Hurricane Delta Update; Vermont Freeze, Drought, Storms And Rain

Hurricane Delta is behaving pretty much as forecasters have thought all along as it approaches the Louisiana coastline toward evening. 

Hurricane Delta on a approach to Louisiana this morning.

That "weakening" trend that was predicted was starting to happen, but that doesn't really matter at this point. Delta will clobber Louisiana. 

The hurricane as of early this morning had top winds of 120 mph and was about 200 miles south of Cameron, Louisiana. 

With upper level winds coming from the southwest, Hurricane Delta will have sort of a lopsided appearance, with the heaviest weather along and east of its center.  It won't look like that classic, spherical storm with a sharp eye right in the middle. 

Those upper level winds, and coolish waters near the coast will contribute to the storm's weakening trend today.

Weakening does not mean weak in this case.  There will be still be damaging hurricane force winds in Louisiana and destructive storm surges. 

Hurricane Delta will come ashore probably no more than 15 miles or so east of where Hurricane Laura did in late August. Laura really did a number on the city of Lake Charles, Louisiana. 

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be too worried about Lake Charles with the way this latest hurricane is developing.  With Hurricane Delta going by to the east of Lake Charles, winds won't be quite as bad there as they would be further east. They could gust to hurricane force there, but strongest winds would avoid Lake Charles. 

Had Delta been the only hurricane hitting the area this year, Lake Charles would suffer quite a bit of tree damage, pretty extensive power outages and a little structural damage here and there. 

However, as mentioned yesterday, Lake Charles has not had nearly enough time to recover from Hurricane Laura.  The wind will easily rip off a lot of those  thousands of blue tarps covering damaged roofs.  That will expose the interior of buildings to the hurricane's torrential rains which will cause a lot of water damage.

There's also piles of debris left over from Laura.  Much of that debris will be blown around by the wind, creating projectiles that will cause even more damage to homes and businesses.  Highways heading out of Lake Charles were jammed with traffic Friday as people wisely fled the city. 

Hurricane Delta will also hit areas relatively unscathed by Laura, causing destructive storm surges and flooding from torrential rains as far east at New Orleans and beyond.

It is very rare for hurricanes to hit basically the same spot twice in one season, but it's not unheard of. In 2004, Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne came ashore right around Stuart, Florida within three weeks of each other. 

VERMONT UPDATE

Burlington, Vermont had its first real frost and freeze of the season this morning, ending the growing season there (Most of the rest of Vermont had killing frosts in mid-September.

This means the growing season in Burlington was right around average this year. The last freeze of the season in the spring was on May 9 and the first frost of the autumn was August 9.  Both dates were two days later than average, so the length of Burlington's growing season, at least was exactly as it ought to be. 

Just a little bit of drought improvement in 
Vermont this week. Orange shades are drought
Yellow is just "abnormally dry"

Temperatures will be in a bit of a yo-yo pattern for the next several days. Some days, like today, will be cool. Saturday will be warmer than normal, followed by a pretty decent cool down for Sunday. Rinse and repeat. 

These ups and downs imply that there will be some storms, or at least some cold and warm fronts around.  This further suggests rain. And we will get some.  Which is great because we need to continue picking away at the drought in Vermont. 

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor, released yesterday, shows a little, tiny bit of improvement in Vermont after last week's rains. 

Nearly 30 percent of the state, mostly in the Northeast Kingdom, is still in severe drought.  That's unchanged from a week earlier. 

However, the percentage of the state in moderate drought fell from about 76 percent to 57 percent. Last week, the entire remainder of the state was abnormally dry.  That's still almost true, but a tiny sliver of southwestern Vermont is no longer considered "dry."

Rainfall so far this month has been near normal.  A cold front later tomorrow will create a band of showers and thunderstorms. That will put down some light rain, maybe a quarter of an inch, across northern Vermont especially. Every little bit helps!

There's still a chance some of Saturday's storms could turn out to be locally severe, which is a bit odd for October, but whatever. 

A wetter cold front could come through Tuesday. If all goes to plan, and that is a real if, the cold front could collect some leftover moisture from Hurricane Delta and dump a half inch to an inch of rain on us. Again, that would give us continued progress toward relieving the drought, but not entirely eliminate it. 

At least we seem to be headed in the right direction.