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:

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:

Death Toll Rising In Latest Tornado Outbreak

Huge tornado near Soso, Mississippi Sunday. Photo via
Twitter, @ConnorWx

As of early this morning, at least 18 people have died in that long anticipated tornado outbreak in the South, and things were still very rough as dawn broke Monday.

As of around 7 a.m. this morning, a destructive, very long squall line stretching from Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and the Florida panhandle was unleashing dangerous thunderstorrms with embedded tornadoes.

That risk will continue there until the squall line moves off the coast later this morning.  Another line of severe thunderstorms, and maybe a few tornadoes, might form toward noon or early afternoon, we'll see.

The death toll was rising this morning and I worry it will continue to do so. The 18 deaths would mean 51 people have died in tornadoes in the United States so far this year, and we haven't even hit the peak of the severe weather season yet.  On average 69 peopl lose their lives to U.S. tornadoes annually.

Just looking at the radar images yesterday last evening was terrifying enough. Judging from those images, two strong tornadoes, one following the other by less than an hour, too parallel paths through the Soso, Mississippi area.

Those radar images showed pieces of debris thrown 30,000 feet into the air, then raining down over a 60-mile radius. Soso appears to have been in the path of a monstrous supercell thunderstorm that dropped a string of tornadoes across southeastern Mississippi.

Other destructive tornadoes caused lots of damage around Monroe, Louisiana and near Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Weather Channel said five people were killed when a tornado struck a mobile home park near the Tennessee-Georgia border.

The storms then continued into northern Georgia. Radar picked up what appeared to be a tornado passing within about a mile of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

The orange stripe  uo usee on this map is from
early this morning. The orange stripe is all
severe thunderstorm warnings. The red
spots are tornado warnings. 

Flooding was widespread as well, with all of northern Alabama under a flood warning this morning. Flash flooding was occuring across the central and southern Appalachians, with reports of downtown Roanoke, Virginia under water.

Once that squall line goes offshore, the action shifts to the Great Lakes and Northeast during the day today. No tornadoes are expected up in places like New England,   but forecasts for strong winds still hold.

High wind warnings and wind advisories cover most of the nation east of the Mississippi River except for parts of Florida, northern and central Vermont, and parts of New Hampshire. Even in those areas without advisories, winds will be strong enough to knock over a few trees and power lines.

As you can tell, this powerful storm behaved as expected, which is too bad.  I think every meteorologist out there would have preferred a forecast bust.

However, I'm sure days of alerts and warnings leading right up to the severe weather saved lives, since people were made aware of the danger before it hit.

Weather will always throw a few curves and surprises at us, but forecasting continues ot improve. This storm was a great example of some spot-on predictions.

Video:

An overview news report helps capture the extent of at least part of this outbreak:

Breaking: Downtown Nashville Slammed By Overnight Tornado

Widespread damage in Nashville from this
UPDmorning's tornado. 

UPDATE: 

As of 10:30 a.m., Tennessee Emergency Management says the death toll from the tornado or tornadoes is up to 19 people in four counties.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

A tornado went right through the heart of Nashville, Tennessee early this morning, causing widespread destruction and at least nine deaths in and near that city.

It was probably the worst possible scenario for a tornado. A large, strong tornado going through a major metropolitan area in the after-midnight darkness.  People were sound asleep at that hour, and not in a position to hear tornado warnings and take cover.

Dramatic videos are at the bottom of this post

Early reports suggest that the Nashville Fire Department responded to calls regarding at least 40 collapsed buildings, says the Weather Channel.

The tornado apparently touched down a little west of Nashville a little after 12:30 a.m. and continued eastward for about 50 miles to a spot well east of Nashville. That's a long track for a tornado, and dangerous, considering much of its path covered heavily populated areas.

An airport west of town was heavily damaged.  It looks like the tornado went by just barely to the north of the highrises in downtown Nashville. Eastern parts of the city were heavily damaged.

Election workers were checking reports that Super Tuesday polling stations were damaged, too.  In any event, the tornado and its aftermath will surely disrupt voting today in parts of Tennessee.  Polls across Nashville are opening an hour later than scheduled today because of the twister.

Last evening and overnight, there have so far been eight confirmed tornadoes in Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. Tornado warnings blared through the night in parts of these three states.

The extent of this tornado outbreak caught at least me by surprise.  That's not to suggest there weren't adequate warnings, because there certainly were.  It's just that forecasters often see tornado outbreaks days in advance. This one snuck up to an extent.

By late Sunday, forecasters were predicting the risk of severe storms and perhaps a tornado or two in this region.  By Monday afternoon, it was clear that things were beginning to escalate in the atmosphere, so a tornado watch was wisely issued for the area that eventually was hit.

By evening, rotating supercell thunderstorms were firing up, and the damage started.

Another image of tornado damage in Nashville, via Twitter.

It's not necessarily over. Severe thunderstorms and possibly a few more tornadoes are expected today in a long strip from central Texas, across the Gulf Coast states and on into North Carolina.

Some strong storms, and possibly a tornado or two, are even possible roughly 100 miles in any direction from Washington DC.  This could further disrupt voting in states that are in thick of Super Tuesday today.  

Severe weather and flooding is likely across much of the Deep South on Wednesday and Thursday, too

Back in Nashville, this isn't the city's first go around with a tornado going right through the middle of the city. In April, 1998, an EF3 tornado, with winds of between 156 and 200 mph, swept through the middle of Nashville in a path somewhat similar to this morning's.

In the 1998 storm, 300 buildings in downtown Nashville, including the State Capitol, were damaged. Sadly, the 1998 tornado hit East Nashville particularly hard, just as this morning's twister did.

The Nashville tornadoes reinforce the fact that tornadoes can and do go through the middle of cities.  There's a prevalent myth that tornadoes can't do that, but of course that's not true.

Destructive tornadoes have hit other urban areas, both historically and in recent years.  Damaging twisters went through  downtown Atlanta, Georgia in 2008,  Raleigh, North Carolina in 2011, Oklahoma City in 1999 and even Brooklyn, New York, twice, in 2007 and 2010.  (The video of the 2010 tornado in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is pretty wild).

Just last year, tornadoes swept through heavily developed areas right in Jefferson City, Missouri and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  It can happen here in New England, too: Witness the big tornado in Springfield, Massachusetts in 2011 and the even bigger one in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1953.

Videos:

The immediate aftermath of the tornado in East Nashville.  I always find the sound of alarms going off in busted buildings after a disaster haunting. Watch and listen:



Meteorologist Henry Rothenberg at NewsChannel 5 in Nashville gave the play by play as the tornado swept past the television station early Tuesday:



It's frightening to watch a tornado go through a big city, even when you can't see it well in the darkness. Sam Shamburger of television station WRKN tracked the tornado as it passed through. You can see it with the power flashes it was causing:



First light this morning reveals some of the destruction:

Storm Dennis Causes Major British Disaster

Extensive flooding in England from Storm Dennis last weekend

The United Kingdom this week is busy picking up the pieces after Storm Dennis.

That was the storm that last weekend was billed as something that would possibly become the strongest storm on record in the North Atlantic.

It came close. The central barometric pressure of a storm is a good measure of how strong it is. Dennis bottomed out at 919 millibars, which is the third strongest storm on record in the North Atlantic.

It's also the ninth strongest non-hurricane storm on record for the entire Northern Hemisphere.  

It produced wind gusts of up to 159 mph in Iceland, but saved its worst destructive punch for Great Britain.  The center of Storm Dennis stayed well north and west of the British Isles.  So the waves and storm surges, while destructive, weren't the worst on record.

However, the vast reach of Dennis really screwed Great Britain.  Consider the storm's cold front at one point stretched from roughly Edinburgh, Scotland to Miami, Florida, an incredible distance of at least 4,200 miles.

That meant there was an immense feed of warmth and tropical humidity drawn far north by Storm Dennis. Which, in turn, meant downpours.  Some areas in Scotland and northern England had a month's worth of rain in two days.

Worse, another very strong storm, named Ciara, came through six days earlier with its own bout of heavy rain and flooding.  The result was some of the most serious inland flooding Great Britain has seen in decades.  Videos are at the bottom of this post.

Some areas in southern Scotland received more than six inches of rain from Dennis.

There were some 200 different flood warnings in effect across Great Britain due to the floods from Dennis, says the BBC.

The storm has left England, but rivers remain high, and some won't fall below flood stage for several days.

By the way, that warmth drawn far north by Storm Dennis brought record warmth to much of western Europe. They've had an incredibly warm winter there.  The result of this Dennis-related warmth and the balmy winter is a weirdly early spring.

The cold front from massive Storm Dennis at one point stretched from
Scotland to Florida guaranteeing a massive flow of tropical
moisture and flooding rains across Great Britain.

All this, once again, brings up the question of climate change. Was Storm Dennis a sign of this dangerous global warming?

I'll start with the caveat we're all familiar with: One storm or weather phenomenon doesn't prove or disprove climate change at all. Weather is variable, and freaks can happen, with or without climate change.  

The global warming scenario for storms like Dennis is complicated, though. Many scientists believe that mega-storms like Dennis in the North Atlantic would actually become less frequent as climate change worsens.

However, storms around much of the world, including Great Britain, will have the capacity to dump heavier rain than they do now.   That trend toward heavier precipitation events has already begun, and is expected to become worse.

Warmer air can hold more moisture than a cooler atmosphere. Under the right conditions, the added moisture in a toastier world can cause heavier downpours than what have generally occured in the past.

In any event, I'm sure many Britains are so busy cleaning up after the floods that they might not be thinking about the nuances of climate change.

Here's a couple Dennis compilation videos:



Here's a fairly long but worth watching compilation video of the widespread flooding in the UK:



Here's an equally good second-day compilation of Storm Dennis:



 For some reason, the visuals in this news report remind of Waterbury, Vermont during the epic Tropical Storm Irene flood of 2011:



An outfit called Cornish Walking Tours sounds like a great thing to sign up for, except for during Storm Dennis. Corning Walking Tours put out this video of storm waves battering St. Agnes, Cornwall:



On one small bright side, Storm Dennis picked up a little mess that it made and set everything right:

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.

Australia Wildfires Really Are A Global Big Deal

Firefighters in a losing battle with the Australian bushfires.

I know that for the past couple months, I keep returning to the extreme wildfires in Australia, which incredibly, keep getting worse and worse.

In fact, there's a lot of media reports and weather forecasts that indicate Australia will have the worst part of the crisis yet by Saturday, as a combination of near record heat, continued drought and erratic winds will stir up the giant fires even more. 

Mass evacuations continue amid a rising death toll, widespread destruction, and a section of Australia burned that is at least as big as Belgium. Dramatic videos are at the bottom of this post.

The real reason I keep bringing the fires up is the obvious situation that this is a huge new story.  It also is, if you'll forgive my oxymoron, a microcosm of the global climate crisis writ large

Yes, yes, I know the bushfire crisis in Australia is not 100 percent caused by climate change, as some of the more strident activists would have it.

Wildfires have always happened in Australia,  pretty much every summer. This year, a  natural cycle that has brought drought to Australia, which has exacerbated the  fire situation.  On top of that, more and more people have moved to the so-called urban-wildland interface, which has made for an increasing number of potential human fire victims.

Apocalyptic scene of a mother taking her two sons
(under the blankets) out in a boat on a lake to
escape the Australian bushfires. Photo by
Allison Marion.

But there's no question that climate change has tipped the scale to make what would have been a terrible fire season absolutely catastrophic. It you make a climate a little drier, a little hotter and a little windier, in this case through climate change, you get something like the current Australian cataclysm.

We've seen this type of thing all over the world, although Australia is among the most devastating examples. I suspect the terrible wildfires in California in 2017 and 2018 were made much worse by climate change.

On the opposite extreme, epic floods, like the Hurricane Harvey inundation of Houston and much of the rest of East Texas back in 2017, likely would not have been as bad if climate change had been absent.

Australia's current summer of fire also highlights the current state of climate denial among the world's so-called leaders.

The escalation in "natural" disasters - ones that might have happened anyway but in recent years were made worse by climate change - coincides with a global rise in right wing populist "leaders."

For some reason, some, but not all of these right wingers, like Donald Trump in the United States, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, and yes, Australia's Scott Morrison, are strident climate deniers, or at least, they don't give a damn about it.

Trump, Bolsonaro and Morrison have all labeled climate change as "fake news."

Bolsonaro went as far to falsely accuse climate activists, including Leonardo DiCaprio, of setting or  having people set Amazon forest fires last year to boost their political agenda  While Morrison has certainly not copied Bolsonaro, his poltical supporters have.

I notice on Twitter, where fake news really thrives, a lot of climate deniers have retweeted patently false "news" that 200 climate activists started the Australian fires to advance their agenda.

Australians awaiting rescue from a seaside beach as bushfires
close in on them.

As always these awful deniers take something that has a grain of truth and then totally falsify what's really going on.  It's true that a lot of the Australian fires were set by humans, either accidentally or on purpose. 

These obviously weren't climate activists setting this blazes. It was stupid people doing some outdoor burning despite all advice against it, or pyromaniacs who get their jollies out of inflicting immense pain and suffering by starting wildfires.

Australia's Morrison acknowledges the existence of climate change, but says the current conflagration isn't caused by it.  And he supports and encourages the nation's coal industry, and resists calls to downsize that industry.

So, the fires continue. The death toll will mount, more destruction will happen, and then when the fires are out, or more likely before then, we'll move on to our next climate-related disaster.

Some videos:

Here a firetruck is overrun by the fire front in New South Wales. Firefighters in the video try desperately to get under blankets to protect themselves from the intense heat. Happy spoiler: They survived



A woman attached a GoPro to her forehead as she battled to save her home from the fires:



This is Mallacoota, as residents were forced to flee to the beach, a risk of having to dive into the ocean to escape the flames. The blood red sky and the darkness in the video were taken during the day, a testimony to how scary and intense this crisis was and is:



Here's some aerial views to give you just a little taste of how extensive these wildfires are:



To give you an idea of how serious this is, Australian media have begun calling this, accurately, a humanitarian crisis. That's the kind of phrase you hear when a Third World country is having a catastrophe, not an advanced nation like Australia. Here's the video that shows this:

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:

Waterlogged Venice, Italy Assessing After Near-Record Flooding

A lone person wades through the flooding in Venice, Italy this week.
It was the second highest flood crest on record. Credit: Getty Images

UPDATE:

In the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up department, the Venato Regional Council sort of a county or state government for Venice and environs, got flooded out literally moments after voting against spending money to combat climate change, CNN tells us.

Of course, as I describe below, climate change was only one of many ingredients that caused this massive flood in and around Venice.

But the irony of this story is certainly there.

Says CNN:

"The council chamber in Ferro Fini Palace started to take in water around 10 p.m. local time, as councilors were debating the 2020 regional budget, Democratic Party councilor Andrea Zazoni said in a long Facebook post.

'Ironically, the chamber was flooded two minutes after the majority League Brothers of Italy, and Forza Italia parties rejected our amendments to tackle climate change,' Zazoni, who is deputy chairman of the environment committee said in the post."

The League Brothers party is aligned with the Italian government's far right leadership. The head of the League Brothers for the Venato Regional Council rejected Zazoni's assertions saying the council has spent money on anti-pollution efforts.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

As anybody with a hint of awareness about Italy knows, the historic city of Venice is wet and prone to flooding.

Many of us have seen photos over the years of tourists standing knee deep in water or picking their way over makeshift platforms above flood waters.  The city has some flooding at least a couple dozen times a year.

This week's Venice flooding went way beyond that.  You can see video at the bottom of this post.

About 85 percent of Venice was flooded, the worst inundation since the famous storm of 1966, according to the Weather Channel.

The water reached 6.14 feet above normal, just 2.5 inches lower than the historic 1966 flood, the Associated Press reports.

There are fears that St. Mark's Basilica could be damaged, as water flowed through windows and into the crypt beneath, says the Weather Channel.  That might be compromised the historic building's structure, such as the columns that hold St. Mark's up.  The building is made largely of marble, which corrodes easily in salt water.

St. Marks has flooded just six times in its nearly 1,000 year history, but two of those times were in the past two years, says CBS News.

The Associated Press also said the Ca'Pesaro modern art gallery was damaged because water created an electrical short circuit, which started a fire.

Those platforms tourists walked on during high water were taken down because the inundation was so bad those platforms could have washed away.  Shopkeepers traditionally put boards in front of doors to keep water out, but this time the water overtopped those boards, flooding countless businesses and homes.

On the bright side, the AP said that priceless artworks in Venice were unscathed.

"These are the effects of climate change," Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said on Twitter as he surveyed the damage, which he said amounted to hundreds of millions of euros.

He's probably only partly right about climate change.  It could well have influenced this week's flooding, but it's not the only player.

Plenty of things came together to create the destructive Venice flooding.  A full moon made ocean tides higher worldwide.  Strong southerly winds pushed the high tide into Venice. Plus, the city is slowly sinking because of ground water pumping.

And, yes, climate change contributed because sea levels are rising due to the warming. That made the water a little higher than it otherwise would have been.

Venice has been building multi-billion dollar flood barriers for more than a decade, but the project has been plagued by delays, cost overruns and corruption.

Video of the flood from The Guardian:



More footage from the BBC. Note the water flowing into shops and hotels:

Deadly New Delhi Air Pollution Keeps Getting Worse

At certain times of year, some immense cities in the world become cesspools of extreme air pollution, putting the lives of millions of people in danger.

Extreme air pollution in India this past week. Photo by Arushree
Fadnavis./Reuters

In recent days, New Delhi, India has probably topped them all. The pollution was so thick, so dangerous, that you couldn't measure it.

A widely used air qualilty index measures ground level ozone, particulates, carbon monoxide, sulfer dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.  If the index is at 50 or lower, the air is clean and great to breath.

Up to 300, the air is a bit iffy - unhealthy for people with underlying health issues or other sensitivities, but the rest of us can probably manage, though with some potential health effects. If you get over 300, the air is downright dangerous for everybody.

We don't know how high the air quality index got in New Delhi, because the measuring devices only go to 999. I imagine the pollution levels were at least four times higher than what is considered dangerous for everybody.

 Here's how Time magazine describes what this is like:

"By one estimate, breathing Delhi's air for one day has the health impacts of smoking at least 25 cigarettes. Although Delhi typically experiences marked increases in air pollution around Novermber, this year's pollution prompted Delhi's Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal to call the city a 'gas chamber.'"

Time says New Delhi's experience with air pollution is part of a global trend that is causing roughly 7 million premature deaths annually.

Inversions, in which warm air traps cooler air beneath it, is the root meteorological cause of these pollution episodes. That warm air aloft acts as a lid so that pollutants can't escape and blow away. As cars, trucks, agricultural fires, factories and everything else loft stuff into the air, it just accumulates under this "lid," with toxic results.

In New Delhi's case, it started with an annual celebration called Diwali, in which lots of people set of fireworks. Those add a lot of smoke to the air.

This is also the time of year that farmers in land surrounding New Delhi to set fires in fields to clear land for the next round of crops.  Add to it the millions of cars, trucks, factories and scooter and you get a real disaster.

By the way, we here in Vermont are not immune from pollution problems caused by inversions.  These inversions often happen in the winter.  That can trap pollutants from things like cars and wood stove smoke in our Green Mountain valleys, elevating pollution levels.

The area around Rutland, for instance, is shaped like a bowl, and is sometimes subject to wintertime air pollution alerts. Of course, and thankfully, Rutland will never get as bad as New Delhi.

Analysis: Vermont Storm Fit Climate Change Trend: Was Big, I Even Have to Pick Up The Pieces

This tree fell on my husband Jeep in my St. Albans, Vermont yard,
likely totaling the vehicle

I spent last night as a storm refugee for the first time I can remember.  Then again, the storm Thursday night and Friday was among the worst I can remember, at least for Vermont as a whole.

At least in my opinion, it was the Green Mountain State's most destructive storm since the epic floods of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.  Between the flooding - record river crests in at least two spots in northern Vermont - and the damaging winds, this one will probably have parts of Vermont declared a disaster areas.

For me and my husband Jeff, things aren't nearly as bad, as it is for some people, mind you.  My house is intact, but it lacks electricity. Falling branches pulled the wires and electrical box from the house and messed with the wiring system in the house, so we had to shut off the brakers. We hope to get things fixed within the next few days.

Plus a large tree fell on Jeff's Jeep, and it's probably totaled.  With all that going on, we moved into a La Quinta Inn motel room for the night.  I'm wrote most of this missive Saturday morning from the "comforts" of this motel room.

Our situation is an inconvenience that is being resolved super quickly. I was surprised and delighted when I checked on my house at 8:30 a.m. today to find Green Mountain Power already there repairing our electrical line. They have so much work to do after this store that I was very impressed with GMP's responsiveness.

There are other Vermonters who are sorting through flood damaged homes and businesses, trying to navigate washed out roads, figuring out what to do now that the culvert under the driveway, and the driveway itself is gone.  It will take awhile for some people to recover from this.  (Had we not replaced a culvert with a larger, sturdier one this summer, Jeff and I would have lost our driveway too in this storm, along with the other trouble we had.)

This was a much more serious storm than anyone expected in Vermont. Its effects are wide ranging, causing damage from near the Gulf Coast to Quebec.  The storm had its birth in the Rocky Mountains, where it caused unseasonable snows and all-time record lows for October. The storm contributed to the strong winds in California that fanned those wildfires.

Technically, the storm was a nationwide disaster.

You usually can't trace a direct line between a storm and climate change. You can't say this storm was "caused" by climate change. You can say this storm was consistent with climate change. The storm was probably influenced by climate change and there's a very good chance climate change made this storm worse than it otherwise might have been. If there wasn't climate change maybe the wind with this storm would not have been strong enough to knock the tree onto Jeff's Jeep. Who knows?

From WVNY: Significand flooding in Richmond, Vermont Friday. 

This tempest was a product of a wonky jet stream, which many scientists see as clue that climate change is messing with weather patterns. In a sense, this is so far the biggest direct impact climate change has had on me so far.

The rainfall was particularly, oddly heavy, especially in northern and central New York, most of Vermont and southern Quebec.  Here in Vemont, the storm dumped 5.26 inches of rain on East Berkshire and 4.85 inches on Enosburg Falls. After the heavy rains of the previous week, it's no wonder the Missisquoi River reached a record high crest at North Troy,'

In the Lamoille River watershed, 4.8 inches of rain fell on Fletcher, raising that river to a record high crest in Jeffersonville. This was no ordinary Vermont flood.

In an ominous way, this type of heavy rainfall makes sense. The atmosphere can hold more water when its warmer, meaning potential precipitation is heavier. Sure, this might have happened anyway. Vermont's worst flood on record, in 1927, happened this time of year, too. But these heavy rain events are getting more frequent. Parts of the Green Mountain State were declared a disaster area due to some serious flooding just this past April.

This storm had quite a one/two punch as the winds caused serious damage, as I said all up and down the East Coast and into Quebec. The damage was certainly noticeable here in Vermont, including at my St. Albans house, as mentioned.

Up to 50,000 people lost power in Vermont. That figure was 900,000 in Quebec, making this the worst power outage in the Canadian province since the famous ice storm of 1998. A man died around Montreal when, while taking a photo of a fallen tree, another tree fell on him, CBC reported.

The wind in Vermont was almost as destructive as the flooding. At some points Friday, at least 50,000 homes and businesses were without power in Vermont. Before dawn this morning that figure had fallen to roughly 28,000, including at yours truly's house.  With numbers that big, it will take a long time before everybody has electricity. I bet some people will be out for a week or more.

Elsewhere, the wind collapsed a large barn up in Maidstone, Vermont. A section of Interstate 91 was briefly closed when a fallen tree blocked both southbound lanes. The storm also cut off internet access in much of Burlington.

The temperature gyrations with this storm were incredibly remarkable, too. Again, I won't say climate changed "caused" this temperature weirdness, but it probably influenced it. Climate change can lead to bigger extremes.

True, out in the Rockies, on the cold side of this storm, they had a nearly unprecedented cold snap for this early in the season. Some cities hit all-time record lows for October. But as Vermont was in the throes of the storm, temperatures rose to a record highs in places like Burlington, where it reached 71 degrees late in the evening of October 31,  despite the fact the sun had long since set and it was raining.

The dew point, a measure of how much moisture is in the air, reached the humid levels of a muggy July night.

Very often, an emergency brings out the best in people and that was the case here.  For instance, in Burlington's Intervale, vegetable farms put out a call on social media to help quickly harvest carrots and other crops before the Winooski River flood arrived to ruin the vegetables. More than a dozen people showed up to save the day.

Even Vermont Gov. Phil Scott got into the act.  A tree blocked a road along his route Friday, so he pulled a chainsaw out of the back of his truck and removed the tree.

As is typical with big storms, we're getting something of a break from the rough weather.  A series of small little storms will gradually sink us into winter conditions over the course of the next week, at least for awhile.

But we are in a "new normal," as the cliche goes, so we'll experience more wild storms, more temperature extremes and more weirdness, both here in Vermont and everywhere else.  As my experience shows, even when it's not that bad, this is tiring and expensive. But here we are.

Some videos:

The Winooski River racing through the city of Winooski:



During the Halloween night storm, a tornado touched down west of Philadelphia. Here's a damage video:



And an ABC News overview of the storm.

Two Very Different Style Windstorms To Affect Vermont, California

Widespread rainfall of near two inches is expected with the
upcoming windy storm Thursday into Friday.

This is essentially an update to yesterday's post, with more details about a pretty stiff storm about to sock us here in Vermont, and a nearly unprecedented wind event (and possibly fire event coming to southern California today.

Let's start locally.  It's already been breezy in parts of Vermont, especially the Champlain Valley, as I drove through a blizzard of falling leaves amid 30 mph wind gusts.

That's just a foretaste of what's to come.  Yep, we are going to get a lot of rain and wind.  There's a risk of both flooding and damaging winds Thursday night and Friday in and around Vermont.

I suppose way out ahead of the main storm there could be a couple light showers this afternoon, but they're nothing to worry about. 

The main show arrives tomorrow. At first, it'll just be showers, but a steady rain will move in during the afternoon as winds increase.

It's tricky to predict how strong winds will get while it's raining.  There will be strong winds aloft, but  rainfall can sometimes prevent those winds from mixing down to the surface.

There will be locally strong winds.  Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in South Burlington think channeling effects in the Champlain Valley could bring gusts to 45 mph there.

Worse, the southeast flow could bring strong downslope winds to the western slopes of the Green Mountains. There's definitely a risk of gusts in the 60 to 70 mph range, with maybe a couple locally higher gusts along the western slopes of the Green Mountains Thursday night.

That will be Round One of the wind. More on Round Two at the moment.

Between the wind and the rain, it's not going to be a great night for trick or treating. Overnight, this noisy storm will likely produce a lot of rain.  Most of the state should get one to two inches, with locally three inches possible.

We've had a lot of rain lately, so the soils are saturated. This amount of rain is probably enough to cause some flooding. It won't be an Irene-style epic flood, but even minor flooding is something to pay attention to.  People always tend to try to drive across flooded roads and that's such a bad idea.  This should be obvious, but whatever.

It seems the rivers most at risk of some flooding are the Mad and Winooski and Other Creek in Vermont and Ausable in New York.  But any water way could flood, and small streams could wash out dirt roads.

Newly fallen leaves can form little dams in streams. When these dams eventually break, you get rushes of water that can take out culverts or wreck gravel roads.

In urban areas, newly fallen leaves can can clog storm drains, too.  Needless to say, a flood watch is up pretty much region wide.

Friday morning, the storm's sharp cold front will whip through, which will shut off the heavy rain. (Lighter showers will continue here and there.)

This cold front opens the door for more strong winds, this time from the west.  Gusts in favored areas could reach 55 mph. Most of us will gust over 40 mph Friday.

Overall, there's already a high wind watch up in northwestern New York and those wind watches, warnings and advisories will almost certainly spread across most of Vermont.

Obviously, the large upcoming storm won't just affect Vermont.  The entire Northeast is due for a big blast of wind, rain and power outages with this storm. 

Not everybody will lose electricity, but there will be outages.  Make sure your devices are fully charged by Thursday evening, just in case.

CALIFORNIA WIND/FIRES

It seems like we've been talking about the California wildfires for weeks now, though it's only been days.

It also seems like every time we say this will be the worst day, an even worse day comes along. That's today in southern California.

Meteorologists are predicting one of the strongest Santa Ana winds on record in southern California. This will be combined with a relative humidity of well under 10 percent.  Santa Ana winds and fire weather occur every autumn in southern California, but not like this.

Every time there's a real fire risk, something called a red flag warning is issued.  This happens a lot in southern California in the autumn, so the National Weather Service in Los Angeles worried that people would just dismiss it as just another background noise weather alert.

To shake people out of their complacency, they're calling this one an Extreme Red Flag Warning. "Conditions are as dangerous for fire growth and behavior as we have seen in recent memory," the NWS warned. 

Unlike most Santa Ana wind events, the weather won't be particularly hot this time. Normally, the air rushing down the hills in Santa Ana winds compresses, which heats it up. The air mass triggering the winds is so cold that this warming won't be very pronounced.

Unfortunately, that doens't matter.  Between the winds gusting to 80 mph on the ridgelines and in some canyons and 60 to 70 mph elsewhere; and the relative humidity running in the single digits, you can imaging how fast a fire would spread.  I don't think any human could keep up with it.

So, millions of people in southern California are on edge, wondering if they will be the ones who have to flee in a flash because of a fire.

The winds are so strong this time that even outside fire zones, the National Weather Service is saying people should stay out of forested areas and away from trees.  They could topple easily in such strong winds.

I guess we here in Vermont should count ourselves lucky that we're only going to get lowland flooding, a few toppled trees and power failures.

While Watching California Burn, Wishing We Could Send Vermont's Dreary Downpours To Them

Yesterday was as dreary a day as you can get in Vermont.

A foreboding, stormy, gloomy late autumn day Sunday
in my St. Albans, Vermont yard.

Stuck inside, I watched videos depicting parts of California burning amid arid, blowtorch gales. A few of the videos are at the bottom of this post.

 I also watched yet another drenching storm soak Vermont, keeping me from doing my outdoor autumn chores. It was a classic, dark, wet, foreboding late October day as we race toward winter.

I wished I could teleport all that rain and wetness to California.

Not that's it's been an ugly, awful month in Vermont. Quite the contrary.  We've had a lot of gorgeous days this autumn.  But the rainfall, especially in northern Vermont, is kind of impressive for October, which is normally a relatively dry month in Vermont.

A little over an inch of rain dropped into my unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans, Vermont, bringing the month's total to 6.4 inches. That surely must put us in the top 10 wettest list for Octobers. Again, we haven't had a lot of rainy days, really. It's just that this month, when it rains, it pours.

Burlington, Vermont so far has had less rain than right up along the Canadian border. The Queen City has had 5.14 inches as of last midnight. That doesn't place October in the top 10 wettest, but if the next storm comes early enough, on October 31, it could put this month in that top ten list.

The storminess here and the fires are related meteorologically. And climate change might have a hand in it.  When the Arctic is warm, it does seem the jet stream has more and bigger northward bulges and southward dips. And those patterns seem to get stuck.

This month, an enormous northward bulge in the jet stream has kept Alaska very toasty, at least by their standards.  What goes up must come down. So there's been a corresponding major dip in the jet stream into the Rockies and western Plains.

Which is why they've had some odd wintry cold fronts and snowstorms out in that neck of the woods.

The cold in the Rockies and the warmth in California has increased the pressure gradient between the West Coast warmth and Rockies cold.  Bigger pressure gradients mean more wind, which is in part why these periods of very gusty, dry downslope winds have brought fires to California.

That dip in the jet stream means there's a corresponding northward bulge further east, off the East Coast.  Which puts us Vermonters in a flow that comes from the southwest.  This arrangement allows storms to pull lots of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, so it rains hard.

Yet one more storm is coming along, as I said on Halloween and November 1.  Details are still sketchy, but there could be heavy rains and strong winds in and around Vermont with this one. We'll keep an eye on it.

Meanwhile, California keeps burning. The biggest danger today shifts toward the southern part of the state, especially near and north of Los Angeles. Already early this morning, a roaring wildfire developed near the 405 and Getty Center. It was rapidly spreading, a few houses were already on fire and there were hasty evacuations going on.

So the day doesn't look good at all in that region

Some videos:

A grass fire trapped cars on Interstate 5 near Sacramento. Some people had to run for their lives as their cars caught fire. Others looked for an escape route as traffic jammed amid the smoke and embers.

Here's somebody on that Sacramento freeway as the wildfire closes in, directing traffic onto a dirt side road that would help them escape the fire. Chaotic!



A dangerous fire developed in Vallejo, California, but firefighters eventually, somehow got the pper hand on it.  Here's what it looked like for awhile:



A home burning during the Kincade fire. Watch to near the end as a tree explodes dramatically overhead:

Dire Situation Unfolding In Northern California Wildfires Today

The Soda Rock Winery in Healdsburg, California in flames during
the Kincade fire this morning. Photo by Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images.

A lot of peoples worst fears are being realized in northern California today.

Wildfires, including the huge Kincade Fire, exploded overnight amid extreme Diablo winds gusting in some places past hurricane force, with relative humidities in the single digits. One wind gust of 91 mph was reported this morning near the Kincade fire.

This is about as extreme weather as you can get in wildfire situations, so it's sadly not surprising that things are falling apart quickly in northern California today.

The reporting from television station WPIX in the Bay Area early this morning is stunning.  Like this snippet of their reporting:

"By 3:30 a.m., a wall of fire ws rapidly approaching Windsor, triggering a frantic call from the Sonoma County Sheriff's department for residents - who had ignored a mandatory evacuation order Saturday, to flee now."

For some people, it might be too late to flee, which means I worry some people will die.  In the hard hit town of Geyserville, WPIX reported that high winds ahead of the fire toppled trees across roads, which would make a fast evacuation pretty much impossible. The WPIX reporter giving us this information was standing in front of the Soda Rock Winery, established in 1869 and during her report, fully engulfed in flames.

Seventy-nine structures, including 31 homes, have been confirmed destroyed, says KPIX. I'm sure that number will rise exponentially.

Evacuations ordered went out for a big chuck of Santa Rosa, Califoria, north of Highway 12 and west of Highway 101. By my reading of maps, that's roughly a quarter of the city of 175,000 people. The evacuations extend westward all the way westward to the Pacific Ocean, which makes me think officials think the out of control fire will race to the beach, too strong for anybody to stop it.

This Santa Rosa situation is particularly painful as that city was ravaged by a wildfire just two years ago that  killed 22 people and destroyed more than 4,600 homes.

People whose houses survived the 2017 Santa Rosa fire, or are just moving into rebuilt ones, are understandably traumatized, the Mercury News reports. 

In all, 90,000 people have been evacuated so far, and you can imagine the logistical nightmare that would entail

The Kincade fire started early this past week and was less than 15 percent contained when the winds whipped up this morning. It was breaking through those containment lines, with flames more than 100 feet tall torching trees on ridgetops.  Hot embers are flying in the wind well in advance of the main fire, causing spot fires that are rapidly growing.

Meanwhile, the fire risk, already high in southern California, will go to an extremely critical risk in some areas near Los Angeles tomorrow.  Extremely critical risk, like the one in northern California today, is the highest level of alert for wildfires. It's like a Category 5 hurricane, as compared to a Category 1 type. In other words, much, much worse.

Videos:

Terrifying video from the Los Angeles Times. Turn up the volume. Just the sound is incredible:


Here's the Soda Rock Winery in flames:

Vermont Weekend Half And Half; Dangerous Weather Elsewhere

Welcome to the weekend.

A gloomy day last December in Burlington, Vermont. We're heading into
the cloudiest time of year. After a relatively nice Saturday, we'll
have a rather stormy dank Sunday, followed by unsettled weather
through most of the upcoming week.

Here in Vermont, today's weather will be OK, with some sunshine, but if you have outdoor plans Sunday, you might as well pretty much forget it. That's thanks in large part to ex-tropical storm Olga.

Olga formed briefly in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday before being quickly overtaken by a strong cold front, turning this thing into an ordinary, but still rather potent storm. 

It brought damaging tornadoes Friday around Mobile, Alabama and severe thunderstorms elsewhere in the South. Strong winds caused quite a few power failures in and around New Orleans, Louisiana.

Ex-Olga will make a beeline into Michigan by Sunday morning, bringing a good batch of good old Gulf of Mexico moisture with it.  That means a pretty nasty day Sunday with wind, rain and chilly temperatures.

Now, it won't be extreme for the end of October, but not as pleasant as we've gotten used to. Most places in Vermont will get an inch of rain or a little less than that, so flooding isn't a big worry.  Most of the strongest winds will be limited to the mountains, but it will be gusty pretty much everywheere. There might be a few power issues, but nothing widespread.

In some of the higher elevations to the north especially, the National Weather Service in South Burlington says the storm might start with some wet snow flakes early Sunday morning before changing to rain. Yes, it's that time of year.

Later on Sunday, the rain might become a little more showery, but it will still be damp. Unsettled weather will continue most of next week. We are getting toward the cloudiest time of year in Vermont, which is November and December, so we have to expect that.

CALIFORNIA FIRES UPDATE

In Vermont, Sunday's weather will be merely unpleasant. In much of California, it will be scary and dangerous.

The weather of late has favored conditions that have made for some destructive wildfires.  On Sunday, things will go to a whole other level in northern California.

National Weather Service meteorologists in the Bay Area warn of a  "long duration and potentially extreme/historic event across the North Bay."

Even by California standards, the fire risk is off the charts Sunday with winds gusting to 55 mph in the low elevations and up to 80 mph up high. Combined with very low humidity, this is a recipe for disaster if any fires get going, or if the wind whips up existing fires.

If things go well, it will just be windy. If things go badly, this has the makings of destructive wildfires chewing up swaths of neighborhoods and towns, like what happened in Santa Rosa in 2017 (44 deaths) and Paradise, California last year (more than 80 deaths.)

Southern California, already hit by wildfires this year, is also at risk.

Pacific Gas & Electric, which has been cutting power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses during periods of high fire risk, will likely step it up even more Sunday, possibly cutting power to more than 2 million people.

Even without any fires, that's a huge impact in and of itself.