Rare Dual June Tropical Storms And East Coast Storm Cleanup

Summer time is often the doldrums when it comes to weather.

This big mess of a storm in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to
become Tropical or Subtropical Storm Cindy.

It's hot and humid and nothing much happens. Oh sure, you get your occasional severe thunderstorms, a few searing heat waves, maybe a local flood or two.

But things so far in this young summer are coming fast and furiously.

I've already mentioned a couple days ago that terrible heat wave in the Southwest, where all time record high temperatures are being threatened today.

The Northeast today is cleaning up after punishing thunderstorms and flash floods on Monday. I'll have more on that in a bit.

JUNE TROPICAL STORMS

But first, we have the rare spectacle of two Atlantic tropical storms spinning up at the same time. It's the first time that's happened in June since 1968.

That is, if a near-tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico gets its act together today.

Tropical Storm Bret spun up in the far southern Caribbean yesterday, slashing Trinidad and Tobago and the northern coast of Venezuela with gusty winds and torrential rains.

It's heading toward the west with top sustained winds of 45 mph. It probably won't get much stronger, and forecasters think Bret will fall apart in a couple days. Stronger upper level winds will probably kill Bret before it reaches the coast of Nicaragua.

A bigger worry, at least for us in the United States, is a tropical storm or subtropical storm is  expected to develop in the Gulf of Mexico, possibly today. (A subtropical storm has characteristics of both a tropical storm and a regular old low pressure system.)

The Gulf of Mexico storm has winds of 40 mph, enough to have it declared a tropical storm. However, as of early this morning, it didn't have a nice circular center, which you need to have a tropical storm.

The storm was getting better organized, so the National Hurricane Center gave this storm a 90 percent chance of becoming Tropical Storm Cindy.

Forecasters are worried about wannabe Cindy because it's heading north toward the United States Gulf Coast. Tropical storm warnings are up for the Louisiana coast, and a tropical storm watch is up for the far eastern Texas coastline.

Storm surges in the low lying coasts could definitely cause flooding with this.

A bigger worry is the torrential rains that will come in with Wannabe Cindy. At this point, the storm poses an inland flood threat from East Texas and Louisiana all the way up to Tennessee and Kentucky, and possible east of that in the coming days.

EAST COAST STORMS

As expected, lots of strong and severe thunderstorms popped up in the Northeast Monday, sending plenty of trees and powerlines crashing down, sometimes onto cars and houses. Flash flooding became a real problem, especially in parts of southern Vermont and New Hampshire.

Only one tornado was reported so far, an EF-0 with 70 mph winds that trashed some trees in Maryland.

Departing storm clouds cast an orange glow at sunset last
evening in St. Albans, Vermont.

Here in Vermont, flooding was pretty widespread in and around Brattleboro. A large mudslide closed Route 30 northwest of Brattleboro. The Brattleboro Reformer also reported mudslides along Route 5 and Route 9. Back roads had washouts.

Parts of Rutland City also flooded amid the heavy rains.

Today, only scattered showers and thunderstorms are likely across the Northeast, including Vermont.

No more flooding is expected, except in northern Maine, where the storms might be heavy enough to cause further flash flooding

Here's a video of some flooding along Route 9 west of Brattleboro, Vermont:

Vermont Among Fastest Warming States in U.S.

An interesting story by Seth Borenstein with the AP indicates Vermont is tied with Maine as the fastest warming areas of the United States as global warming takes hold.  

A hot summer day on Lake Champlain off Burlington, Vermont.
The Champlain Valley is among the fastest warming
regions in the United States.  

He did an analysis of temperature trends in the past 30 years - between 1984 and 2014, to come up with the regions in the United States that warmed the fastest and most slowly.

The five fastest growing regions in the United States include two in Vermont: The Northeast Kingdom and the Champlain Valley.

The other ones are the St. Lawrence Valley of New York, northern Maine, and the northeastern plains of New Mexico.

The fastest warming spot, including Vermont, are at least 2.5 degrees warmer than they were in 1984. That doesn't sound like much, but it does represent a significant shift in the overall scheme of things. It's almost as if the climate of Springfield, Mass. moved to Burlington, Vermont

Warmer winters are driving the increasing heat in Vermont and the rest of the Northeast. Hotter, drier summers are heating the Southwest, it seems.

The data show how randomness, local effects and other cycles that have nothing to do with human-caused climate change can cause varying rates at which places warm.

According to Borenstein:

"The continguous United States annual average temperature has warmed by 1.2 degrees since 1984, with summers getting 1.6 degrees hotter. But that doesn't really tell you how hot it's gotten for most Americans. 

While man-made greenhouse gases warm the world as a whole, weather is supremely local."

The theory is Vermont has gotten hotter faster in part because of global warming, and in part for whatever, reason, the North Atlantic was unusually warm during much of the past 30 years, which influenced the New England climate.

More importantly, Vermont's warmer winters are part of a feedback loop. It's milder, the snow melts, the dark ground reflects less winter sunlight than snow cover, so the lack of snow makes it even warmer than it otherwise would have been.

Meanwhile, the southeastern United States warmed more slowly than other regions. Those areas rely more on coal for electricity. The pollution from coal plants reflected away a little bit of sun, tamping down the warming there.

There's no guarantee that the regions that are warming the fastest will continue to do so. The rate of warming in Vermont might, or might not slow down over the next 30 years. But the world as a whole continues to get hotter.

Your kids will say that their climate is not their father's climate, that's for sure.