Tornado Onslaught Was One Of The Busiest Of The Decade

As you can see in this map, lots of tornado reports have
come in this month across the country. While most of them
have been in the southern and central Plains and Midwest,
some have been reported anywhere between California
and New Jersey. The map shows here in Vermont,
we've continued our long tornado-free streak. The
last Vermont tornado was in 2014.

Several days ago, I say that the number of tornadoes hitting the United States was definitely higher than normal, but not too, too far out of the ordinary.

But the tornadoes kept hitting. And hitting. Now, we're up to more than 470 preliminary reports of tornadoes in the past 30 days. There  have been only four other occasions in the past 15 years or so with that many tornadoes in such a short period of time. Those were in 2003, 2004, 2008 and 2011.

During May, the nation is typically, on average, hit by about 275 tornadoes. 

We're still not yet in record territory for the number of tornadoes within just a few weeks, but it's been busy, busy, busy.

Seven people have died in tornadoes over the past week, which is a terrible toll. But given the number of tornadoes, that number of casualties is strikingly low.  It's a testiment to great warnings by the National Weather Service and local media meteorologists. And it's a sign that people headed warnings and fled to basements, closets and storm shelters as the tornadoes approached.

Another good thing. Most of the tornadoes were relatively weak to moderately strong, not EF4s or EF5s, which are the strongest and most dangerous. Those higher end tornadoes generally cause the most deaths, because often, hiding in a closet or basement isn't good enough to survive the real biggies.

Finally, we're about to catch a break. The stalled weather pattern that has kept a clash of hot air over the Southeast, chilly air in the western United States and relentless storminess in the middle is breaking down.

This Linwood, Kansas house was wrecked by one of 475 or so tornadoes
that have struck the nation this month. Photo by Chris Neal of
the Topeka Capital-Journal

A more gentle, somewhat west to east air flow will come across the nation over the next several days. Which means, going forward into next week, there might be a few severe storms and even tornadoes here and there, not many will form. No big new outbreaks are in the offing.

Serious flooding remains a big problem, though, even as all that rain tapers off. I'm headed to South Dakota Friday, and I notice so many rivers there are in flood stage, even major flood stage. The water will be receding (I hope!) while I am there, as mostly dry weather is forecast next week.

Elsewhere, it's worse. Parts of Missouri are running a whopping 18 inches above normal for rainfall this month, says the National Weather Service in Kansas City. Some places in the Corn Belt have received an incredible 30 inches of rain in the past month. During that time, four or five inches would have been normal.

As you can imagine, the soggy, flooded fields means spring crop planting is way behind schedule. Less than 60 percent of the anticipated Midwest corn crop has been planted. More than 90 percent of the seeds should have been in the ground by now, says the USDA.

While rainfall will be less intense over the coming week in the hardest hit flood zones, there will still be bouts of unneeded rain that could dump a couple more inches of water in places like Missouri and Kansas.

The bottom line: The weather pattern has finally gotten a little friendlier, but the damage is done. And who knows whether this is a real long lasting break, or just a brief respite from the destructive weather in the middle of the nation?

Terrible Tornadoes This Year Are "Normal," But Of Course That's Not Good

This chart is a little hard to read so click on it to make it bigger
and easier to see, but it shows the building number of
tornadoes each year since 2005. The black line is this year,
and we are off to the fastest first half of tornado season
since 2011.

It seems every day lately we get news of another terrible tornado. Deaths. Neighborhoods destroyed. Farms blown to pieces.

So it was last night when yet another tornado slammed into El Reno, Oklahoma, killing at least two people. A motel was blown apart, as was a good chunk of a mobile home park in El Reno, which is about 25 miles west of Oklahoma City.

If the words "El Reno" and "tornado" sound familiar, that's because the widest tornado on record 2.6 miles wide - hit El Reno in 2013, killing eight people, including storm chaser Tim Samaras.

There are unconfirmed reports of somewhat smaller tornadoes last night right in Oklahoma City, and in the southern part of Tulsa.

Preliminary reports indicate there have been 820 tornadoes in the United States so far this year, as of May 24. That sounds like a lot, and it is. But it's actually not anywhere near a record. Still, it's the most tornadoes as of this time of year since 2011.

By May 24 of the terrible tornado year of 2011, there had already been 1,252 twisters. In another awful year, 2008, there had been 1,139 tornadoes.

So far this year 34 people have died in United States tornadoes. On average about 75 or so people die in tornadoes annually. Last year, only ten people died in tornadoes, one of the lowest annual tolls on record. By contrast, 2011 saw 553 tornado deaths, the second worst year on record. In 1925, 774 people died.

It's still only midway through the tornado season, so it remains to be seen whether the year will keep trending busier than recent ones, and whether there will be more deaths.  The busy season could keep going, or the activity can abruptly shut down. You never know.

In the short term, the tornado forecast isn't really good. Tornadoes are forecast daily in the middle of the nation through Wednesday, and there could be quite a few of them on Tuesday, at least according to latest forecasts.

Indications are that the threat of severe weather and tornadoes will start to wane somewhat toward the end of the week.

Good New On 2018 Tornadoes, But There's An Ominous Study About Them

The last known EF5 tornado - the most powerful possible - in the
United States was this twister in Moore, Oklahoma back in 2013.
The storm killed 24 people. The U.S. has gone more than five
years without an EF5 tornado, which is a very unusually
long time between such disasters. 

It looks like we are about to conclude an incredibly benign year for United States tornadoes this year.

Despite an uptick in tornado activity in the Northeast during 2018, the nation as a whole saw relatively few tornadoes, and this will quite possibly become the year with the fewest tornado deaths on record.

On top of that, we're just concluding a rare year in which there were no EF4 or EF5 tornadoes, which are the strongest possible. These tornadoes have winds of 166 mph or more.

Tornadoes with an EF4 rating will level well-constructed houses and toss cars around. An EF5 tornado would take those leveled houses and fling them away to oblivion.  Cars would be tossed 100 yards or more, and even extremely sturdy high rise buildings would be twisted and destroyed.

Needless to say, EF4 and EF5 tornadoes, and their nearly as strong companions EF3s, cause the most tornado deaths. There weren't many EF3's this year either. At last count, the nation had ten EF3 tornadoes.

There was one EF4 tornado in North America in 2018: An EF4 killed one person in Manitoba, Canada this past August. 

Still, 2018's lack of strong United States tornadoes contributed to the thankfully low death toll.

So far this year, only ten people have died in the United States in tornadoes. That would be the lowest toll since 1875, when they started really keeping track of such things. The current record for least tornado deaths is 12 in 1912, followed by 15 back in 1986, says the Weather Channel.

The nation has been in a bit of a tornado drought, and an especially thankful tornado death drought since 2012. The average number of deaths per year is 69. In 2018 and 2017 combined, there were only 52 deaths between the two years, says data from The Weather Channel.

The last year we had an average or above average number of tornado deaths was 2012, when 69 people died in twisters.

Of course, the famous tornado year of 2011 was tragically much worse. That year, 552 United States residents died in tornadoes, which is a tie with 1936 for the second-worse tornado year. Some 700 people died in 1925, mostly in just one super tornado.

Never mind science, we are overdue for a bad tornado year, unfortunately. It's just a matter of chance. You'll eventually get a bad roll of the dice.

This happened in the United States with hurricanes. We went eleven years from 2005 to 2016 without a major hurricane hitting the mainland U.S. Major being Category 3 or higher. That was an unprecedented. We'd never gone that long without a major hurricane.

Then came 2017 with Harvey and Irma, the first time since 1851 two Category 4 hurricanes hit the U.S. mainland. (And then we had Maria trashing Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.).  This year brought hurricanes Florence and Michael.

Tornado activity can turn on a dime like this too. This aspect has little if anything to do with global warming. But it does beg the question: Does climate change influence tornadoes?

INCREASED TORNADO POWER?

A researcher, Dr. James Elsner of Florida State University, says one measure of overall tornado power in the United States is increasing.

The tornado drought in recent years notwithstanding, there hasn't really been a trend up or down in strong and violent tornadoes over the past several decades

Dr. Jeff Masters wrote about this recently in the Category 6 blog in Weather Underground:

"Tornadoes have been coming in bigger bunches with individual tornadoes being wider and staying on the grojnd longer, resulting in an increase in the destructive power of U.S. tornadoes averaging 5.5 percent per year since 1994."

I have to say I got a lot of pushback when I retweeted something on this a couple weeks ago. Meteorologist and business consultant Mike Smith correctly pointed to data that shows there seems to be a general trend toward fewer strong tornadoes (EF3 or higher) since 1954. However, Eisner's research didn't really say there are more tornadoes, just that there are more long-tracked, strong tornadoes during large outbreaks. 

The number of violent tornadoes has trended downward in recent
decades, but there are worrisome exceptions to this trend

So it's kind of how you parse the data.

Anyway, Masters in Category 6 goes on:  

"Eisner's study found that a given tornado is more likely to be strong or violent at night,  between 10 p.m - 4 a.m. and during the coldest months, between November and April. This counterintuitive result could be because there are fewer tornadoes overall at night and in winter, but tornadoes that do develop at these times are more likely to be in environments of strong wind shear, thus allowing their destructive power to be higher on average."

The above situation describes conditions in which there is a lot of instability in the air, which climate scientists say should increase in a warming world. However, another key ingredient for tornadoes is wind shear, which is wind that changes direction and speed with height. Climate scientists say wind shear should decrease overall with global warming.

The decreased wind shear would be most pronounced in the warmer months and less so during colder times of the year, so this fits well with Eisner's research, and what's been going on in the real world in recent years.

Four or five years do NOT make a trend, but there have been fewer tornadoes during the warmer months lately. Then again, there's 2011, so it's hard to draw firm conclusions.

It's possible climate change could make winter tornado outbreaks worse, but this is too preliminary for me to definitely go there. I want to see more research.

For now, I'll just go for a little of that dreaded wishcasting:  Let's hope that 2019 continues with the tornado drought.

In Exception, Record Lows Outpaced Record Highs In January, But That Will Change In February

Ice jam and flooding on Boston Post Road in Enosburg,
Vermont on a rainy, record warm January 12. The warmth
came just five days after record cold. 

Starting in December, 2014, the number of record highs across the United States outpaced the number of record lows in each month. At least through December, 2017.

That long streak was broken in January, when that brutal cold wave in the eastern two thirds of the nation created more record lows than record highs.

According to the Guy On Climate blog, using information from the National Climate Data Center, said there were 1,918 daily record highs in January and 2,750 daily record lows. (Burlington, Vermont had one of those record highs and one of those record lows in January.)

Thus, January ended a remarkable streak of 37 consecutive months where United States record highs outpaced record lows.

It's just one indication, though I admit not proof, that the climate is off the rails. You should have roughly an even number of record lows and record highs. Some months would  have more record highs, others would have more record lows, depending on the weather pattern during that period. But long term, it should even out.

You'll notice the record lows in January did not outpace record highs by all that much. Some months during the three year streak of warmth were particularly lopsided. For instance, one standout, February, 2017 had 7,180 record highs and just 178 record lows.

So far in February, as of Tuesday, there had been 962 daily record high maximum temperatures across the country and 69 record lows.

Most of those record highs were in the western part of the nation. Over the next several days, record and near record highs are likely on various days over the next week or so in the eastern and southern third of the country.

Meanwhile, cold air will be mostly confined to the northwestern third of the nation, That chilly air isn't exceptional, so there won't be very many record lows to report in the coming days.

Epic Denver Hail Storm Leaves Front Range Reeling. LOTS Of Damage Reported

A Denver area woman holds a giant hailstone Monday.

An epic hail storm swept along much of the Front Range in Colorado Monday, and the Denver metro area was among the areas hit hard. 

Big hail happens from time to time in the High Plains, but when it hits a metropolitan area, the total amount of damage can be worse than in a tornado.

The damage in any one area from hail is almost always less than tornadoes but the damage is more spread out, so the totals go up.

The Denver metro hail in some areas was the size of baseballs or even a little bigger.  There are dramatic videos to watch at the bottom of this post.

Countless cars were dented with windows smashed out. Thousands of homes and businesses had smashed windows, ruined siding and roofs that suddenly needed to be replaced.

One of the worst hit spots was the Colorado Mill mall, where hail smashed in skylights to let pouring rain in. Stores were flooded, the mall was evacuated, and shoppers leaving the mall found their cars with windows smashed out, says the Denver Post. 

If you're in Denver with a hail damaged car, good luck getting it fixed. The Denver Post says all the auto glass dealers now have full voice mails an overloaded email accounts from the torrent or people desperate to get their windshields fixed.

Hailstorms usually cause a lot of damage. The Denver Channel says Colorado's Front Range, including Denver, typically sees about $25 million in insurance claims from hail damage annually. This will be far worse, though damage estimates for this aren't in yet.

The most damaging hail storm in Colorado was in July, 1990, which caused $1.1 billion (with a "B" in damages. That figure is adjusted for inflation to 2015.

Watch this cool timelapse of the severe thunderstorm and hail taking over downtown Denver:



In this brief video, hail abruptly takes out the back window of a car:



Here's hail smashing through the windows of a Denver house:



And here's the chaos in Wheat Ridge, Colorado as house windows shatter and car alarms blare in the hail:

March Proved This Year Was Easy Winter, So Far Tough Spring In Vermont

Aftermath of the three foot deep
snowstorm in Richmond, Vermont
on March 14-15

Back on March 1, you thought you got away scot free with another easy winter, didn't you, my fellow Vermonters.

After all, on that day, temperatures reached record highs in the low 60s, just a few days after we had unprecedented readings at around 70 degrees at the end of February.

Ha!

As we well know now, we finally hit hard core winter in March, when we were supposed to be slowly recovering from a Vermont winter.

The statistics are now out to prove all this.

In Burlington, the snowfall for the month amounted to 36.8 inches, enough to be the third snowiest March on record. Burlington's records date back to the 1880s.

The bulk of that snow came on the "Pi-Day" storm on March 14-15, which proved to be the second largest snowstorm on record.

The previous winter, 2015-16 was among the least snowy on record. In fact, Burlington got more snow in the last 18 days of March than the entire winter of 2015-16. Quite an accomplishment.

As we also know, the snowy regime extended into April Fool's Day.

With Saturday's storm, the seasonal snow total in Burlington got just above 100 inches. That's only the twelth time since 1885 that Burlington has had more than 100 inches of snow during a single winter.

March, 2017 was colder than the rest of the winter. It's very rare that March is the coldest month of the year. It's almost always January, February or December. But this March was the colder than any month this winter.

The same was true down in Boston, making this the first time on record that March was the coldest month of the year there.

On the bright side of sorts, March, 2017 was wetter than normal. I say bright side, because there were some drought conditions holding over from last year.  Dry conditions have ended in northern Vermont and diminished in southern Vermont, says the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Virtually all of Vermont was abnormally dry or in drought three months ago, and only half the state is now, the Drought Monitor says. And forecasts call for more bouts of heavy rain in the coming days.

As always, I'm reluctant to hazard a guess as to what April will bring. The weather is always surprising in Vermont.

Even Weak Tornadoes Can Be Dramatic

Roof flies off a Fort Worth, Texas bank during
a small tornado Friday. Image o the left is the roof
in the parking lot later. Images from WeatherNation.

Strong tornadoes are usually the ones that grab all the headlines as the maurade through towns and cities, blowing apart everything that comes in their path.

The fact is most tornadoes are relatively weak. According to the National Climatic Data Center, usually about 30 or 40 tornadoes annually in the United States are EF3 or stronger on the Enhanced Fujita scale. That's out of roughly 1,000 reported each year.

EF3s have winds of 136 mph or greater.

So, we don't really get all that many super big tornadoes. Most are small. But those little ones can certainly cause drama. One such tornado, and EF0 that hit Fort Worth, Texas Friday, took the roof off a bank building.

It had winds of 80 to 85 mph, and being weak and small, it's hard to see at first in the video, below. Then the roof goes and the people filming start swearing like crazy (so NSFW)

No injuries were reported with this brief tornado, though, which is good:

New England Snow Has Officially Gotten Ridiculous

  A woman at her home in eastern Massachusetts yesterday.
Photo via Twitter, @JohnDePetroshow  

I know, I know, New England snow, New England snow.

I now think I can safely say that some parts of southeastern New England probably have not seen snow like this since it was settled in the 1600s.

Bouts of snow in 1717, the mid-1800s, 1978 and 1996 come close but this really takes the cake.

Yesterday pushed everything into the ridiculous zone. The huge headline on today's Boston Globe says it all "Piling It On."

I'll say. Let's go to the numbers.

The storm that ended in southern New England dumped 23.1 inches of snow on Boston, whih was the 7th biggest snowstorm on record there.

That's the second storm within two weeks to score in Boston's Top 10 storms. The blizzard on January 26 and 27 was Boston's sixth biggest, with 24.6 inches.

There was also 37 inches of snow on the ground in Boston yesterday, after it settled and compacted. That's the most on the ground on record there.

So far, 40.1 inches of snow has fallen on Boston in February. If only 5.3 more inches of snow falls there this month, it'll be the snowest on record. The chances of that happening are excellent.

Until now the record in Boston for the most snow in a 30 day stretch was 58.8 inches, during the period ending on February 7 1978, the tail end of the Great Blizzard of 1978.

The new record now set is 71 inches. But that's only in the past 17 days. There's nearly two weeks to go and more snow is forecast for Boston. Yep, more snow.

GRIM FORECAST

Front page of today's
Boston  Globe.  

This next one looks really nasty. It's a little soon to tell, but present indications are the next storm won't be nearly as deep as yesterday's or the January blizzard.  Even if the snow amounts are uncertain with the next storm, it will be very windy and very cold during the next storm.

The pattern with the expected Thursday and Friday storm is similar to many of the others. An energetic Alberta clipper type storm is now in the upper Midwest, causing a mess of snow, sleet, freezing rain and wind in parts of the Dakotas and Minnesota.

The Clipper will come across the Great Lakes, across New York and into northern and western New England.

In those places, towns like Houghton, Michigan, Watertown, New York  and Burlington, Vermont, that Clipper will dump perhaps one to as much as five inches of snow. No big deal, especially since in those areas, the snow on the ground is fairly robust, but not ridiculously deep.

Then, here we go again, the Alberta Clipper will transfer to and off the coast and blow up into a massive storm.

Though it's almost certain several inches of snow will fall on eastern Massachusetts, it's not clear yet if by several inches, I mean five inches or 20 inches. It's a little unclear how far off the coast this thing will blow up.

What is more certain is the wind. Since the storm will really crank up explosively off the coast it'll generate strong north to northeast winds. That's dangerous in two major respects: With several feet of powdery snow on the ground already, the blowing and drifting will be horrendous. I wouldn't be surprised if drifts are 10 feet tall or more once this storm's done.

Nobody's leaving via this Boston
basement door anytime soon.
Photo from Christopher Fielding, via Twitter.  

The other danger applies to all of New England, and much of the Northeast for that matter. The north winds will be accompanied by an Arctic blast which will plunge temperatures below zero. So being outside could get very dicey.

It gets worse. Another disturbance will dive almost due southward from the North Pole into New England Sunday. That'll make the cold even worse, driving temperatures into the teens and 20s below zero in parts of northern New England.

This disturbance will - you guessed it! -- blow up just off the coast into a monsterous huge storm. Again, it's too soon to tell if this Sunday episode will develop into an eastern New England blizzard or just light snow.

Either way, winds will gust past 30 mph well inland in New York and Vermont with this feature and even stronger in eastern New England. With temperatures far below zero, this will be one of the most dangerous bouts of wind chills we've had in years.

A for instance: It the temperature is minus 10 and the wind is blowing at 25 mph, the wind chill is 37 below. Such conditions have a strong chance of happening on Sunday.

This second cold wave on Sunday will dive south all the way to Florida, so we might start hearing about frozen oranges and other crops in Florida by early next week.

There's a Jeep in there, I think, Hingham, Mass.  

DANGER AND EXPENSE:

Beyond the expense and severe inconvenience of all that snow lying around, things are getting dangerous.

The weight of the snow is beginning to collapse roofs, and if more snow comes, as predicted, that problem will get worse.

Roofs are starting to cave in under the weight of all that snow. The National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass this morning reported several snow-related structural failures. The roof of a building in Rockport, Mass called the "Piano Mill" collapsed this morning.

Nobody has been hurt by the collapses so far, but I worry about the possibility that a roof could give way on a building with people inside.

Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said the city will have spent double its $18 million budget for snow removal by the end of this week. And winter is far from over.

WARM OCEAN WATER PRIME SUSPECT

One interesting thing I picked up on social media chatter in weather circles over the past few days is the water temperature off the New England coast. The water is much, much warmer than normal.

Here's what noted meteorologist and climate expert Michael Mann Tweeted yesterday:

Mann is saying here that SST's - that's sea surface temperature-  is 21 degrees warmer than normal off of Cape Cod. Temperatures that much warmer than normal has been totally unheard of out there until now.

It stands to reason that a storm encountering this warm water would strengthen faster and more robustly than otherwise.

Plus, whether or not the storm strengthens faster, the warmer water supplies more moisture to a storm system than cooler water would, so precipitation associated with the storm would be heavier with the toasty water.

The very warm water is almost surely a major player in New England's snow blitz this year.

With the storm that ended yesterday, five of Boston's biggest snowstorms have occurred since 2003.

The trend toward bigger Northeast snowstorms is widespread. None of the recent storms in Burlington, Vermont scored in that city's Top 20 biggest (northwestern New England has so far tended to only get the fringe effects of the past month's snow blitz.)

But in records dating back to the 1880s at least, eight of Burlington's 20 biggest snowstorms have occurred since the year 2000.  Statistically, you'd expect only one or at most two of the biggest snowstorms to have occured in the past 15 years. So something's going on.

Air and ocean temperatures along and off the East Coast have generally been increasingly warmer than normal for years now, a symptom of global warming. 

Even as things continue to warm up, winter is not canceled. You still can get sharp cold waves, like New England is getting now, and when these cold waves plunge into or interact with very warm air or water nearby, you get these big storms.

The only way now to stop the snow dump in the New England is weather pattern change, one that does not send nascent storms over that hot water off the coast.

The pattern will indeed change. We just don't yet know exactly when that will happen.

No, That WASN'T A Surprise Tornado In Vermont Early Saturday Morning. Was Microburst

6:30 p.m. SATURDAY UPDATE:

National Weather Service meteorologists from South Burlington hightailed it to Craftsbury this afternoon to check out whether some wind damage was due to a tornado.

James Sinko took this photo of a pole impaled into a
metal roof in Craftsbury, Vermont after an early
Saturday microburst. Photo via @JamesSinko on Twitter.  

The area had been under a tornado warning early Saturday morning after meteorologists detected rotation in the clouds above.

The meteorologists' conclusion: Nope, it wasn't a tornado. It was a microburst.

Even though nobody wants to see property damage, a microburst sounds vaguely disappointing, compared to a tornado.

However, microbursts are often as dangerous as a tornado.

Just check out the damage, as inventoried by the National Weather Service inspection of the damage in Craftsbury, near the intersection of Collinsville and Wild Branch roads.

A roof was torn off a barn, several trees fell over, there was minor damage to a home, and a pole was impaled into the roof of a shed.

A turkey hunter nearby who was out when the microburst hit said he heard the sound of a tornado. That's not surprising. A microburst, a rushing gush of wind, can sound like a twister.

A microburst is an outflow of violent wind from a severe thunderstorm. They cover areas of less than 2.5 miles wide and almost never last more than five minutes.

Meteorologists who inspect damage like what happened in Craftsbury can often readily tell whether the mess was caused by a microburst or a tornado. A microburst knocks down trees and scatters debris pretty much in just one direction. A tornado will topple trees in a variety of directions, and debris will fly every which way.

The National Weather Service conclusion that the storm was a microburst rather than a tornado is preliminary. They'll analyze things a bit more before putting this investigation to bed.

12:30 p.m. SATURDAY UPDATE

As you can see by the reader comment at the bottom of this post, there are reports of wind damage near Wolcott and Craftsbury last night. That's right in the area that the National Weather Service in South Burlington issued a tornado warning.

A meteorologist at the South Burlington National Weather Service office just told me they are sending people up that way this afternoon to see if there is evidence of wind damage, and whether that damage was caused by a tornado or straight line winds.

The meteorologist said radar indicated rotation aloft. However, Doppler radar, based in Colchester, Vermont, has a hard time seeing down near the surface, because mountains block the view. Radar first detected rotation more to the south, near Worcester or that area, then it moved north to Wolcott.

The mountains block the view of the radar toward Wolcott even more than they do more to the south, so it was surely hard for the National Weather Service to determine whether there was indeed some sort of tornado going on.

It looks to me out of an abundance of caution, given the rotation aloft, that they issued the pre-dawn tornado warning.

The assessment team should be back later this afternoon and the National Weather Service will put out a statement later today on whether they think a tornado touched down, or whether any damage was caused by straight line winds.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION FOLLOWS: 

I slept in late this rainy Saturday morning and was shocked into full wakefulness when I discovered there was a tornado warning for central Vermont, just 20 or 30 miles to my east early this morning.

A tornado ripped the roof of of an apartment building
in Washington, Vermont in May, 2009.  

The tornado warnings came around 4 a.m., especially around the towns of Worcester, and later Wolcott, as the National Weather Service in South Burlington detected rotation in a line of storms that was making its way through the state.

As of 8 a.m. Saturday, the National Weather Service tells me there are no reports of touchdowns and no reports of damage.

My guess is there was indeed rotation on radar, but the swirling did not reach the ground.

Or, since that section of Vermont is pretty remote, a tornado maybe touched down in a place where there are no people and no structures.

It's still dark at 4 a.m., so nobody would have seen a twister. Plus, if there was one, it was probably rain wrapped, as there was a lot of heavy rain involved.

Still, that there was enough rotation in the storms to warrant a tornado warning comes as a big surprise to me.

First of all, tornadoes are usually the product of supercell thunderstorms, which typically reach their peak intensity in the late afternoon or evening, not just before dawn.

But sometimes, in a weather pattern like this,  with storms moving north fast, within a slowly moving line of rain, you get rotation and spin up thunderstorms.

Again, though, Vermont is a somewhat odd place for this to happen.

Tornadoes are rare in Vermont. We average less than one per year.

According to the excellent Tornado History Project, there have been 45 tornadoes in Vermont since 1953.  None of them killed anybody, but 10 people have been injured.

The project lists 68 additional injuries from Vermont tornadoes, but those 68 injuries were from a tornado that crossed from New York State into Bennington County, Vermont on May 31, 1998. All the injuries associated with that tornado occured in New York State.

That tornado was the only EF3 intensity twister on record in Vermont since 1953. The rest have been between EF0 and EF2. That means, except for the 1998 tornado, all twisters had winds of 135 mph or less. Most of the tornadoes were EF0, meaning they had winds of between 65 and 85 mph.

If there is a tornado alley in Vermont, the Tornado History Project suggests two of them: One in Franklin County, in far northwestern Vermont, and the other in far southern Vermont. According to the history's map, those two locations have the heaviest concentrations of tornado touchdowns, and virtually all of the EF2 intensity twisters.

If there is any new information on whether there was a tornado in central Vermont last night, I'll update this post.

This Cold December Bucks A Trend Of Toasty Decembers

No doubt it was frigid in northern New England this Tuesday morning. One of the "warm" spots was Burlington, Vermont, which clocked in with a temperature of 9 below, just one degree warmer than the record for the date.

Thick layer of ice on my truck windshield
this morning at a temperature of 11 below.  

Elsewhere, it was as bone chilling as it gets. It reached 32 below in Island Pond, Vermont and 30 below in Canaan, Vermont. There were lots of reports of readings in the 20s below in New York, Vermont and New Hampshire.

As of yesterday, half way through the month, the average temperature this December was averaging 3.4 degrees below normal. Unless there's a huge turnaround in temperatures, this will go down as one of the coldest Decembers in years.

Not that there's much competition. The past couple of decades has brought a series of abnormally warm Decembers to Vermont. Six of the top 10 warmest Decembers on record have occurred since 1996. This is in a record book that goes back to the 1880s.

I found only two cooler than normal Decembers in Burlington in the past 23 years. And the two cool Decembers were only a little below normal.

So not only is it cold this December, we're not used to such early season cold, either.

This week, it will warm up, sort of. Of course it really can't get much colder. Some small storms will blow by, with one this afternoon and evening bringing a dusting to far northern parts of Vermont and New Hampshire, with several inches in the southern reaches of those states.

Something else is coming along Friday, along with a quick squirt of warm air which will bring temperatures above freezing for a day or so. By that I mean upper 30s, so it won't exactly be tropical out there.

Then temperatures will drift downward again, but I don't think we'll see 20s and 30s below again for a couple weeks at least. Or we could hope, anyway.