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:

Departing Storm Turned Into An East Coast Ice Disaster

A Pennsylvania DOT web cam caught this
pileup on an ice covered highway Sunday.  

Yesterday and last night's storm unexpectedly turned out to be one of the most disastrous of the winter as freezing rain froze roads over a wide area of the East and caused zillions of car crashes, some of them fatal.

Up and down the East Coast, the National Weather Service, and virtually all other weather forecasting outfits, had predicted ahead of the storm that roads would freeze over in freezing rain from Maryland to Maine.

They sure did, and they did more than anyone expected.

In hindsight, which is always 20/20, I'm thinking weather forecasters should have been more strident in warning about the icy roads that were coming. But many of the highways froze more extensively and much more suddenly than anyone could have predicted.

At least five people were killed and dozens injured in crashes and pileups across the Northeast on Sunday. 

Parts of major highways closed in the chaos from Pennsylvania to Vermont, and people who were not involved in actual crashes had to wait on closed highways for hours. A hockey game broke out on a stretch of Interstate 95 in Connecticut as traffic halted amid the ice.

On top of this, there's late word from WPTZ-TV as of 9 a.m. today that two people died this morning in a crash on an icy highway in Essex, Vermont.

I often rail against people driving too fast for the conditions and I'm sure that was a reason for some of the crashes across the Northeast. But the pavement froze so suddenly and in such a slippery fashion that I don't think many motorists could have prevented the crashes they were in.  

Dawn broke on a snowy scene in
St. Albans, Vermont this morning.  

As bad as this was, imagine if this hit during a weekday? The worst of the ice hit during what would normally be the morning commute. But this was a Sunday, so fewer people were on the road than say, a Tuesday.

The rain and freezing changed to snow as expected across Vermont, but snowfall totals were slightly less than expected.

It took a little longer than originally thought for rain to change to snow, but the National Weather Service had said that was a possibility as they were forecasting the storm early Sunday.

Still, much of Vermont received two to six inches of snow, with eight inches being the most reported in Barton.

For the record, I was forecasting 5.5 inches of new snow for my property in St. Albans, Vermont. I received 3.0 inches, but a band of snow approaching my area early this morning might boost that total slightly.

Light snow is continuing in parts of northern Vermont this morning, and before all is said and done, some of the ski areas will certainly be reporting more than eight inches of snow from this storm.

The weather will be calmer across the eastern United States this week. A small storm looping southeastward from Canada could give parts of the Mid-Atlantic region  one to four inches of snow Wednesday or Wednesday night. Stay tuned on that one.

Lightning Strikes: Heed The Warnings

Parmedics help one of the people who
was struck by lightning last weekend
in Venice Beach, CA. This man was not
seriously hurt.  

The lightning strike that hit Venice Beach, California a few days ago, killing one person and injurig more than a dozen, was extremely unexpected.

It hit pretty much without warning. Witnesses said the first hint of lightning from the approaching storm cloud is the one that caused the death and injuries.

Since lightning is extremely rare along the coast of southern California, it's not surprising that people had no idea this was coming.

Lightning deaths have declined in the United States in recent years, mostly because of greater public awareness. Weather historian Christopher Burt at Weather Underground has an excellent summary of the Venice Beach strike, and lightning strikes in general in the United States. 

But most of the time, in most of the rest of the country, we know when a thunderstorm is coming. We see the darkening sky, we hear the distant rumbles of thunder. That's your cue to get out of the water, off the golf course, off the beach, off the mountain and into a building or your car.

Watch the video below for a close call to illustrate what I mean. The couple was snorkeling at a resort in Mexico when lifeguards kicked everybody out of the water because a thunderstorm was approaching.

The couple, the guy still in his snorkeling mask, decided to take a selfie instead of getting into a building, you know, maybe the hotel bar for a nice cocktail.

This is what happened: