So Let's See How All That Weird Weather Is Going

Night time aerial view of the wildfire near Irvine, California
with heavily populated areas visible just to the left of the'fire
Photo is from ABC7 

Yesterday, I talked about how extremely wild and weird the weather is across the United States.

It's worth a check on how things are working out with this, so here's the update:  

CALIFORNIA FIRES

The good news, I supposed, Monday was bad in California, but not as bad as it could have been.

The worst news from the blazes was that two firefighters were critically burned battling a fast moving wildfire near Irvine, California.  That blaze forced the hasty evacuation of 60,000 people from the Irvine area. Another blaze a little to the north forced 5,000 people out of their houses in Yorba Linda. 

It's unclear at this point how many of those homes have burned, but it's clear that firefighters saved a lot of them, for sure. 

Northern California so far has dodge a bullet. The worst weather conditions for wildfires there was over the weekend.  Firefighters managed to suppress new fire starts remarkably well, given the conditions they were facing. 

It ain't over yet. Today, in both northern and southern California, continued strong, gusty winds and incredibly low humidity levels continue the risk of rapidly spreading fires.  Winds subsided overnight in southern California, but were picking up again early this morning.  Those fires near Irvine and Yorba Linda are also nowhere near under control, so those might cause more havoc.

WINTER STORM

The snow and ice in the southern Plains has worked out pretty much as expected. In other words, unprecedented. Winter storm warnings continue as far south as Midland-Odessa, Texas, where snow and freezing rain continue to fall.

Ice accumulating on still leafed-out trees is causing a lot
of damage in Oklahoma. 

The normal high temperature in Midland, Texas today is 74 degrees. The forecast high is just 32 degrees amid continued freezing rain. 

This mess, as expected, extends up through Oklahoma.  In the winter storm zone with all this freezing rain, the leaves are still mostly on the trees. The weight of the ice has those trees crashing down, and that will continue today. 

Television station KOCO reported at least 90,000 homes and businesses in Oklahoma without power.  One couple in Yukon, Oklahoma was resorting to using two by fours to prop up the sagging branches of their prized pecan tree. 

The scope of the cold air remains incredibly impressive. Up in Laramie, Wyoming, it got down to a whopping 26 below zero this morning. That's not wind chill. It's actual temperature. It's obviously the coldest on record for Laramie for October, and it's also the colder than the lowest temperature on record for the entire month of November. This is really something!

Further south, normally temperate Albuquerque, New Mexico endured a record low of 19 degrees, 2.9 inches of snow and winds gusting to 58 mph on Monday. 

I'll have more in a near-future blog post as to how oddly unfrozen water near Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic might have contributed to this weeks winter weirdness in the Rockies and Plains. 

TROUBLE FROM ZETA

Once and likely future Hurricane Zeta is still a big threat to the U.S. Gulf Coast.  Zeta made landfall as  a hurricane last night in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It was the third time that region has been hit by a hurricane this year. 

Because of its interaction with land, Zeta at last check was a tropical storm with top winds of 70 mph. It is expected to strengthen into a hurricane again today in the warm waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico. 

Zeta will come ashore sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening somewhere near New Orleans, packing winds of up to 85 mph and storm surges of two to six feet.  Any storm surge is dangerous in Louisiana given the wide areas that are barely above sea level. 

This will be a record fifth time Louisiana has been hit by a hurricane or tropical storm this year. On the bright side of sorts, Lake Charles, Louisiana, battered by two destructive hurricanes this year, will only see rather minor effects from Zeta

FLOODS, THEN NORTHEAST SNOW?

Once inland, future Hurricane Zeta will merge with the storm responsible for the wild winter weather in the Plains. Parts of the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic States could see some flooding from this.

Cold high pressure will be pushing into this storm systems, so rain will probably turn to snow with this thing Thursday night in parts of the Northeast.

It's still unclear where the snow will focus, but it looks like the higher risk areas are upstate New York and central New England.  I'm not sure how much snow will fall.

Here in Vermont, the forecast is tricky, to say the least. The storm has a lot of moist air with it, but that cold high pressure system coming in from the northwest is super dry.  Vermont will be in the battle zone between those two systems. That means we'll probably see a big gradient between next to nothing in the far north to maybe a few inches of snow in the high elevations south. 

Of course, a slight jog to the north with this storm would put more areas of Vermont in play for snow. Or if there's a minor shift to the south, this will be a whiff for Vermont.