Hanna, Now A Hurricane, Steals The Show. Also: Vermont Heat AGAIN!

Radar of Hurricane Hanna east of Corpus Christi, Texas this
morning. Powerful winds and storms now completelu
encircle Hanna's eye, which means further
strenthening is likely until the storm
makes landfall this afternoon. 

A few days ago, it looked like we would spend the rest of the week talking about a would-be hurricane named Gonzalo, while ignoring a nothingburger in the Gulf of Mexico.

As more proof that the tropics can be unpredictable, the "nothingburger" is now Hurricane Hanna, and it's about to strike southern Texas. And cause lots of problems.

Satellite views of Hanna overnight showed it organizing quite well, forming an eye with curved bands of intense thunderstorms surrounding that center.

The National Hurricane Center confirmed that as of around 7 a.m. this morning, top sustained winds in Hanna had reached 75 mph, enough to be the first Atlantic hurricane of the season.

It looks like Hanna will keep strengthening until it hits the southern Texas coast this afternoon.  The only thing keeping Hanna from become an even bigger monster is it doesn't have much time to get more powerful before it makes landfall.

However, powerful thunderstorms managed to completely surround the eye of Hanna as its central air pressure lowered. That's certainly a great recipe for further strengthening. Some observers  this morning were wondering if top winds could reach 90-100 mph.

Don't think for a minute so called "weaker" Category 1 hurricanes don't cause a lot of problems. This one will create a lot of difficulties, as most Cat 1's do.  It will cause wind damage. Even worse, storm surges of three to five feet above normal sea levels are expected around and south of Corpus Christi.  It's a low coast line, so that will cause lots of flooding.

Worse still, Hanna will dump between six and 12 inches of rain on far southern Texas, which will cause a lot of flash flooding.

There's more bad news with this:  A hurricane that is growing stronger as it nears the coast is especially bad because it catches people off-guard.  Some people in southern Texas might have been saying yesterday, "Oh, a tropical storm. I guess we won't have a beach day on Saturday."

Now, they have little time to get out of the way of wind, storm surgest and inland flooding.  I was, however, heartened to see news video of LOTS of cars driving away from the southern Texas coastline Friday evening.

Additionally, as we've all heard on the news, Texas is enduring a terrible spike in illnesses, deaths and hospitalizations due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  So on top of the extreme health crisis, southern Texas has to deal with a hurricane.

How do you socially distance in evacutation centers?  What if people are hurt or need to be rescued during Hurricane Hanna when medical and emergency teams are already stretched so thin?

They told us way back in the spring this would be a difficult hurricane season.  This is the opening salvo, and it's certainly not a good one.

Going back to the other tropical storm, Gonzalo, it's falling apart.  It will bring tropical storm conditions to some of the Windward Islands, and it's still expected to dissipate in the Caribbean Sea.  You never know what will happen to Gonzalo's remnants in a few days, so its currently disorganized mass of clouds could come back from the dead in a week or so.

VERMONT HEAT OVERPERFORMS AGAIN

Speaking of things that keep rising from the dead, another hot spell is coming to Vermont, especially Sunday and Monday.

There had been hope earlier in the week, that temperatures would stay pretty close to normal, continuing a trend that started Tuesday and continued through Friday. All four of those days were only slightly warmer than average, instead of torrid.

It's back to hot again for a few days. Today won't be too bad, because humidity levels are pretty comfortable. Still, afternoon highs will get into the 80s pretty much statewide.  The broader, wider valleys will probably get into the upper 80s

The humidity will increase by Sunday, along with the temperatures. Burlington could easily see its 16th 90 degree reading of the year tomorrow, and we might make it to #17 on Monday.

It doesn't look like there will be any cooling thunderstorms Sunday. However, on a very muggy Sunday night, and early Monday, some weather disturbances riding over the northern edge of the Northeast U.S. heat ridge could bring showers and thunderstorms to Vermont. If they happen, it's most likely north of Route 2.

Scattered hit and miss  showers and storms could punctuate the heat and humidity Monday.  A cold front slowly sagging south through northern New England will gradually bring relief to us later Tuesday and especially Wednesday, when temperatures will fall - and I use that term loosely - to readings that are similar to what we've had the past three or four days.

Flash Flood Update: Damage, But Could Have Been Woirse

Haile remained piled up in Sanford, Maine after Tuesday morning's
intense hail storm. 

I'm sure there are plenty of residents around eastern Vermont, New Hampshire and western Maine trying to restore washed out driveways and damp basements in the wake of yesterday's flash flooding.

There is a fair amount of damage here and there, but it could have been worse, considering how hard the rain came down.  It seems like it let up just in time to prevent any kind of catastrophe.

Still, water flowed into two operating rooms at a hospital in Woodsville, New Hampshire, forcing the cancelation of two surgeries. Several roads in that area were closed by flooding.

In Vermont, storm reports include an eight by six foot section of road washed out in East Cabot, and another washed out road near St. Johnsbury.  St. Johnsbury itselt reported 1.83 inches of rain Tuesday. In Bradford, Vermont, about 3.5 inches of rain fell in less than six hours.

The most dramatic of the storms occured in southwestern Maine, where hail fell so heavily in some spots that snow plows were called out. A car dealership in Sanford, Maine ended up with more than 1,000 cars sustaining hail damage. 

A couple videos of the Maine hail storm at the bottom of this post.

In northwestern Vermont, the anti-rain force field held, as usual.  Not a drop of rain fell here in St. Albans, and just a trace was reported in Burlington.

The next shot of rain comes Thursday night as a weather front approaches from the west, then kind of washes out over or just past us. It still has enough oomph to give us at least a shot of some showers and scattered thunder Thursday night and Friday.

Videos:

Here's what the hail storm looked like in Biddeford, Maine:


A drive through the part of Maine that got hit by that hail storm.  Notice the ice accumulation and hail fog.  This dense fog often forms right after a hail storm as the hail cools the humid post-storm air near the ground.

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: Size Matters

Cristobal is expected to eventually cross the western Great Lakes
and go into Canada later this week. 

Tropical Storm Cristobal, which came ashore in Louisiana Sunday proves that "weak" tropical systems are anything but.  

Top winds with this thing were 50 mph, which doesn't sound like that big of a deal.  However, what Cristobal lacked in wind was more than made up for in size.

Cristobal didn't have a classic tropical storm shape while it was in the Gulf of Mexico.  In satellite photos, it looked more like a giant comma, like you would see in a strong nor'easter in coastal New England during the winter.

Tropical storms and hurricanes usually have a more circular, symetrical shape.

The tropical storm was large in size, which meant it could cause havoc over a wide area.  That's why you saw on the news tornadoes swirling through Orlando, Florida. It's also why parts of Florida got up to a foot of rain.

Size mattered in an even more important way.  Cristobal's relatively modest winds covered a wide are of the Gulf, so it was able to push a lot of water ahead of it.

This created a nasty storm surge, made worse by the timing. The surge came just as high tide rolled in.  Coastal communities like Grand Isle, Louisiana and Waveland, Mississippi were inundated as a result .

MORE CRISTOBAL TROUBLE

Cristobal, now a tropical depression as of early this Monday morning, will move generally north and end up in Wisconsin by early Wednesday morning. It will take a swath of heavy rain with it. Flood watches are up along the projected path of Cristobal in Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin.

The storm will be gradually becoming a non-tropical system as it moves northward through the Midwest. If it still has some tropical characteristics by the time it hits Wisconsin, which is quite possible, that will be something.

The storm is actually expected to strengthen as it approaches the Great Lakes as it gradually merges with another storm.  It could cause some damaging wind gusts midweek, and create the lowest air pressures on record for June in that area.

VERMONT EFFECTS

We won't have any direct impacts from Cristobal here in Vermont, but it sure is helping to make the weather forecast challenging.

The Cristobal storminess in the Midwest and a strong, but sharp and narrow upper level ridge further east puts Vermont in a weird spot.  A warm front out ahead of everything will try to move in, but there's disagreement in the computer models as to whether it will make it all the way through here.

High and mid level cloudiness will accompany this feature over Vermont Tuesday, and a pretty big temperature gradient will be setting up over or near Vermont.  We could end up with  a cool, cloudy 65 degree day up in Newport and a muggy 85 degree afternoon down in Bennington.  That's just one possibility, but the temperature contrast could set up further west, or further east. Who knows?

Wednesday's weather is a toss up. It all depends on where that warm front goes, and if it makes it north of us. It could either be humid and way up in the 80s to near 90 in a spot or two, or just in the 70s with more moderate humidity.

Amid all this uncertainty, the remains of Cristobal, and the cold front it will eventually drag through here at the end of the week, won't give us a lot of rain.  Which is too bad. We still need it, despite the showers we had over the weekend.

Here's a drone view of storm surge flooding from Cristobal in Grand Isle, Louisiana:

Another Weather Off The Rails Weekend (Not In Vermont, Though)

From 9 News:  A severe thunderstorm associated with a derecho
knocked this billboard down on a Denver building Saturday. 

As we forecasted yesterday morning, weather is definitely going off the rails in different parts of the nation this weekend, and that trend will continue for the next few days.

We here in Vermont will pretty much be an island of tranquility in the weather department, but that won't be the case elsewhere.

The most remarkable weather event Saturday was a long lasting derecho that got going near the Arizona/Utah border and raced north and northeastward during the day through the central and eastern Rocky Mountains and on into the western Dakotas.

Derechos are relatively rare events and almost unheard of in the Intermountain West. Yes, I know we just had a derecho in Pennsylvania and New Jersey last week, but they still don't happen all that often.

On average derechos happen once every year or every other year in much of the Midwest and South. On the East Coast, you average one every four years or so.  In the Intermountain West, there have maybe been a handful over the past several decades.

The one that swept through yesterday was a doozy, too, judging by wind reports. Just a sampling:

110 mph near Copper Mountain, Colorado
94 mph Butte County, South Dakota
92 mph near Cactus Plateau, South Dakota
85 mph, Four Corners, Wyoming

There were numerous reports of gusts above 75 mph, including in metro areas like Denver.

Meanwhile, Florida got in on the action, thanks to Tropical Storm Cristobal.  Most of the heavy weather with this system was east of its center.  This mass of storms spun off at several tornadoes in Florida, including one that passed through Orlando.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that at least 50 residents of apartment blocks and houses were displaced near the city's downtown because of tornado damage.

MORE ROUGH WEATHER COMING

Tropical Storm Cristobal will splash ashore around Louisiana later today. Storm surges and flooding is already happening in Louisiana and Mississippi, and that will continue the rest of the day.

However, the bigger drama from Cristobal will come over the next few days, as its remnants head north through the Arkansas, Missouri and into Wisconsin by Wednesday.

It won't really be a tropical storm by the time it hits the Great Lakes, but it will manage to intensify. It'll form into a mean storm for this time of year over or near Lake Superior.  Expect reports of wind damage, battering waves and erosion on the lakes and maybe some flash flooding.

VERMONT CALM

All this weather action will pretty much miss Vermont. The fact that Cristobol will be going by to our west will give us a squirt of warm to hot, and windy weather midweek, but nothing extreme.  Not a lot of rain is in the forecast either.  A cold front associated with the remnants of Cristobol might bring a few showers and thunderstorms late Wednesday night and Thursday.

Cristobal Not The Only Threat: Wind, Tornadoes, Fire Even Snow Out West

WPTZ-TV's web cam captured this lightning strike at around 2:30
this morning over Plattsburgh, N.Y. Thunderstorms roamed through
northern New York and northern Vermont early this morning, bringing
much needed rain.  Hat tip to WPTZ meteorologist Ben
Frechette for posting this one. 

The weather headlines this weekend are dominated by   which is forecast to make landfall late Sunday night in or near Louisiana.

Storm surges three feet deep or more are expected in much of coastal Louisiana, and heavy rains will add to flooding woes.  The wind won't really be the problem. The water will be the issue.

As bad as that all sounds, it's the Rocky Mountain states and the western Plains that have even more action this weekend.

They'll have it all. Depending on where you are, wildfires are possible, so are strong winds not associated with thunderstorms, blowing dust, thunderstorms, possible tornadoes and even a snowstorm in a spot or two.

A strong cold front associated with a powerful upper level low pressure system in the Pacific Northwest are causing all this havoc.

Ahead of this storminess, strong south winds over the New Mexico and the High Plains of Colorado will gust to 65 mph.  This could cause some tree and power line damage. It could tip over high profile vehicles on highways.

Worse, it could make any wild or range fires in New Mexico and Colorado spread really quickly and become dangerous.

Further north and east, when you get up into South Dakota, the threat today will be tornadoes and dangerous supercell thunderstorms that will throw down huge hailstones and wicked straight line winds in some spots.

The highest chances of tornadoes and strong thunderstorm winds is over central South Dakota today.  The higher chances of damaging hail are more toward the Black Hills, where a hail storm the other day caused a lot of damage in and around Rapid City, South Dakota. 

The threat for severe storms and tornadoes continues tomorrow for northern South Dakota and the eastern half of North Dakota.

Heading back to Colorado and Utah, the problem up in the mountains today is not too little rain, like in the Plains east of Denver, but too much.  The strong cold front out there will set off some thunderstorms with heavy rain.

That'll trigger flash flooding, especially in a lot of those narrow slot canyons in Utah.

Up in Idaho, they're actually bracing for a snowstorm.  The National Weather Service in Pocatello said accumulating snows could reach all the way down to valley floors in towns like Stanley.  Some areas can expect several inches of snow.

All this is an extremely busy weather pattern for early June.  Severe storms and tornadoes are relatively common, as are flash floods this time of year. But this variety of weather, from winter weather, to tropical storms, to high winds, fires and those tornadoes, is pretty wild for what is generally a relatively mellow time of year in the weather department.

Up here in Vermont, we're missing out on the extremes, which is OK.  Thunderstorms blustered through northern parts of the state early this morning. My unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans captured  0.55 inches of much-needed rain from the early morning storms. Burlington only got 0.04 inches as the storms mostly missed them.

Scattered showers and storms will continue today and this evening, off an on, as a series of weather fronts and boundaries move through.  Any thunderstorms that get going today should not be severe, but a few might be gusty. Eastern and southern New England have a slightly better chance of a few strong to severe storms today.

After a cool Sunday and Monday, it will warm up to summertime levels again by mid-week.  I'm not sure it will hit 90 again. It did manage to get that warm in Burlington Friday.  We've already had three days this year that have gotten to 90, which is at least half our normal alotment for the entire summer.

On average, most 90 degree days in Burlington hit in July and August.

Tropical Storm Cristobal Lurks. Eventual Gulf Coast Hit?

The projected path of Tropical Storm Cristobal from the
National Hurricane Center. This forecast will surely be
adjusted in the coming days as more data comes in

As was pretty much expected, Tropical Storm Cristobal formed in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico Tuesday.  It is the third tropical storm of the season in the Atlantic basin, the earliest on record for a "C" storm.

As we know, the names of each season's tropical storms and hurricanes go in alphabetical order.  Last year, we didn't have a storm that started with a "C" until August.

By this morning, the National Hurricane Center said Cristobal had strengthened to the point where it had top winds of 60 mph. It was just making landfall early this morning on the southeastern Mexican coast.

Cristobal is moving very slowly, so it will dump huge amounts of rain in the areas it hits later today. No doubt there will be catastrophic flooding as the storm is forecast to dump 20 inches or so of rain on some areas.

As noted yesterday, parts of El Salvadore and Guatamala were hit with torrential rains from Tropical Storm Amanda this past weekend.  Additional rainfall from Cristobal will raise rainfall totals in parts of those two countries to 35 inches since last Saturday.

That will make already horrific flooding even worse.

For persepective, 35 inches of rain is very roughly how much precipitation we get in Vermont during the course of a whole year.

As is often the case, what happens to Cristobal in the coming days is pretty uncertain.  It's expected to  linger near the shore of the Bay of Campeche for the next couple of days.  If the storm center stays very close to the shore, it will weaken slowly.  If it moves inland more, it will weaken faster.

That either/or scenario might have implications for the United States Gulf Coast.  Steering currents are expected to eventually draw Cristobal northward, which would make it aim toward perhaps Louisiana late Sunday night or Monday.

If Cristobal weakens a lot over the next couple of days, that could mean maybe a weaker, less impactful storm on the U.S. Gulf Coast. If Cristobal maintains its shape better between now and Thurday, it will have more ability to strenghten further as it heads north through the Gulf of Mexico over the upcoming weekend.

Under that stronger scenario, Cristobal could actually be a hurricane once it reaches the Gulf Coast. If it is a hurricane at U.S. landfall, it would be the earliest in the year on record a hurricane hit the United States. The current record holder is Hurricane Alma, which struck Florida on June 9, 1966.

People in and around Louisiana ought to keep an eye on Cristobal, as it could really cause some flooding problems if it gets or keeps its act together.

Devastating Michigan Floods. North Carolina Is Next

One of the failed dams causing serious flooding in Michigan
yesterday and today. 

A big flood disaster has been unfolding in Michigan the past couple of days.

Torrential rains have hit the state since Saturday, and as the rains tapered off, the situation actually worsened.

The Associated Press reports that two dams on the Tittabawassee River in Midland County failed, and a flood crest was heading toward the city of Midland, population of about 41,000.

About 10,000 people have been evacuated.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer warned that downtown Midland could become submerged under nine feet of water. Midland is about 140 miles north of Detroit.

Another concern is that a Dow Chemical plant is in the path of the flood waters. So it's not good. Video is at the bottom of this post.

Some parts of Michigan received up to seven inches of rain over the past few days, causing flooding across much of the state. The heavy rain is also sure to cause some of the Great Lakes to rise further, exacerbating flooding, as the lakes are already at near record high levels.

One of the breached dams in Michigan, the Edenville Dam, was built in 1924. As of 2018, the state of Michign rated it as in unsatisfactory condition, according to clickondetroit.com.

Last November, an Associated Press investigation revealed that at least 1,680 dams in the United States are unstable enough to pose a risk to people downstream.

The actual number of such dams is higher than 1,680 because some states refused to release data to reporters, and a few states don't rate dams at all due to a lack of funding.

Now, as parts of Michigan floods, attention is turning to a huge risk of flooding today in North Carolina.

NOAA's Weather Prediction Center put western North Carolina in a relatively rare high risk zone for excessive rainfall today.

Around four inches of rain fell in that region yesterday, and another four inches or so is expected today.

Flooding, landslides and debris flows are all an almost certainty today in the mountainous region in the state.

The Weather Channel reported earlier this year that 41 percent of all U.S. flood deaths covered in one research project were on high risk excessive rain days, which are posted about 15 times per year.

Here's a quick video of Midland, Michigan from early this morning:



The scene around one of the failed dams on Tuesday:

Bay Of Bengal Cyclone Could Turn Very Deadly

Cyclone Amphan, that swirl i the southwestern Bay of Bengal, is
expected to hit near the area colored in pink on Wednesday.

While we in the United States are watching weak Tropical Storm Arthur, and a semi-related flood threat in the Carolinas, a much more dangerous storm is brewing in the Bay of Bengal.

Cyclone Amphan strengthened rapidly to a Category 5 storm Sunday with top winds of 160 mph.  A cyclone is what they call a hurricane in the Bay of Bengal.  

As the storm heads north, it's pushing a storm surge ahead of it. The upside down "V" shape of the Bay of Bengal tends to worsen and pile up storm surges up higher. Where Amphan is expected to make landfall, somewhere near the India-Bangladesh border, is flat and low, making the effects of onrushing storm surges all the more deadly.

Cyclone Amphan will probably weaken somewhat before landfall on Wednesday, but that's too little, too late. The cyclone is already pushing a lot of water north, and will continue to do so, even if it becomes somewhat weaker.

A somewhat similar cyclone in 1999 killed about 9,000 people in this area. 

As Bob Henson in the Weather Underground Category 6 blog writes:

"Warning systems have been greatly improved in India and Bengladesh over the 20 years since the Odisha cyclone. However, the region's geography and high population means it is still exceptionally vulnerable, and Amphan will need to be taken seriously by all concerned. The novel corornavirus pandemic will no doubt complicate evacuation and sheltering in myriad ways."

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Arthur had maximum winds of just 45 mph this morning. It'll brush eastern North Carolina with breezes and just a couple inches of rain today.  It will then turn toward the east, away from the United States and then largely dissipate.

A second nearly stalled storm, the cut-off low that I referenced in this here blog thingy yesterday, will crawl southeastward after causing flooding around Chicago, Michigan and other areas near the Gerat Lakes. As the storm heads toward the Southeastern United States, it will interact with tropical moisture and cause potentially flooding rains in western North Carolina and southwestern Virginia over the next few days.

Up to seven inches of rain is expected near Ashville, North Carolina this week.

Meanwhile, up here in Vermont, that blocked up stalled high pressure system in southern Quebec will keep moisture away from us pretty much all week, meaning you'll really have to water your gardens.

Because of mostly clear skies at night early this week, early morning temperatures will be a bit cool for this time of year tomorrow and Wednesday.   It'll be cold enough in the valleys of the Northeast Kingdom for some frost, but that's typical for this time of year.

The vast majority of us will be fine and frost free during this spell of fair weather. Daytime highs will be mostly in the 60s early this week, but climb into the 70s during the second half of the week.

Weird Storms, Just Not Here

Turns out this probably WAS a tornado in Wilton, New York which
is in Saratoga County, not too far from the Vermont border. 

That strong weather system that affected New York and New England did create at least one tornado, and meanwhile, new storms are brewing that could cause trouble in parts of the eastern United States. Just not in Vermont.

Let's get into Friday's storm damage, then we'll get into the new storms that are pretty interesting.

In yesterday's post, I showed a photo that might have been a tornado in Wilton, New York. I wondered if it might have actually been a microburst or a hail shaft.

Nope. Looks as if that Saratoga County storm DID produce a tornado.

The National Weather  Service office in Albany, New York said the EF-1 tornado had top wind speeds of between 85 and 90 mph, traveled 1.8 miles and was about 50 yards wide. It damaged the roof of a warehouse, and toppled many trees, some onto houses.

The National Weather Service in Albany also reported something called a macroburst caused damage in an international sounding section of Herkimer County, New York, particularly affecting the towns of Russia, Norway and Ohio.

A macroburst is a burst of wind from a strong downdraft reaching the surface. As the name implies, it's bigger than a microburst, which cover much smaller of an area, but still causes a lot of damage.

The New York microburst had winds of 80 to 100 mph and covered an area 10 miles wide and 25 miles long.

Now that those storms are long gone, we have others to deal with. And they're a little strange.

First, there's Tropical Storm Arthur off the northeast coast of Florida. I'm calling this one weird because it formed pretty early in the year.  You usually don't start seeing the first purely tropical storms unti July.

Arthur is going to remain weak as it heads north. It'll brush the North Carolina coast with gusty winds and heavy showers on Monday, Top winds with Arthur are expected to stay at 60 mph or less, and most if not all of those winds will remain offshore.

Early season tropical storms aren't as weird as they used to be, though.  There has been one before July 1 every year since 2014.  In 2014, the first tropical storm didn't form until July 1. Coincidentally, its name was Arthur.

The second weird storm is something that will meander around the Midwest and East through the week.  It's a cut off low, meaning it has removed itself from the flow of the jet stream. There's nothing to push it along.

So it will sit and spin, spreading heavy, slow moving rains around the Great Lakes today and tomorrow. That's bad news, because the Great Lakes are already at near record high levels, so they don't need more runoff.

The heavy rains will shift to the Mid-Atlantic later in the week, especially around Virginia and North Carolina, raising the risking of flooding there.

This isn't cast in stone, because cut off lows are notoriously hard to forecast. The heavy rains might set up in different locations than currently forecast.

However, depending upon your outlook, this cut off is either great news or somewhat bad news for us here in Vermont.

It's good news in that it will allow that high pressure system in Quebec to sink south over us during the week, creating a long stretch of at least partly sunny and mild weather.

It's bad news in a way for northern Vermont. We finally got some good rains Friday, and could use a little more. It looks like it's going to be a dry week, though southern Vermont could get some rain early in the week.

No, All These Tornado Outbreaks In The South Are Not Normal

A tornado safety closet that a family huddled in is the only thing
left of a home swept away by a tornado last week in Mississippi.
The family survived. More dangerous tornadoes are expected
today in the same region.

Another outbreak of tornadoes appears likely in the Deep South today, continuing a terrible winter and spring down there of heartbreaking twisters, severe storms and repeated, devastating flooding, all amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Today looks especially bad across the northern half of Louisiana and the southern halves of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has this area on level 4 of 5 in terms of risk level today.  So it's pretty serious.

Already, as of mid-morning, a tornado watch was up for eastern Texas and western Louisiana, including the Houston metro area. Some straight line wind and hail damage had already been reported in parts of the South as of 10 a.m. It will get worse as we go through the day.

Many of these areas are just coming off a terrible tornado outbreak exactly a week ago, so this is definitely bad news.

A few tornadoes today in this region might once again be especially strong, especially if supercell thunderstorms get going without interference from larger clusters of thunderstorms moving in from the west.

Even that larger cluster of storms from the west wil cause trouble with their own batch of tornadoes, strong winds, hail and flooding rains.

We obviously won't completely know until tomorrow how many tornadoes will form, how big they will be and whether they hit any heavily populated areas. But once again, people in the Deep South are hunkering down and praying the tornadoes miss their houses.

We are heading into the peak of tornado seasons and April tornadoes are rather normal, especially in the southeastern quarter of the United States.  Yes, tornadoes are normal, but the number of them this year, and the deaths they are causing, is anything but normal.

It turns out the tornado outbreak last Sunday and Monday yielded 132 twisters, which is a huge number for two days of severe weather.  Preliminary research indicates this is tied for the fifth-most numher of tornadoes in a two day outbreak on record in the United States.

The tie is with an April 15-16, 2011 southeastern United States outbreak. The record biggest outbreak for two days was 271 on April 26-27, 2011. So you can see 2011 was the benchmark for a horrendous tornado season, and one we don't want to repeat.

In addition to the tornado risk, flooding is a big concern in the Deep South, as it has been frequently for months now. Potentially life threatening areas of flash flooding are expected today in the same areas with the greatest tornado risk.

Not good.

The weather pattern will remain bad in the South in the upcoming week or more. Severe weather threats look like they will ramp up again Wednesday, then after, that, probably next weekend.

Blizzards, Severe Weather Coming To Central U.S.; Yo-Yo Weather Vermont

A little snow from last night melts amid raw winds on a brown, messy
lawn at my home in St. Albans, Vermont. Classic March scene, huh?
Also classic March: Very changeable weather coming

As we all hunker down to protect ourselves from Covid-19, the weather rolls on and there will be plenty of weather to talk about over the next couple of days.

Severe weather, including the risk of tornadoes, will strike parts of the South, while a blizzard rages in areas of the Northern Plains later this week.  

For Vermont, this all means the weather will be all over the place.  The yo-yo weather has begun in the Green Mountain State, and will continue all week. More on that after I set up the national picture.

A  southward dip in the jet stream over the Southwestern United States has resulted in stormy weather there in the past few days.  Local flooding and severe thunderstorms have rattled around parts of Arizona and California over the past couple of days, and feet of needed snow has been falling in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

One piece or a couple of pieces of energy did eject from that southwestern mess over the past couple of days, resulting in some snow and rain from Nebraska and South Dakota Saturday, moving eastward to northern New England today.

Another piece of stormy weather will come out of the Southwest today, causing a risk of severe weather in Texas and heavy rains in North Texas and Oklahoma.  That'll head east and cause some rain and snow once again from the Midwest to New England by Thursday.

At the same time, the main show will start to get going as a larger storm gets going over Colorado and begins to travel to the northeast, toward the Great Lakes.

This will unleash a blizzard somewhere in the northern Plains, though the exact location of the worst of it is still unfolding. There are already blizzard warnings up southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska for Thursday and Friday. Those might eventually be extended into part of the Dakotas.

Meanwhile severe storms will move into more of Texas on Thursday, and into the lower Mississippi Valley Friday.

Flooding is also possible in Oklahoma Thursday, and then extending into parts of the saturated mid-Mississippi Valley and parts of the Midwest later Thursday and Friday.

VERMONT EFFECTS

People in northern Vermont and the high elevations of southern parts of the state woke up this morning to a return to winter.  Here at my St. Albans, Vermont home, I returned from the Midwest last night to find bare ground. I woke up this morning to a little more than an inch of snow on the ground.

More scattered precipitation is likely the rest of the day, but it will be mostly rain in the valleys, and it won't be particularly heavy.  It'll be raw the rest of the day, especially in the Champlain Valley where winds are pretty gusty.

After a pleasant enough day on Wednesday with some sunshine and temperatures near 40. Then that next disturbance arrives for Thursday.  It'll be another raw day, with more rain and snow, with the snow especially prevalent in the mountains.

Again, this one won't bring a huge amount of precipitation, but it's certainly is worth watching, especially because of the risk of slippery roads in mid and high elevation snows.  Any precipitation will change to all rain as the day wears on Thursday.

Friday looks very interesting. As the large storm moves through the Great Lakes, it'll swing a warm front through New England.  The warm front will probably give us a good dousing of rain late Thursday night and Friday morning.

The warm front will bring a burst of warm, humid air all the way into northern New England.

Forecasters are currently expecting high temperatures Friday in Vermont to get into the 60s. Normal this time of year is around 40 degrees). I wouldn't be surprised if a 70 degree reading or two popped up if we get a period of sun between the showers.  As the storm's cold front approaches later on, we could get the first round of thunderstorms of the spring season. It all depends on the cold front's timing as it runs into the very mild air.

This cold front means business, and temperatures will really crash Friday night and go back below freezing.  That'll instantly freeze any lingering water on roads, so be careful Saturday morning.  It is only March, after all, so you can't expect springlike temperatures to last

We'll be left with an almost wintry weekend, with some sun, some flurries and light snow showers and high temperatures both days barely making it to the freezing point.

Whiplash, indeed!

Entertaining Weather Videos On A Slow Weather Day

Clear skies in the Northeast Friday allowed a great view of where snow
was on the ground, where it wasn't, what was frozen, what not.
Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to see details.

Things have temporarily gotten slow in the weather department, but don't worry, things will be pretty active around here by the middle and end of the week.

While we have some quiet weather moments, some goofy weather videos to share. And a photo.

The photo on the right is a satellite shot taken amid unusually clear skies in the eastern United States on Friday.  Click on it to make it bigger and easier to see the details of the current state of the winter.

The snow cover in New England ends just over the Massachusetts border from Vermont and New Hampshire. The Great Lakes are remarkably ice-free for late February. Even the Finger Lakes in New York aren't frozen.

You can also see that a large section of Lake Champlain is also free of ice. It almost certainly will not completely freeze over this year.  We have a few warm days coming. Even if it turns cold in March, the increasing sun angle would help erode new ice that forms at night.

Down in eastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, you can also see an area of snow on the ground from a small storm the day before.  By the end of the day yesterday, that snow in the Southeast was mostly gone.

The clouds off the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts are caused by cold air blowing over the relatively warm waters of the Atlantic.  There were even a few ocean-effect snow flurries from these clouds Friday morning on Cape Cod.

Now some videos:

This one has been billed as a "carbon neutral way to prevent ice dams:"



Next up, stupidity of the day.  We see this all the time. People drive right into floodwaters, not knowing how deep it is, not caring how dangerous it is.  A lot of it is stupidity.

There's still a lot of flooding going in in England due to two immense storms over the past couple weeks.  Here, we see rescuers in elaborate safety gear with boats heading out to retrieve residents from obviously deep floodwater in one neighborhood.

You and I wouldn't drive down that flooded street, right? The turbulent water and the rescue crews would seem like dead giveaways not to proceed.  Not everybody thinks like that. Watch the rescuers shake their heads in disbelief:



In Michigan, volcanoes have been erupting last week.  Don't worry, no lava in Detroit, no pyroclastic flows in Ann Arbor. Instead, ice has piled up on the windy shores of Lake Michigan.  More waves pounding in get under the ice and water pressure creates these "ice volcanoes."  They're pretty cool:



Also, in Michigan, another icy phenomenon.  A curving current in a small river created a rotating ice disk, much like that larger, more famous one that formed in Maine last year.  Here's the mesmerizing Michigan ice disk:

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.

Nasty Weather, But Lucking Out So Far In Northwest Vermont

An icy pine bough on my St. Albans, Vermont property this morning.
Ice is much less thick than expected and I'm happy to see that
so far, there's no storm damage at or near my home. 

If I am wrong about something, this is the way I want to be wrong. At least wrong so far.

It turns out, so far at least as of 6:30 a.m. , the freezing rain in northwest Vermont and northern New York is indeed bad, but not as bad as forecasts as recently as Saturday night said it would.

ICE SO FAR

Ice was definitely accumulating on the trees outside my St. Albans home as of 6:30 a.m., but so far at least, damage is very minor.

Power outages are not widespread yet in Vermont, with only scattered localized problems reported. Vermont Outage Map as of 8 a.m. had about 500 homes and businesses in Vermont without power, but that number has slowly been creeping up early this morning.

Most of the 30,000 or so outages in New York State as of 6 a.m. were in far western New York, where wind, not ice is the main problem.

We're not totally out of the woods yet, because many areas of northern New York and northern Vermont have a couple or few more hours of freezing rain to go.  That will further weigh down trees and power lines that are already starting to sag, so we should still anticipate some problems as the morning and early afternoon wear on.

Winds have started to increase as of 8 a.m. and will continue to do so.  That means some ice laden trees or branches might break, increasing the risk of power failures. But it still won't be as bad as we feared yesterday.

Ice is many areas is getting close to the point where it can start causing damage. Ice was  0.30 in hes thick in Clinton, New York; 0.22 inches thick in Plattsburgh, New York as of 6 a.m. and  0.17 inches thick in Burlington, Vermont.  At 0.25 inches,you start to see minor damage, and damage becomes pretty widespread at 0.5 inches.

At my place in St. Albans, I was relieved to see ice only 0.15 inches thick on trees so far as of 7:30 a.m. Even if we get a little more ice, I don't anticipate much damage around my property. The worries I had for my trees before the storm yesterday turned out to be unnecessary.

Of course as conditions change this morning, I'll update this post, or put up additional breaking storm news.

Still, it looks like ice accumulations for most people in the ice storm zone have a good chance of turning out to be less than expected.  The less ice the better, obviously.

Small differences in temperature made big differences as to what is happening out there. Saturday evening, temperatures crashed rapidly from the 50s to the 30s just as expected. But then, temperatures held just above freezing for a longer time period  than anticipated. That delayed the onset of the freezing rain.

For instance, Plattsburgh, New York didn't touch 32 degrees until around 1 a.m. this morning.  That was a good three or more hours later than expected. Which meant Plattsburgh "missed out" on three hours of freezing rain. I'm sure few people are disappointed by that.

The amount of precipitation was well forecast.  As of 7 a.m. Plattsburgh had collected about 1.5 inches of rain and melted ice, which is exactly in line with forecasts.

Outside my house in St. Albans, Vermont, temperatures have hovered around 31 or 32 since after midnight. It's not that far below freezing, so things don't turn to ice quickly.  As of 6 a.m., I was having a freezing rain downpour.   It was coming down so hard that a lot of the water was running off trees and power lines before it could freeze.

It has since tapered off to a freezing sprinkle.

Needless to say, though, the roads are quite icy. Stay off them until the freezing rain stops and crews have a chance to clear them.

Not everybody seems to be escaping the ice. In parts of Ontario, Canada, there is an inch of ice on everything, and there's a LOT of damage as a result.

Maybe people will say this storm was hyped here in Vermont and New York and we were all crying wolf.  But like I said, one or two degrees in temperature has so far made a big difference.

We'll see if things hold up well for the tail end of the storm.

FLOODING, RAIN, ODD TEMPERATURES

Flooding is still a concern as well, especially in northern and central Vermont. The hours of non-freeing rain was already pushing the Mississquoi River to flood stage early this morning. Many smaller creeks and streams are really high.

Other rivers, like the Lamoille, Winooski, Mad and Otter Creek, are still expected to reach flood stage, if they're not already there now.

The temperature contrast in southern Vermont continues to be amazing. At 6 a.m. Rutland was down to 34 degrees but Bennington was still at 62 degrees.  And 62 degrees at dawn anywhere in Vermont in January is something to behold, for sure.

The rain and freezing rain in Vermont this morning will turn to a period of snow in many areas by or during this afternoon, but it won't amount to much. Maybe an inch or so here and there.

The weather will remain active through the upcoming week, but any systems that come through will be weak with only light precipitation.

A more substantial storm seems like it wants to hit around here next weekend, but it's too soon to say what that means for us.

DOWN SOUTH

While we might not have been hit as hard as expected with the storm in Vermont, the anticipated severe weather and tornadoes certainly hit the South. At least eight people died in the storms, and many homes and businesses were destroyed or damaged from  Texas to Georgia.

At least 16 tornadoes touched down in the South since Friday although that number will probably rise as meteorologists inspect damage to determine if heavily hit areas had tornadoes or straight line winds.

A couple videos:

Damage from a violent tornado in Alabama Saturday. Notice how far debris and entire homes have been thrown:



More damage around Bossier City, Louisiana

Saturday Evening Vermont Storm Update: No Big Changes To Dangerous Forecast

Add caption

Don't let the record warm temperatures and bits of sunshine you experienced today in Vermont fool you, we are still in for a humdinger of a storm

Dangerous ice is still coming to the north of Vermont, especially the northern Champlain Valley. And far northern New York  is really going to get nailed with awful ice.

Much of the rest of Vermont is still in for some flooding.

By late afternoon, pretty heavy rain had worked itself into northern Vermont and it was gradually working its way to the south and east. That is the beginning of the end of the warmth, and the start of the freezing rain episode in the north.

The freezing rain won't start right away, but it will come tonight.

Let's set us up with what happened this afternoon. There were quite a few record highs this afternoon in New England, including around Vermont. Here are some of the records:

Burlington, Vermont: 59, beating 56 set in 1980
Montpelier, Vermont: 59, beating 52 set in 2014
Plattsburgh, New York: 53, beating 51 in 2017
Boston: 70 degrees; second warmest January day on record
Hartford, Connecticut: 67 degrees, third warmest day on record.

WHAT'S NEXT

I took this photo of the huge "Triplet Trees" in my St. Albans
back yard amid record warmth this morning. I took this possibly
final photo of the trees in case they were end up damaged or
destroyed in tonight's ice storm. I have no way
of knowing how they wil come out Hoping for the best! 

I would say there were more record highs in the North Country today than I expected. That does NOT mean it will be a little warmer than expected overnight.  So the ice is still coming.

If anything, it could possibly mean precipitation will be a tad heavier than expected, as the contrasting air masses involved with this storm are even a little more extreme than some had forecasted.

The cold air is starting to bleed in. Massena, New York, which would be the first place south of the  border with Canada to see the cold front actually saw it come through a little after 2 p.m. this afternoon, and temperatures there have been slowly falling ever since.

The cold front just barely came through around my place in St. Albans, Vermont at 5 p.m. this evening, accompanied by heavy rain. I'm writing this right at 5 p.m., and the gusty south winds we've had all day in St. Albans just turned to the northwest a couple minutes ago. The downward slide in temperature has begun.

The National Weather Service in South Burlington expects the rain to change to freezing rain in New York's St. Lawrence Valley and the northern tip of that state around 8 or 9 p.m. tonight. The northern Champlain Valley should go to freezing rain at around 10 or 11 p.m. tonight, and points south and east of there should go to freezing rain around midnight to 1 a.m. Sunday.

Places south and east of a line from a little north of Rutland to a little north of St. Johnsbury should get little if any freezing rain, if current forecasts come out right.

The low-level cold air coming down from Ontario and Quebec is about as cold as forecasts had been all along, so the freezing rain and ice damage in the north is most certainly on for later tonight and Sunday.

Forecasts for ice accumulation haven't changed much since this morning. Far northern New York still looks to get a disastrous one inch or so of ice accumulation, which would cause massive tree and power line damage.

The northern Champlain Valley is still in line to get a half inch to three quarters of an inch of ice, which will certainly also cause a lot of damage.  By the way, southern Quebec from Montreal south, and sections of Ontario are in line for a very destructive ice storm tonight, too.

There's a couple things going for us that will make a bad situation not as bad as it could be. One, instead of a long, drawn out few days of freezing rain, we'll get downpours overnight.  So much rain will come down that some of the water won't have time to freeze until it reaches the ground, or soaks in. That would cut down a little on how much ice accumulates.

There's also a chance the low level cold air could get a little thicker in altitude than forecast. If that happens, we'd get some sleet, which doesn't really accumulate on trees and power lines. That would be most likely in the far north. Pray for more sleet than expected, believe it or not. That would make things less bad than forecast. Don't count on it, though.

FLOODING

Flooding is obviously still a concern with this storm.  It's been raining pretty hard in northwestern Vermont since mid-afternoon and small streams have already become torrents, aided by snow melt in the record warm air earlier today.

Even in the ice zone, expect some flooding this evening. I notice the small streams around my area in Franklin County, Vermont are already flowing at pretty high and fast rates as of 5 p.m. Saturday.

Small stream and gully flooding will increase this evening and overnight across northern and central Vermont as the heavy rain continues.  That will translate to mainstem river flooding on Sunday. Most rivers in Vermont will at least crest at minor flood levels. Several rivers in northern and central Vermont are still expected to reach moderate flood state.  Flood watches remain in effect, obviously.

Temperatures will also stay quite warm in southern Vermont, maybe not dropping below the 55-60 range overnight.

I'll update tonight, maybe, if warranted, and try to do a comprehensive update Sunday morning. That is, if I have power. We'll see how that goes. If you don't hear from me tomorrow morning, I don't have power, and won't be able to post. I'll figure it out eventually if that happens.

Heads Up: Dangerous Storm Eastern U.S. This Weekend. Vermont Effects Included

Precipitation forecast map for th next seven days. Most of the
precipitation you see is with the forecast big stom this weekend.
Purple shades, as in over Vermont, depict about 1.5 inches of
rain or melted snow and ice. That huge area of bright
red is two to seven inches of rain, so you
see a big area that's under a flood risk. 

I usually don't like to hype storms too far in advance. As most of us know, computer models more than a few days out can be unreliable.

This time, though, I'm going into hype mode, at least to an extent. The computer models have been consistent in saying some rough weather is due in the eastern half of the nation Friday through Sunday.

It's rare to see the Storm Prediction Center highlighting a risk for tornadoes and severe storms five or six days in advance.

But that's what they're saying about a zone from eastern Texas and across the Gulf Coast states Friday and Saturday with this system.

The devil is always in the details, so we won't know how extensive this severe outbreak will actually turn out to be. But there is the risk, at least of some pretty significant tornadoes and high winds across the South Friday and Saturday.

Likewise, this storm is going to have a LOT of moisture to work with.  Parts of the South, and Tennesee and Ohio valleys have been quite wet of late, and early predictions are already touting two to six inches of rain with this system in that region.  Some flooding is already ongoing, so it will only get worse this weekend. 

This storm will likely get some of its power from a very strong Bermuda-high like ridge of high pressure off the East Coast.  That will probably create some record high temperatures in the coming days along the Eastern Seaboard.

The arrangement of that ridge of high pressure will bring quite a lot of moisture inland off the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile, a strong dip in the jet stream, and a strong jet stream aloft, will provide plenty of energy and instability for heavy rain, thunderstorms and possible southern tornadoes. And winter cold air from the west will just add a clash of air masses to wring the heavy precipitation as the system heads northeastward.

You'll very likely hear about this storm in the news in the upcoming days and through the weekend. Unfortunately, it could easily prove deadly and destructive in the South.

VERMONT IMPACTS

The storm will inevitably head northeastward into New England. For us here in Vermont, something nasty looks like a near certainty over the weekend, but what form that nastiness would take is still anybody's guess at this point.

We know there's a good potential for precipitation to be heavy.  Perhaps one to two inches of liquid equivalent, which is a good thumping for mid-winter, which tends to be drier.

But will it rain? Snow? Freezing rain? Locusts?  All of the above?  For now, I'm going with all of the above, except for the locusts. I'm pretty sure we won't get locusts.

We won't know exactly what will happen until nearly the last minute. But I'd start planning for difficult travel on Sunday.

We could easily have another messy ice deal like we did back on December 30, though the precipitation this time looks like it might be heavier.

It all depends upon when cold air from the northwest plays out.

Here's how the National Weather Service in South Burlington thinks it'll play out.  Remember, results may vary, and forecasts will change. Stay tuned for updates.

We'll start out with a brief shot of Arctic air Wednesday afternoon through Thursday. Thursday will be the first colder than normal day around Vermont since December 21.  Lows will be near zero, with highs in the teens to near 20.

Yeah, that's cold, but no great shakes for a Vermont January day.

Then the fun starts. Temperatures will start rising Thursday night as winds pick up from the south.  A piece of the storm will draw a warm front through, causing some light mixed precipitation going over to some light rain Friday.

The real problem Thursday night and Friday will be strong winds, created by the contrast between that vigorous ridge off the East Coast and storminess to the west.

It'll continue to warm up Friday into Saturday, but how warm it gets depends upon when a cold front arrives. Could be record warm, could be just kinda warm. We'll see.

Here's where it gets really complicated. Chilly high pressure will come across the northern Great Lakes and into Ontario and southern Quebec. That would feed cold air in the lower levels of the atmosphere towards us here in Vermont.

Meanwhile, warm, wet air will glide northward up above that chilly air.

How cold will it get and how far south will the chilly air make it?  If the answer is very little and it stays warm, we'd get a lot of rain and we'd have a flooding risk.

If mostly low level cold air comes in but it stays warm aloft, that sets us up for a bunch of freezing rain and sleet.

If the cold air blasts in, we get a lot of snow.

Take your pick, because nobody is yet sure which scenario would play out, and where in Vermont different types of precipitation sets up.

Here's a worst case scenario for you, though. In their forecast discussion, the National Weather Service in South Burlington compares the overall weather setup this weekend to March 6-7, 2011.

On that occasion, we got a bunch of rain and melting snow, which led to some flooding. Then, the colder air came in, changing rain to snow, especially across the north. There was a LOT of snow with that March, 2011 storm. 

Burlington got 25.8 inches of snow, which was up until that time the greatest March snowstorm on record. (Later usurped by the Pi Day Blizzard of March 14, 2017).

Most of northern Vermont got around two feet of snow in that 2011 event.

I'm not saying history will repeat itself this weekend. I'm guessing it won't. But as I said at the start, this is a head's up.

Florida Storm Floods Big Time, Brings Odd Tornado Scare

Flooding at the Fort Lauderdale airport last night. 

As I mentioned yesterday, most of the nation is having quiet Christmas week weather, but not sunny Florida, which at the moment isn't so sunny.

Parts of the state got hit by some big time flash flooding overnight. It was so bad it temporarily blocked access to the Fort Lauderdale airport.

The flooding was mostly concentrated between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, with rainfall amounts outside thar area being not as bad. Where it rained hardest, though, the rain was incredible.

Hallandale, Florida reported 12.8 inches of rain. Fort Lauderdale itself had about eight inches of rain.

The downpours hit in a very short amount of time, which made the flash flooding worse. The Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport had 4.45 inches of rain in just an hour. For comparison's sake this area normally gets about two inches of rain during the entire month of December. It's normally the dry season in South Florida about now.

Access roads to the airport were closed, and a lot of flights were delayed.  The airport has since reopened, but the water flood had been replaced by a flood of traffic from cars originally blocked from being allowed in. A number of homes and businesses were flooded in the region.

Meanwhile, in the Florida Keys, residents and tourists hunkered down as rare tornado warnings were issued. Supercell thunderstorms came ashore in that area, carrying the risk of strong waterspouts that would turn into a risk of strong tornadoes down there.

Waterspouts are common around the Keys, but almost always, they stay offshore and weak. This was a totally different scenario with the nearly Midwest-style supercells creating a risk of stronger twisters.

So far, though, there have been no official reports of any tornado touchdowns.

The storm is moving northeast into coastal Georgia and South Carolina.  Flooding is especially likely to hit coastal South Carolina today.

Early this morning, rain and high tides had already blocked sections of 26 streets and roads in Charleston, South Carolina.

The storm will then go safely out to sea and not affect the rest of the Eastern Seaboard.

Here's a news report from the Fort Lauderdale airport:

Stormy Vermont Weekend, But Nothing Like Iceland!

Flooding in Johnson, Vermont from the October 31/November 1 storm
this year.  A storm that will look similar on weather maps to this
one will hit Vermont this weekend, but the real-life effects will
NOT be nearly as bad as the previous storm.  Photo by Jenn Chittick.

The bad news is we are in for a rather stormy weekend here and in the rest of New England.  The good news is that although the storm will be similar in some ways to that destructive flood and wind storm at Halloween, it won't be nearly as bad.

This weekend's storm will look a lot like the storm two months ago on weather maps. But it will look radically different here on the ground. If there's damage this time, it will be quite light.  

Also, it won't be nearly as bad as a storm that swept through Iceland a few days ago. I'll get into that in a bit.

First, the weekend storm here in New England.

The first problem will come this evening in the form of a very light drizzle or freezing drizzle. That doesn't sound too bad at all, but remember, it takes just a tiny bit of ice to make roads very dangerous.  This evening's ice will mostly affect eastern Vermont and the Adirondacks. It will also be mainly a problem on untreated roads and sidewalks.

It's looking like the Champlain Valley will be a tad too warm for the drizzle to freeze, so that's good.

Overnight and Saturday morning, the storm will produce a hefty slug of rain. It will be setup sort of  like that Halloween storm, with rain riding north amid lots of moisture coming in from the south. This will be ahead of the storm's cold front.

I do want to emphasize that on the weather map, this will be somewhat similar to Halloween, but for those of us on the ground who have to live with it, this will clearly NOT be nearly as big a problem.'

Many of us could get an inch or even more of rain in some spots out of this.  But there's not much snow on the ground to melt, so that won't add much to the runoff.  And the expected rainfall totals are a lot less than the two to five inches we got on October 31.

The bottom line is there will probably be areas of minor flooding across Vermont and surrounding areas, so you will want to watch out for that.  You won't want to drive over flooded roads, and avoid any flooding in general. But this certainly won't be the disaster we experienced a couple months ago.

There is a somewhat higher risk of flooding from this storm over far eastern New England, where rainfall is expected to be heavier than in Vermont.

Rain will probably turn lighter and more showery Saturday afternoon, but then pick up a little more Saturday evening all the way into Sunday.  This rain will turn to mostly a wet snow overnight Saturday into Sunday morning. Accumulations will be light, but the mountains might pick up a few inches.

Snow showers will probably continue all day Sunday, but they won't amount to anything, really, in the valleys.  There will be a bit more accumulations when you go uphill, especially along the western slopes of the Green Mountains.

Also, in a way that was similar to the October 31-November 1 storm, the wind will really crank on the back side of the storm on Sunday.

Again, it won't be nearly as bad as it was a couple months ago. But wet soils and gusty west winds will make it easy for shallow rooted trees to topple, much like they did on November 1.

Since winds will be lighter than they were then, the chaos of widespread power failures looks unlikely. Still, some people will lose power, and tree branches and even a few trees on Sunday amid the gusty winds.

The worst of the winds look like they will be on the east slopes of the Green Mountains and Adirondacks.

There's no rest for the weary. Another storm looks like it will come through on Tuesday with a batch of snow and/or mixed precipitation. It's too soon to figure out how extensive that storm might be.


HUGE ICELAND STORM

Iceland, a country I'd like to visit due to its cool geography, is not a place to visit in the winter.

It's dark, cold and stormy up there, as you might imagine for an island that far up in the North Atlantic.

The Capitol, Reykjavik, actually has average temperatures this time of year similar to Vermont's. (Although summers are much, much cooler in Iceland than in Vermont.)

Winter storms, however, are much stronger in Iceland than here in the Green Mountain State, and they just got hit by an immense doozy.

As the Washington Post and other media outlets report, Winds gusted as high as 149 mph on at least one location in Iceland, and sustained winds were at 63 mph in Reykjavik.

The nation of about 360,000 people was also hit by up to ten feet of snow.  Most places had much less than that, but it was hard to measure, given that the winds were so strong.

The storm was probably the worst in ten years.  Most roads were impassable because of snowdrifts.  This in a North Atlantic nation that should be used to winter weather.

Iceland is positioned in a spot that naturally makes it stormy.  Iceland is as far north as southern Greenland, northern Canada and central Alaska.  So yeah, it's close to the North Pole.
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But the warm Gulf Sream in the Atlantic Ocean passes northeastward just off the eastern Icelandic coast. That explains why Iceland is relatively mild in winter, given how far north it is.  Yet it's sofar north that extreme cold lurks nearby.

That contrast helps fuel powerful storms, like the one they got this week.

Some videos. The first one looks unpleasant enough:



Here's a view from inside an Icelandic Coast Guard vessel:



I do like how nonchalant people in Iceland are in storms. Here's a video of Reykjavik as the storm was bearing down.  It looked nice. Despite the snow, cold and strong winds, a guy was walking around in shorts, a busker played guitar on a corner, and parking was tight as people enjoyed holiday season shops and restaurants: