Tuesday Morning Storm Update: Havoc Nationwide; In Vermont Icy Mix To Canadian Border

People try to free cars stuck on ice and snow amid subzero
wind chills in (checking notes) Waco, Texas.

The mad, mad, mad weather of February continues, with widespread power outages in the South affecting millions, a growing death toll,  tornadoes, every kind of precipitation in the book, and finally, a glimmer of hope that this will all end. 

Meanwhile, here in Vermont, the latest winter storm turned into a sleety mess all the way to the Canadian border, and we're watching the next storm for Thursday night. More on that in a minute.

First, as usual, we need to summarize the awfulness going out in much of the nation right now.  5 million people had no electricity across the nation, 4 million of them in Texas. 

CNN is reporting at least 15 deaths so far, mostly due to crashes on icy highways.

The famous phrase, "Houston, we have a problem," has never been more true than today, and it applies to all of Texas, really. 

The crisis involving the power grid in Texas worsened overnight.  Intense cold has frozen equipment at gas generated power stations, shutting at least 30 of them down.   Despite the current narrative, frozen out wind turbines are not the main issue.  Reports are probably 2 percent of the state's wind turbines went offline because of the extreme weather. 

With record temperatures statewide, demand is through the roof. So practically the entire electrical system in Texas shut down.  The result is roughly 4 million homes and businesses in Texas without power. Some people have had no power since yesterday morning. 

Homes now have interior temperatures below freezing and frozen pipes are bursting all over.  I greatly fear that news will emerge of many deaths from exposure to the cold due to this situation. This is especially true among the elderly and the poor, who don't have the resources to move to a toastier refuge or buy supplies to keep them warm. 

So, watch this space. 

The extreme weather is causing all kinds of weirdness. One instance: Arctic sea smoke was seen off of Galveston. That's steam coming off the warm waters and condensing in the frigid air. Arctic sea smoke is common in places like New England.  In coastal Texas, not so much.  

Lake effect snow flurries were reported downwind from small lakes and bayous around Houston.  Such activity is often seen coming off lakes here in the Great White North - including off of Lake Champlain. But Houston?

The high temperature in Oklahoma City Monday was just 4 degrees.   And OKC managed to do that despite sunny skies! At last report early this morning, it was 10 below in OKC, and the temperature was still dropping. If it makes it to 12 below, it will be the second coldest reading on record there. 

Ahead of the cold front, a deadly tornado struck coastal North Carolina, killing three and injuring 10, NPR reports this morning. 

Elsewhere,  at least three tornadoes touched down in northwest Florida and southwest Georgia, injuring at least one person  More tornadoes are possible today and tomorrow ahead of the second winter storm coming through the South.

That second storm will produce another wave of snow, sleet and freezing rain on top of what is already there in Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana.  This second storm will add another stripe of snow and destructive ice up the Appalachian chain in the coming two days. 

At least there are signs the end of the winter siege is coming.  Grand Forks, North Dakota went above zero last evening for the first time since February 5. 

Next Monday, the forecast high temperatures are 52 in Oklahoma City, 60 in Dallas and 66 in Houston

VERMONT IMPACTS

That trend toward mixed precipitation moving more and more north continued overnight, and as of this morning, sleet was falling all the way north to the Canadian border.

Traffic on snow packed Fairfield Hill Road in St.
Albans, Vermont Tuesday morning as sleet
made things even a bit more slippery. 

This is cutting down on snow accumulation totals, but will make cleaning up the accumulation heavier and harder. So far, it seems like accumulations are in the two to six inch range across most of Vermont.  

As of 5:30 a.m., my place at St. Albans had accumulated just 3.2 inches of snow and sleet and sleet was falling at the time.  Light sleet continued on after that, and it was still coming down as sleet as of 8:30 a.m around here. 

All this is a lot less than expected, at least in the northern half of the state. 

Warm air really moved in aloft over southern Vermont.  A temperature inversion is keeping most areas down there as freezing rain. But to give you an idea of how warm it is aloft, strong downslope winds are pulling the warm air up high down to the surface in Bennington, where it was 41 degrees early this morning. 

Since there was much more sleet than freezing rain in Vermont, so ice didn't cling to trees much. So power failures aren't a big issue. Some ice is clinging to trees in far southern Vermont, but there's only a few isolated outages down there. 

An intrusion of dry air into the storm system was starting to make precipitation come down at a lighter pace as of mid-morning across Vermont.  This state of affairs will continue through the day. However, that warm air aloft will start to erode, so precipitation should turn back to snow. In the north especially, we are in for another one to possibly as much as three inches of additional snow once things switch back. Maybe a little more in the mountains. 

Needless to say, the roads are crappy through the region. Though crews are out, the roads will never get perfect until the snow and stuff ends tonight. 

The next storm down the pike continues to look snowier and snowier, the opposite trend this current storm ran. The projected path of the storm Thursday and Friday keeps going more and more east, so we'll stay in the cold air on the western flank of the storm.

There's even a low chance the next storm's projected path could go so far to the east that some of us miss out on the heavier snow.

Everyone expects plenty more adjustments to the forecast for the next storm after today, so we should sit back, relax and see how it plays out.