The New England Rain Derby, A Derecho, And Snow?

Fall colors pop in my St. Albans, Vermont yard amid dark
clouds and rain today.

 As of mid-morning, it was raining outside by hacienda in St. Albans, Vermont, another installment of drought relieving rain coming down. 

Though it looks like rainfall won't be quite as heavy as originally forecast, it will be another slight blow to the lingering drought over New England. 

It turns out some of the best moisture will go by well to Vermont's east, but we're still looking at as much as a half inch of rain in western Vermont today, with around three quarters of an inch east of the Green Mountains. 

That's respectable, if not overwhelming.

For fans of rain, there's more potential good news.  Current forecasts have a strong, slow moving cold front moving through Friday, with a storm forming along it and moving northward through New England. 

There's potential, at least, for this storm to grab a nice slug of moisture and dump a lot of rain on much of New England, including Vermont.  If all goes well - that's still a big if - there could easily be one to two inches of rain with the Friday/Saturday storm. 

It looks like the Friday and Saturday event will be a chilly one as well. Today is cold and damp under the rain, then it warms up to perhaps near 70 again on Thursday, before temperatures crash again. 

The end of the week storm might prove to be the first substantial snowfall of the season on the highest elevations on Vermont, New York and New Hampshire. Several inches of snow could accumulate on the summits. 

The valleys are safe with this one. It'll just be a cold rain. 

Looking further ahead, three's a shot of another rainfall come Tuesday or Wednesday. We're on pace to have a wetter than normal October, which is just what the doctor ordered to help erase the New England summer and early autumn drought 

A DERECHO?!

As noted in earlier posts, we had two rare outbreaks of severe thunderstorms in the North Country, one last Wednesday, the other on Saturday. Those two events were definitely odd for October.

I had thought that the event last Wednesday was not a derecho, but it turns out, upon further analysis, it was.

A derecho is defined as a concentrated swath of severe thunderstorm damage extending at least 240 miles in length.  It must include consistent gusts of 58 mph or greater along its entire path. 

A billboard was bent over in strong winds during
last week's derecho in Johnsville, NY.
Photo via NWS Albany.

The event from October 7 has been officially declared a derecho by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center. It extended more than 320 miles from Lake Ontario to Cape Cod. 

 (There were a couple severe storm reports in northern and central Vermont that day, but that was outside the derecho's path. Far southern Vermont WAS in the path of the derecho). 

This derecho produced one brief tornado in Canajoharie, New York, and numerous gusts over 60 mph through central New York and southern and central New England. Up to half a million homes and businesses lost power. 

Most severe thunderstorms have damaging gusts that last only a few minutes. Derecho winds often last a bit longer. This one featured strong gusts lasting up to 15 minutes. 

Derechos are rare in New England, especially this time of year. About 70 percent of all derechos in the United States happen between May and August.  New England averages one derecho once every four years. 

As destructive as this month's New York and New England derecho was, it was far less intense than the well-publicized, extreme derecho that struck Iowa on August 10.  That storm caused at least $4 billion in damage and destroyed or severely damaged 8,000 homes. Almost all homes in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and within 75 miles of that city had at least some damage. About 14 million acres of farmland was damaged.