Since Tuesday, the Midwest and South have endured at least 83 tornadoes, and that number will go up as damage areas are assessed.
This includes at least 14 twisters on Friday scattered around northeast Texas, Arkansas and southeast Missouri.
More tornadoes are in the cards today for parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and southeast Arkansas.
The real story, as expected, is shifting toward the torrential rains, which will continue unabated today.
The area under the gun is huge. A long string of flash flood warnings extended from northeast Texas to southern Illinois this morning. Flood watches go from Texas to southwest Pennsylvania.
Already, we tragically have one flood death, that of a nine year boy swept away and drowned in Frankfort, Kentucky.
As in virtually all disasters, the flooding is beginning to hit some towns harder than others in the same region.
Downtown Hopkinsville, Kentucky was under water as six to 10 inches of rain swamped that area. A dozen people had to be rescued from flooded homes. Similar water rescues were reported in far flung places like Van Buren Missouri and Texarkana, Texas. Four inches of rain fell in Cape Girardeau, in southeast Missouri within eight hours. Three inches of that came within two hours.
Hundreds of Kentucky roads were blocked by high water as of Friday. It was still raining hard in Kentucky this morning.
Friday's rainfall curved a little north and west of where it was centered the day before. It was mostly Arkansas and Kentucky that saw the worst of it.
Both states will get nailed today by up to nine inches of rain falling on already waterlogged ground. Which will exponentially worsen the flooding. Today will be the worst day of the flooding as a result. The torrents will also creep back southeastward back into Tennessee and northwest Mississippi, so the flooding will broaden.
The stalled weather pattern will finally begin to break down Sunday. There could be some severe storms and local flooding in the Gulf Coast states Sunday, but it won't be as bad as what we've seen this week from Texas to Ohio.
Even after the rain stops, the flooding will continue and in some cases worsen in the coming days as larger rivers crest.
FLOODS AND CLIMATE
I can't definitively say that this mess was "caused" by climate change but it's consistent with the planet's warming.
Torrential rains and flooding have always struck the South and Midwest occasionally in the spring storm season. But this storm - and several others earlier this year and in recent years - have proven especially torrential and disastrous.
For instance, this is Kentucky's second "100 year rainstorm" in less than two months.
Climate change turbocharges storms, and makes what would have been a heavy rain especially torrential. In other words, the weather setup that is causing this week's flood disaster might have happened anyway without climate change.
But chances are the rain associated with it is much more intense than it would have been in a cooler world. So the flooding is worse than it otherwise would be.
VERMONT WEATHER
The weather will be far from perfect for the next few days, but you have to expect that around here in early April.
The good news is forecasters have somewhat backed off from the idea of freezing rain in eastern Vermont and the Green Mountains.
There could still be patchy ice up high in the mountains. Swaths of the Northeast Kingdom should also be cold enough for freezing rain this afternoon and tonight.
Those temperatures will be marginal, so the ice will be patchy. It'll be enough to make some of the roads up that way treacherous today and tonight, but very likely not enough to create some power outages.
The other trouble spot today is the northern Champlain Valley. Ice won't be a problem there, but gusty winds might.
A wind advisory is up in the central and northern Champlain Valley from mid-afternoon today to after midnight tonight. Gusts could reach up to 50 mph. The rain falling during this time period might tamp the wind gusts down a little though.
Everybody will be rainy this afternoon and tonight. It won't really come down that hard, though, so this won't cause any flooding. It'll make mud season a little worse than it already is, but that's about it.
Sunday is looking a little more optimistic than earlier forecasts, especially the further north and west you go. After a gray morning that will carry the risk of a little lingering rain, we expect some sun in the afternoon.
It won't be all that warm with highs mostly in the 40s, but still, not bad for early April.
The next problem is Monday night and Tuesday, when a potent little disturbance and blast of chilly air invade. There won't be much accumulation, but the timing looks lousy. At this point, some heavy snow showers look like they might come through right during the Tuesday morning commute.
It'll be enough snow in many areas to make the roads slick and awful. Stay tuned for updates on that.
After that, the weather pattern is shifting for awhile, anyway, in which we'll see mostly near normal temperatures and no blockbuster storms in or near Vermont as we head into the middle of the month.