this cold awfulness is over.  Temperatures will rise well into the 50s, which is still cool for mid-May but a definite improvement. It'll be the warmest afternoon since last Thursday.

But the air will be dry and that cold high pressure system will create clear skies and light winds Wednesday night and during the pre-dawn hours of Thursday. That's perfect for radiational cooling. Expect temperatures to go back down into the 20s most areas. There will also be a heavier frost by Thursday morning, which is definitely damaging to leaves, crops and gardens.

After the frost melts Thursday morning, we can finally, definitely say good riddance to this Mayaury weather. A pattern change will take hold, and the chances of frost for the next ten days at least evaporate to zero.

A west to east flow will mostly block Canadian cold fronts for the next couple weeks at least. Cold fronts will occasionally come through during that period, but they won't bring any particularly chilly air with them.

We also have a couple decent shots at rain late Thursday night and Friday, and again Sunday or Monday.  It will definitely be too warm for snow during those two little storms.  (It might be warm enough for a little thunder, but that's OK.)

There are even some computer models that suggest that in a little more than a week, we could get into some summertime weather with highs in the 80s. I'm NOT promising that because the prospect of such warmth is iffy at best.

At least that's a sign that prospects for another cold blast later this month seem to be off the table.

"Ice Shove" Wrecks Minnesota Home; This Is A Weird Thing That Has Happened Before

Strong winds earlier this week pushed a ton of lake ice
into this Minnesota house. 

A perfect combination of wind and spring thawing shoved a bulldozer like wall of ice into at least one lakeshore home in Minnesota this past week.

The 10-foot high wall of ice crunched into the home on Lake Mille Lacs in Isle, Minnesota. Isle is little under 100 miles north of Minneapolis.  

Lake Mille Lacs covers about 207 square miles, and the town of Isle is on the southeast corner of the lake. The ice on the lake was weak from the ongoing spring thaw.

As Minnesota Public Radio reports, a warm, mostly sunny day with northwest winds gusting as high as 50 mph on Monday pushed the wall of ice onto the shore in dramatic fashion.

This one smushed a deck and pushed in a wall of the Minnesota house.

Some people call these things ice tsunamis, because they do rise quite a way out of the water and go inland a fair amount like a slow motion, frozen tsunami.

Of course, ice shoves don't occur on every lake and they don't occur most years. You need the right combination of thawing ice that's ready to break up, a warm day, a strong wind and a shoreline to help steer the ice into big piles.

Other ice shoves have caused far more damage than this.

Lakes in Vermont aren't immune to ice shoves. There was a good one on Maquam Bay in St. Albans, Vermont on Lake Champlain in 2013.

Here's a news video from WCCO of the mishap:



An even worse ice shove hit the shoreline of Lake Mille Lacs in 2013:



Ice shoves can be pretty unpredictable, so you should stay away from them, as footage from this February, 2019 Lake Erie ice shove proves:



These things can move pretty fast, all things considered:

That Tornado Outbreak Killed 30 People; Major, Sometimes Weird Destruction

Just a slab is left of this house in Mississippi after this weekend's tornadoes,
and nobody is sure where it or its debris ended up. Photo by
Steven Macleroy, @SMacleroy on Twitter.

The weather system that caused all those tornadoes across the South has largely moved on, but people will still be picking up the pieces of this for a long time.

At last count, at least 30 people died in these tornadoes in the past couple of days.

There are at least 70 preliminary reports of tornadoes from this outbreak, and some of them were exceptionally strong. That accounts for the high death toll.

As in all major tornadoes, the damage can be extreme and very weird.  Three people were killed in a Mississippi cafe, where the only thing left was a concrete slab and debris piled up against fallen trees a few dozen feet away.

Another Mississippi house was also gone, with just a foundation and some floor boards. Drone footage taken at the scene appeared to show almost no debris around the house. I asked photographer Steven Macleroy, @SMacleroy on Twitter what he saw:

"We are not sure where any of that house ended up. There was very little that the homeowner's brother could find. The homeowner actually lives in Louisiana. Thankfully he and his family were not there."

Thankfully, indeed.  My guess is the house just got bodily sucked up into the tornado, pulverized in the air and rained down as small pieces of debris miles away.  Radar did show debris from this tornado nearly 30,000 feet in the air.

And Alabama meteorologist James Spann said a photograph that landed near Tuscaloosa, Alabama came from a tornado-destroyed house 120 miles away in Mississippi.  Another house in Mississippi had its house and most of its walls torn down, but a freshly baked cake in a glass container sat untouched on an island counter in the middle of what was left of the kitchen.

Some severe thunderstorms will linger in northern Florida today and perhaps tomorrow, but there are no new big tornado outbreaks in the immediate forecast.

Still, there has already been more than 60 tornado deaths in the United States, just a smidge under average for an entire year.  This is shaping up to be the worst yeaer for tornadoes since the epic year of 2011, which saw more than 500 tornado deaths.

We are still in the early parts of tornado season, with May usually being the worst month. Which means more outbreaks are likely.  We just don't know when, where and how bad.  You want tornadoes to hit open areas with little population, but as we saw in the South over the past couple days, that's more often than not impossible.

Videos:

Many of the areas hit by the strong tornadoes on Easter have a lot of mobile homes, which are especially dangerous in twisters. This aerial view includes some shots of just brown rectangles in the landscape. That's where mobile homes were. In some cases, where they are now is anybody's guess:



This video by Gage Shaw demonstrates one of many reasons why tornadoes in the Deep South are often more dangerous than a lot of twisters in the Great Plains.

In this video, the mile-wide EF-4, powerful tornado is in there. You have to know what you're looking for. Look carefully and you can see the back edge of the massive tornado in the video.

Around 2:00 into the video, the tornado is relatively apparent, but is barely visible, but just as strong, a minute later:





Here, a house in Georgia was bodily moved from its perch atop a small hill, perhaps 100 feet to a spot in the middle of the road:

Tornadoes Sweep Parts Of Midwest As Expected, Illinois Not As Hard Hit

Massive tornado yesterday in Jonesboro, Arkansas

As expected, tornadoes swept through parts of the Midwest Saturday, but luckily there have no reports of deaths so far, and only relatively minor injuries. There is a lot of damage, though.

Illinois had been expected to be the epicenter of the tornado outbreak and they did have tornadoes in that state.

But tornadoes were more heavily concentrated to the west in Iowa, and the most destructive of the tornadoes hit to the south, in Jonesboro, Arkansas and the neighboring town of Brookland.  

Dramatic videos of the tornado is at the bottom of this post.

In Jonesboro, a rapidly developing tornado quickly became strong and destroyed a shopping center and numerous homes, Local television station KAIT in Jonesboro reported only six injuries from the twister, which is amazing considering the destruction it caused.

The mayor of Jonesboro put everybody in town under curfew last night, ordering them to stay in their homes so that emergency workers could look for more people that needed help.  They also needed to clear streets of a huge amount of debris and fallen power lines.

Lots of people have seen this photo of a Jonesboro doctor behind
glass so he can protect his one year old from coronavirus. On
Saturday, the family's home was destroyed by a tornado.

Maybe the saddest result of the tornado involves a Dr. Jared Burks and his family. He's been on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak.

A photo taken by his wife Alyssa went viral recently. It showed the doctor watching, behind glass,  his one-year old son.  They must stay separate in case the doctor contracts the virus.  

The Jonesboro tornado destroyed the Burks family home Saturday while the doctor was in it. He wasn't hurt and his family was elsewhere, but the whole thing is just too cruel.  A GoFundMe page is set up for the Burks family. As of early this morning, people donated more than $25,000 to the family.

A total of at least 17 tornadoes have been so far confirmed across the Midwest Saturday.  Several homes and other buildings suffered extensive damage in Iowa and western Illinois.

Today, some severe thunderstorms are possible today in western New York and Pennsylvania, and in the Southeast Monday and Tuesday.

Up here in Vermont, we'll just get a couple rainy days today and Monday.  If any flooding occurs here, it will be very spotty and minor.

Some videos:

Videographer Mike Lane took this dramatic video of the tornado.

 

Zachary Hall too this video of the tornado destroying the Mall at Turtle Creek in Jonesboro:



Here's what scary live coverage of the tornado looked like on KAIT-TV in Jonesboro. The amount of debris in the air at 1:40 to 1:50 into the video is incredible:

 

Early Start To North Country Severe Weather Season

A line of strong showers and storms that prompted severe thunderstorm
warnings in New York and western Vermont Friday were nothing
like this biggie near Sheldon in May, 2018. Instead, Friday's weather
consisted of a quick moving line of mostly light showers that
brought strong, potentially damaging wind gusts. 

Some severe thunderstorm warnings went up Friday afternoon in northern New York and western Vermont, giving us an early start to the spring and summer severe weather season.

There were several reports to the National Weather Service of tree damage mostly across northern New York.  There was also a report of several small trees down around Swanton, Vermont.

This was pretty early to be getting this type of weather in the North Country. The first severe thunderstorms of the season usually don't crop up until around May.

These weren't classic late spring or summer thunderstorms, of course. Some things about the strong storms were similar to what you'd get, say, in June, but most aspects of them were not.

Very often, strong thunderstorms around here develop along or near something known as a pre-frontal trough.  A pre-frontal trough is a skinny area of lower air pressure that marks a wind shift.  This feature usually comes through, from west to east a few hours ahead of a cold front that will also come in from west to east.

In the summer, the air of ahead of this trough is often quite humid and unstable. The trough adds lift to the atmosphere, allowing towering thunderstorm clouds to grow. These summer thunderstorms will usually produce torrential downpours, frequent lightning, strong, damaging winds and hail.

Friday's storms weren't quite like that. There wasn't much lightning involved and rainfall was modest, with most places getting less than a tenth of an inch of rain. This line of storms also zipped through much more quickly than storms do in the summer.

Strong winds were blowing several thousand feet overhead Friday, and the thunderstorm clouds did reach high enough to grab some of that wind, bringing it down to the surface in damaging gusts.

The air was more stable over and east of the Green Mountains, so the storms weakened a lot by the time they got there.  That explains the lack of damage reports east of the northern Champlain Valley.

The early taste of severe weather in Vermont and New York is most definitely over.  It's back to wintry stuff for a little while.

As previously advertised, this weekend will be mostly sunny during the day, clear at night and cold throughout.  A number of places in the north and mountains won't even  make it above freezing today and tomorrow. Lows tonight will be in the single numbers and low teens, with some late season subzero readings likely in the Adirondacks and Northeast Kingdomf of Vermont.

There's lots of questions about a potential quick-hitting storm Monday afternoon and night. There's the potential for several inches of snow with this, especially in the mountains.  However, the computer models were still arguing over this as of Saturday morning.

Some of those models said all of Vermont would get at least some snow.  Others said northern areas might miss out.  Still other forecasts say it will be a bit too warm for snow in the valleys.

As usual, stay tuned.

New York Homes Turned Into Ice Castles

One of the houses at Hoover Beach in Hamburg, New York covered
with ice after large waves from Lake Erie sprayed the houses
with water amid subfreezing temperatures last week. 

Not all areas of western New York were hit by heavy lake effect snow squalls last week

Depending upon where the bands set up, you either measured the snow in feet, or you got out a broom and swept away a dusting of it.

The town of Hamburg, New York, right on the shores of Lake Erie, only managed about six inches of new snow.

Still,  Lake Erie is oddly unfrozen for this time of year.  Which is why those heavy lake effect snows happen. The unfrozen Lake Erie also created another problem besides blizzards.  

For a couple days last week the winds absolutely screamed from the west off the lakes. This generated some awfully big waves on those  lakes. Plus, lake levels are much above normal, so the water is already closer than it usually is to lakeshore homes.

In Hamburg, New York, Lake Erie waves crashing onto the shore created some odd ice castles. At least three homes were encased in thick ice from waves hitting the shore, causing spray to fly through the  air in the gale and onto the houses.

During the storm, occupants had to basically chisel their way out of at least one of the homes.  Ed Mis, the owner of one of the houses, told television station WGRZ that the front of his house is encased in ice one to three feet thick.  One side of a neighbor's house is buried in ice almost to the roof.

It's unclear how badly damaged the houses are. It could be minor, who knows?  Homeowners will need to wait for the ice to melt before figuring that out.  Daytime temperatures in the area are forecast to be in the 40s for much of this week, so maybe at least some of the ice will come off the structures.

Here's a video of what it looked like:

Not Just Vermont: This Storm Was Huge, Odd In Many Ways

Did the best I could cleaning off more than a foot of snow from my truck,
and the quarter inch thick layer of solid ice beneath that. Not perfect for my trip
to work unfortunately. Hoping parking in the sun today will
melt more ice off the rig.

That big storm we had yesterday is out of our hair and we can go out in the very brisk air and start digging out.

If you're in northwestern Vermont or northern New York, or in parts of southern Quebec, you have a LOT of digging to do. 

The storm total at my house in St. Albans, Vermont starting early Thursday morning and ending last night was 16.3 inches.

Burlington's two-day storm total was 14.9 inches. The 11.5 inches that fell on Burlington just Friday alone was enough to set a record for the date for most snow on any February 7.

There was a report via Accuweather of 23.5 inches of new snow in Warren.

There were still about 5,000 homes and businesses without power, mostly in eastern Vermont early this morning. Ice had accumulated on trees and power lines during the storm Thursday into Friday morning, causing that trouble. More than 10,000 were without power Friday afternoon in Vermont.

Across the Northeast and Middle Atlantic States, a total of 250,000 were without power.

The storm was of course disruptive because of travel problems, along with hundreds upon hundreds of closed schools, businesses and events.

At least as impressive with this storm was the big trouble it caused from Texas to eastern Canada.  In many cases, that trouble was much worse than the snow and ice we Vermonters had to deal with.

By my count, there were at least 50 tornadoes from Mississippi to Maryland during the storm.  One extremely unusual detail were the at least five tornadoes and more than 200 reports of thunderstorm wind damage in the Middle Atlantic states, from Virginia to New Jersey.  That kind of tornado and severe storm outbreak that far north along the East Coast is extremely rare.

At least two deaths were blamed on tornadoes in the South.  Near Charlotte, North Carolina, one day care operator did the right tornado safety thing. There were five babies sleeping in the home day care when the operator got a tornado warning. She and her husband moved the babies to the center of the house. A moment later trees crashed down on the structure, crushing the room where the babies had been. Nobody was injured.

Flooding was severe in much of the Southeast with this storm's torrential rains.  Mobile homes were swept away in rural Kentucky. Parts of downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee were flooded, and there were high water evacuations throughout the Southeast.

It's been an incredibly wet winter in the South, and more heavy rain storms are due there over the coming week. Flooding will continue to be a risk down there.

As the storm intensified over New England Friday, winds gusted to as high as 80  mph on Cape Cod, causing added damage.

Given all these problems and all the damage the storm caused, we can consider it among the worst to hit the United States in recent years.  It's possible it caused a total of a $1 billion in damage or more across the South and East. We'll see.

Going forward, there are no new big storms on the horizon for us here in Vermont, though some light snow will come down Sunday night. It could mix with rain in the valleys during the day Monday. After that, there will be other bouts of light snow through much of the upcoming week.

Australia's Weather Goes Bonkers

On top of everything else, a massive dust storm ripped through parts
 of southeastern Australia this week.  

I"m going to need to re-name this blog, "Australia Weather Rapport" since all the extremes and action, not to mention the politics of weather are happening Down Under.

Sure, those super destructive, super scary bush fires are still a threat. Summer isn't over in Australia yet.

But this week, new extreme weather decided to enter the mix. These included massive dust storms, massive hail storms and some serious flash floods.

No doubt some of the storms were extremely welcome. After all, they doused some of those fires. A win! Yet with all the damage Australia has suffered in the past couple of months, the hail, the wind, the floods, the dust, just added that much more devastation.

Who knows what will happen next in Australia? As the several dramatic videos below show, I'm sure Australians just want their awful summer of 2020 to end.

Here's an overview from The Guardian:



The Australlian Capital of Canberra was especially hard hit with hail as supercell thunderstorms rolled through. Sydney got nailed, too. Here's a News 9 report:



Not a nice day at this Canberra outdoor restaurant:



Aftermath of hail in Canberra makes it look like they were hit by a New England style winter storm:



Meanwhile, elsewhere in Australia, check out this kabob/dust storm in part of New South Wales this week: This wall of dust was reportedly was 180 miles long as it rolled over the region. When the dust storm hit the town of Dubbo, winds reached around 66 mph.

Wild Videos Of Tornados Crashing Through South Carolina High Schools

Serious damage at a South Carolina high school after a tornado
struck it this month. Nobody was inside when this twister
hit on a Saturday night. 

Two South Carolina high schools were hit by tornadoes this month, but luckily in one case, nobody was in the school. In the second case, the twister hit the parking lot, but missed the actual high school building.

Dramatic vidoes of both tornadoes are at the bottom of this post.

Let's start with the high school parking lot tornado.  

It was an unexpected one, but it did yield some dramatic video, and a case lesson on how small, relatively weak tornadoes can be potentially deadly.

In this case, nobody was hurt when the tornado went through a high school parking lot, damaging dozens of cars. The twister tossed a few on top of each other.

You might have to watch the video at the bottom of this post  a couple times to catch the narrow funnel cloud going across the parking lot and tossing the vehicles. But it is something to behold.

As is often the case with tornadoes, this one is pretty narrow, so many of the vehicles in the parking lot do just fine.

The tornado goes to prove that it doesn't take a particularly large or strong tornado to put people in danger.

The tornado was an EF-1, with winds of 90 mph.  It hit the campus of Loris High School in Horry County South Carolina on Monday, according to numerous news reports, including television station WPDE  in Florence, South Carolina.

About 75 cars were damaged, and some of them were damaged, WPDE reported. 

Still, since classes were in session, we're glad the tornado didn't go through the high school instead. It would have only damaged part of the high school, but the part were students would have been in could have been really in trouble.

There was no tornado warning in effect at the time.  Meteorologists at the nearest National Weather Service office were tracking the parent thunderstorm and detected some weak rotation within it. But that rotation didn't seem strong enough to set off a tornado.

But it did. The rotation was just enough to set off a relatively weak tornado in a place where it could have hurt people.

This is another reason why you should take severe thunderstorms seriously.  You'll often hear a mention of weak rotation within the oncoming storm. Much more often than not, when the rotation is weak, you won't get a tornado. But in the case of Loris County, South Carolina, and I am sure many other instance it did. And it could happen any time.

This was the second time within a week that a tornado struck a South Carolina high school. On January 11, a  EF-2 tornado with winds up to 130 mph hit North Central High School in Kershaw County, South Carolina. Security cameras there yielded even more dramatic videos than the parking lot tornado.

Because it was a weekend, nobody was in the school, so nobody was hurt.

Which is a good thing Since so many people are in schools, they can be dangerous places to be in tornadoes.

Back on March 1, 20017 an EF-4 tornado with top winds of 170 mph hit Enterprise High School in Alabama, killing eight students and injuring 50.

Here's the video:



Here's surveillance video of another high school hit at night a few days before the video of the one above in South Carolina. Glad nobody was in there. Hallways turned into dangerous wind tunnels:

Ice Storms That Aren't Destructive Are Actually Pretty Cool

Icy berries in my St. Albans, Vermont yard on Sunday.

Now that we know the northwestern Vermont ice storm of 2020 was not as bad as feared, we can actually enjoy the beauty and oddities that freezing rain brings.

Oh sure, some people lost power for a little while, a few people have damaged trees, and the roads weren't all that great in the immediate aftermath of the ice.

But given we avoided wholesale destruction (at least in Vermont) of the Great Ice Storm of 1998, it was good to go out and actually enjoy the ice-altered scenery.

Since temperatures will probably stay below freezing, probably until Tuesday, and there should be a little sunshine here and there to light up the ice, there will probably be more photogenic moments with the ice still covering everything.

An icy bramch in my St. Albans, Vermont yard on Sunday.

Some of the photos that I took for this post are pretty. Some just journalistically document what the ice did.

Either way, it was still good to get out and examine what icy artistry Mother Nature gave us.  When you see this post, definitely respond with your own photos of what you saw in the ice. I'd love to see it.

I"m not a big fan of winter. It's my fourth favorite season, to be honest. Plus, most of Vermont missed out on the ice, so the great majority of Vermonters missed out on the beauty of the ice. But that's OK, there will be other days, with snow, with sun, with ice, with frost, that will highlight Vermont's beauty

Just be ready with your cameras, folks!

Scroll down and click on all the photos in this photos in this post to make the bigger and easier to see.

Birch trees bend under the weight of ice  left by this weekend's
freezing rain in Alburgh, Vermont. 

Ice laden birch trees sag under the weight of ice Sunday in
Alburgh, Vermont, blocking this driveway. 

A jumble of branches and ice on this St. Albans, Vermont shrub.

A tree sags under the ice in Alburgh, Vermont Sunday, while in a background
you can see part of another tree snapped off because of the
weight of the ice. 

An appropriately named street in Alburgh, Vermont Sunday.

An icy white pine branch in St. Albans, Vermont Sunday. 

Great Lakes Still Near Record Highs; Winter Gales Taking Their Toll

This popular tourist attraction, a sea stack in Lake Superior, collapsed
in high water and  windy blizzard this past week. It's a symptom
of heavy damage due to persistent very high water levels in the Great Lakes.

Residents around all of the Great Lakes have been struggling really for two or more years now with high lake levels.

Unusually heavy, persistent precipitation has been going on basically for the past five years in most of the Great Lakes watershed, keeping the water levels high.

Also, several winters in the past five years have had greater than normal ice extent on the lakes. The ice greatly slows evaporation and evaporation is one of the main ways water levels in the Great Lakes can decline.

These lakes are much bigger than say, even Lake Champlain, so water levels in the Great Lakes change slowly.  It takes a long time for them either to rise or fall. Small lakes like Champlain can flood, but the water will go down within several weeks after a flood event.

The Great Lakes have remained stubbornly high. This time of year brings storms with very strong, gusty winds, so shorelines have been eroding steadily, with very damaging results.

Many shoreline homes and cottages this fall and winter from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario have been damaged or even destroyed in these storms.  A famed sea stack -  pile of rocks near the shore of Lake Superior, collapsed this past week amid unusually high water and a very windy blizzard.

It'll probably get worse.  Great Lakes water levels do usually fall in the winter, but melting snow and spring rains make them rise again in the spring. So the first half of 2020 might turn out to be especially destruction in all of the Great Lakes, especially if it's wet.

Even near normal precipitation in the late winter and spring will keep the lakes at near record high levels.

Here in Vermont, there's absolutely no telling how high Lake Champlain will get next spring. Right now it's a little higher than average for this time of year due to a wet fall and early winter. But whether there will be any spring flooding really depends solely on how much snow and rain we get this winter, and how wet the first half of spring is.

Back in the Midwest, just six or seven years ago, Great Lakes water levels were at unusually low levels, due to increased temperatures in the region. Water evaporates more readily when it's warm than when the water is chillier.

Scientific American says more wild weather patterns, largely brought on by climate change, might be making this a "new normal" in which water levels seesaw up and down to more extreme levels than in past decades.

Here's a couple recent Great Lakes videos:

This is a recent CBC report from the Canadian side of Lake Erie:



Here's a Lake Michigan park and walkway being pummeled and wrecked by waves recently:

Two Very Different Problems With Ice In Vermont And Australia

The National Weather Service in South Burlington had adjusted its forecast
slightly and delayed the expected onset of freezing rain later today.
Click on the map to make it bigger and easier to see. In the Champlain
Valley, many of us have a shot of making it home from work before
the roads ice up.

There's some slightly good news in the forecast regarding the freezing rain and sleet that's expected to hit Vermont later today and tonight.  And at least we're not having other problems with destructive balls of ice like Australia had this weekend. (More on that further down, with videos).

Let's get into Vermont first. 

It looks like the onset of this icky precipitation will be a little later and a little lighter than first forecast. It looks like only spotty, very light freezing rain will hit in time for this afternoon's commute, especially west of the Green Mountains.

East of the Greens, it will be a little worse.

We're still going to get the ice, it's just coming later, mostly overnight.  Ice accumulations are still not expected to be whopping. The trees and power lines are pretty much safe. But anyone traveling tonight and overnight can expect really icy roads.  It'll be a good night to stay in and watch "Monday Night Football" or "The Voice" or whatever.

Tuesday morning still looks a little dicey if you're driving to work or school.  Overnight, freezing rain will transition to sleet then snow in most places. A little snow atop ice is never a good thing, so be careful!  All of Vermont and pretty much all of New England is under a winter weather advisory for this icky weather.

We Vermonters catch another break of sorts Wednesday and Thursday.  There will be little if any precipitation. Temperatures will remain colder than normal, but not nearly as far below normal as it's been lately. At least no more record lows are anticipated this week. We'll take what we can get.

The next weather maker is coming along Friday.  It looks like it might be a rain to snow situation, but precipitation won't be super heavy, as it seems now. Stay tuned for updates on that one.

AUSTRALIA HAIL

Large parts of Australia, including a good chunk of Queensland in the east, have been battling wildfires in recent weeks.

Hail damage after a big weekend hail storm in Queensland, Australia

Parts of Queensland got a decidedly suboptimal way to fight those fires over the weekend. Mother Nature decided to throw giant balls of ice at the flames.

Yep, Queensland got nailed by hail.  Big time.  The hail in some areas was the size of baseballs or even softballs. A large supercell thunderstorm was to blame.

The hail caused major damage to countless cars and windows in the area. The relatively brief storm managed to cost at least $40 million in damage, according to Australia's ABC News.

Here are some videos:

This car took a bit of a pounding, didn't it?



Few things are as noisy as big hail in a parking lot.  This is at some place called Aussie World. You can see the car windows getting smashed out during the video:



Some cool slo-mo of somebody releasing a lot of hail from fruit-catching nets in an orchard: