Current Weather Pattern Much Like '91 "Perfect Storm" But This Time Without The Drama

Damage from the "Perfect Storm" in Scituate, Massachusetts 
back in 1991.  Photo from the Boston Globe.

The weather geek in me is wowed by the current weather pattern because of its striking resemblance to this time of year as 1991.  

That was when the so-called "Perfect Storm" was battering New England and Canada, and an extreme unprecedented blizzard and intense cold was hammering the Midwest.

Before anybody panics, this won't be Death And Destruction week, at least not to the degree of 1991. There are enough differences between the set up in 1991 and the way things are arranged this week to spare the United States from storms as historic as those nearly three decades ago.  

The most famous piece of the 1991 puzzle was the Perfect Storm.  That storm was made famous by the book and subsequent movie about the sinking of the fishing boat Andrea Gail.   The Perfect Storm also caused a lot of coastal destruction from storm surges and massive waves in southeastern Canada and coastal New England and Mid-Atlantic States.

The Perfect storm became such a monster as Hurricane Grace merged with a powerful non-tropical storm off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes. 

In a similar vein, major Hurricane Epsilon developed rapidly far out in the Atlantic Ocean and is involved with a non-tropical storm.  At its peak last night it had maximum winds of 115 mph.  The main difference this time is Epsilon and its parent storm are further east, so it's not having nearly as much of an impact on the Northeast as the Perfect Storm.

The New England coast can expect some swells and maybe some minor splash over flooding from this, but nothing to get too scared about. The storm will really wind up in the North Atlantic, causing some incredibly rough seas up there. 

Within a few days of the Perfect Storm, at Halloween on on November 1, an incredible blizzard hit the upper Midwest, especially Minnesota.  More than two feet of snow socked Minneapolis, and much of the state was paralyzed for days. Duluth received 36.9 inches of snow. 

An even more incredible part of this storm was the cold that followed. Temperatures were in the minus teens in Iowa and in the 20s below zero in Minnesota. Many records were set for the coldest for so early in the season. 

The Halloween blizzard of 1991 in Minnesota during
an extreme weather pattern that year.

The weather pattern, though not as fierce for the United States as in 1991 still includes quite a bit of drama. 

Winter storm watches, warnings and advisories stretch along the northern tier of the United States from Washington State to Upper Michigan. 

That's an awful lot of real estate to simultaneously experiencing winter weather this early in the season. 

In the northern Rockies, temperatures in the northern Rockies are forecast to fall below zero later this week with highs only in the teens this weekend. Pretty wintry! 

Vermont was pretty much spared from the extremes in the autumn weirdness of 1991.  Little precipitation fell here. The weather turned somewhat chilly, but nothing that odd for this time of year.

This year's episode is looking wetter than in 1991, with frontal zones and storms expected to produce a soaking rain for Vermont for the first part of next week.  Still, I don't anticipate any extreme, wacko weather around here.