Photo from CBS Miami shows utter destruction in Fort Myers Beach, Florida.
The big mess left behind in Florida is making it impossible to assess the losses both in terms of life and property from Hurricane Ian.
More damage is on the way as a rejuvenated Ian is poised to hit South Carolina today with a storm surge and winds as high as 85 mph. Hopefully, this will be Ian's big last gasp. Although the hurricane isn't as strong as it was when it hit southwest Florida, it's already causing trouble even before making landfall.
As of earlier this morning, parts of downtown Charleston, South Carolina and other sections of the city were beginning to flood from a storm surge. The flooding is expected to worsen as heavy rains continue and tides rise. Flooding is also forecast deep into South and North Carolina today.
Meanwhile, Florida is only just beginning to pick up the pieces as many areas remain flooded. Emergency responders did rescue at least 700 people in Florida Thursday. This included the miraculous rescue of a man found alive under a large pile of broken lumber - the apparent remains of a house in Fort Myers Beach. At least 2.1 million utility customers in Florida still had no electricity as of early this morning.
So far, the Associated Press has confirmed six deaths, but that total will rise. There's still a lot of missing person reports to sift through, debris to search through and reports to coordinate. Many areas remained flooded, and survivors were gradually being taken out in small boats and kayaks. This will take awhile.
I am hoping the death toll does not exceed 100, as some Florida officials feared yesterday. I'm also hoping most everybody left the hardest hit places like Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island before the storm. Areal footage shows many homes swept clean away, leaving only bare concrete slabs behind. If anyone was in those now gone homes, they didn't survive.
In hardest hit areas of Lee and Charlotte counties in Florida, communications were spotty at best, with cell service severely limited. Cell phone companies were rushing in portable cell towers to help with this issue.
Here in Vermont, the only effects from Ian will be from its outflow. Hurricanes are like chimneys, spewing heat and moisture into the air. That outflow takes the form of a vast shield of high, relatively thin clouds. Those clouds were moving into Vermont this morning and will linger until a cold front arrives early Sunday.
Those high clouds will help prevent another frost from occurring tonight, but the cold front will usher in a renewed risk for frosts and freezes Sunday and Monday nights.
Meanwhile, the tropics look blessedly quiet, other than Ian. A tropical depression in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean dissipated yesterday. A new disturbance just moving off the African coast will need to be watched for possible development into a tropical storm or hurricane. But if that happens, it'll take a few days to do so. It's unknown yet if this will threaten any land areas.
Inside a home in Fort Myers, Florida being hit by storm surge. Note the water outside more than halfway up the doors.
Swaths of southwestern Florida are practically flattened this morning in the wake of Hurricane Ian and unfortunately, early signs are we're going to find out about way too many deaths from this.
As I write this, the sun has only been up for an hour or two in Florida, and emergency workers are only now starting to pick their way through blocked, flooded streets to see if they can rescue anyone from this catastrophe.
Marceno said thousands of 911 calls came in pleading for rescue, but roads are flooded or blocked by debris and bridges are compromised.
He later said he does not know exactly how many people died, and he's hoping the number is smaller than he fears.
To get an idea how endangered people who stayed behind were,click on this linkto show how the intense winds decimated what had been a rather nice mobile home park in Placida, Florida. And this park was not hit by the even more deadly storm surge that swept through heavily developed cities like Fort Myers.
A lot of people in Fort Myers probably had little experience with hurricanes. The city's population haas been rapidly exploding as people move there. The city had about 65,000 residents a decade ago, and now has about 90,000.
However social media has been ominous. Twitter, Facebook and other sites were filled with pleas from people trapped in homes, some of which were flooded to the roofs.
"In Port Charlotte, the storm surge flooded a hospital's emergency room even as fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from the intensive care unit, according to a doctor who works there.
Water gushed down into the ICU, forcing the to evacuate their sickest patients - some on ventilators - to other floors,' said Dr Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Staff members used towels and plastic bins to try to mop up the sudden mess."
The hospital has four floors, but only two can be used now, post hurricane. And the hospital is bracing for waves of people injured by the hurricane.
At least nine hospitals in the region also have no water service this morning, so I don't know how they're going to deal with that.
The remains of the causeway to Sanibel Island. Part of it a bridge, collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico.
"'The fire department has a foot of water in it, ' he said. 'There's people stranded. We just got a call for a 101 and a 98 year old lady, and we cannot get to them in Naples. There's nothing we can do.'
'The calls that we're getting, my God: a 91 year old man on oxygen floating in his house, and he's struggling to breathe. We just got a call from an apartment building: Their roof collapsed. The calls are coming in, frantic calls. The winds are too bad with the power lines down at night, but we got guys that are willing to risk that.'"
Part of the causeway to Sanibel Island collapsed, so you now can't get onto or off the island. It's unknown how many people tried to ride out the storm on hard hit Sanibel Island.
I also don't know if people who remained in the danger zones were able to move up to higher floors as the storm surge came in. It was fast. Atraffic cam in Sanibel Island time lapsed just 30 minutesshowing an intersection going from fine to deep flood waters.
Winds diminished as the storm moved inland, which happens with every hurricane. But torrential rains continue and flash flood emergencies continue across much of northern and central Florida. Water rescues are ongoing, but they're difficult as rains continue, making it impossible to reach people in need.
It's way too early to assess how much monetary damage Ian is causing, but it will surely be in the tens of billions of dollars. Maybe over $100 billion.
The humanitarian disasters, both in the U.S. and overseas keep coming. Ian was probably made worse by climate change, so I would rate this as yet another in a long and fast growing litany of climate disasters.
CBS News video of Hurricane Ian. Click on this link or view below if you see image:
The sky over St. Albans, Vermont had that "cold" look Wednesday evening, the kind of sky that suggests frost might be coming. Frost is in the forecast starting tonight and continuing the next few nights.
We've entered a perilous time for persistent late season gardeners in Vermont, as the chances for frosts and freezes increases exponentially. In fact, most nights tonight through early to mid next week will have a chance of frost at least somewhere in Vermont.
That starts tonight.
Frost advisories are in effect across all of Vermont, with a harsher freeze warning for the Northeast Kingdom. We've had very little frost until now, so tonight will be a critical night if you want to save late season gardens.
Though there's no frost advisory in the Champlain Valley, I still think there cold be a few patches of frost there, if you're inland a bit from Lake Champlain. For instance, if your garden is ten feet from, say Malletts Bay, or near the shore in South Hero or Grand Isle, I'm pretty sure you're safe. If your garden is in a low spot in say, Hinesburg, Williston, or Georgia, I'd take frost precautions.
Remember, frost can form and damage crops even if temperatures technically stay above freezing all night. You usually measure temperatures about five feet off the ground. But on clear, calm nights, it might be 35 degrees at eye level, but 32 right on the ground.
In the frost advisory area, it would probably be sufficient to cover things tonight with sheets, or just bring them in for the night. It's best to remove the sheets very soon after the sun comes out and temperatures start to rise.
If you don't cover plants and get a little frost, you might be able to save them from much damage if you act quickly. When temperatures are still bottoming out and the sun hasn't really come up yet, give the frost covered stuff a good spraying with water. It might help.
You'll need to be prepared for frost through early next week. The frost will probably be a little more scattered and lighter Friday night and Saturday night as it will just a couple degrees warmer than tonight.
A reinforcing shot of dry, cold air comes in Saturday night. At this point, the risk of frost and freezes Saturday night and Sunday night look even bigger than tonight. I'd say there's still some risk of frost Monday and Tuesday nights as well.
On the bright side, I'm told chilly weather and nights with light frosts can cause the fall foliage to really pop and become brilliant. Leaves are now rapidly changing across Vermont, and this pace of foliage change will only intensify in this weather.
As I write this, the extreme destruction continues form Hurricane Ian in Florida, with widespread reports of extreme storm surges and powerful winds.
Storm surge almost reaching to the second floor of houses in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. Photo from Twitter via @itsbethbooker
Officially, Hurricane Ian made landfall at 3:05 p.m. around Cayo Costa, Florida, with top wind speed of 150 mph. Those winds will diminish slowly, and the storm surges will begin to retreat this evening.
I've seen no reports of deaths yet, but that will change. A storm this powerful is unsurvivable for people caught in the wrong places. Such as a house that floats away in a storm surge, or gets crushed by a large, falling tree.
Plus, more people will die in the aftermath, unfortunately. In fact, sometimes the majority of deaths from a hurricane come after the storm has ended. People die of carbon monoxide poisoning because of a wrongly placed generator. They pass away from heat exhaustion in the air conditioning-free home atmosphere during lengthy power outages. They die in cleanup accidents. Maybe a chain saw kicks back in a fatal way.
Yeah, it's pretty grim.
Next up will be inland flooding. I've already seen a report of 18 inches of rain between Punta Gorda and Sarasota, Florida, so you can imagine how bad this will be as the heavy rain spreads towards Orlando and then northeast Florida.
Although reports are only trickling in due to the ongoing storm, it appears that Fort Myers is perhaps the hardest hit city so far.
Much of Fort Myers sank beneath storm surges exceeding ten feet. The flooding includes the city's downtown. Some houses floated away. Others were flooded all the way to the roof. New video also shows houses beginning to float in Naples, Florida. More than a million Floridians were without power late this afternoon, and that number was rising.
Another sad look at Fort Myers, Beach, Florida today
Since the eye of the storm just crossed the coastline about an hour or two before I wrote this, wind and water were still extreme in western Florida.
I guess it's so big at the moment that I can't fully grasp the extent of this disaster yet, so I'm concentrating on relatively small details regarding this storm.
One thing that struck me is that devastating Hurricane Charley in 2004 came ashore in Cayo Costa, Florida in the 3 o'clock hour,just like Ian. Top wind speeds in both Charlie and Ian were about the same, but here's the difference.
Hurricane Charley was small in size compared to giant Hurricane Ian that Charlie's eye and eye wall - the circle of intense thunderstorms around the eye - could easily fit within the eye of Ian with plenty of room to spare.
That's a big part of the reason why Ian's storm surge is so destructive. A large hurricane can stir up a much more severe surge than a smaller-sized storm.
By the way, I'm a little tired of the long tradition of reporters standing out in the middle of the wind and water and waves and yelling into the camera. It's pretty dangerous. And we don't need a person standing out in the extreme conditions to understand the conditions are, well, extreme.
Today, the Weather Channel'sJim Cantore got hit by a large branch in the wind. Thankfully, he wasn't hurt. And Reed Timmer wandered into the back yard of a oceanfront house as the storm surge roared in.
Speaking of dangerous, can I just say a few employers really suck. They can be really evil, at least according to some reports I've seen on social media.
Since it's social media, I can't absolutely verify if these stories are true, but it seems we're back to profits over people and safety.
One company apparently told employees who are forced to evacuate low lying areas, to take their at-home work equipment to shelters, and set up there, and work, dammit! I'm not sure how you'd get sufficient wifi, space and quiet to work at an emergency shelter, but full speed ahead, apparently!
Another employer told employees to come to work as their building is supposedly safe, but as a concession, can bring their children and pets. How accommodating! Like is the building really safe? Like the Amazon warehouse and candle factory in last December's tornadoes?
Even though Ian will be weaker, expect flooding rains in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas as Ian pushes northward.
By the way, in case you were wondering, Ian doesn't look like it will have any effects on us here in Vermont. Dry high pressure settling south from Quebec this weekend will push moisture from Ian eastward out to sea far south of here.
If Ian maintains those 155 mph winds at landfall, it will be the fifth strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. Even if it does start to weaken before landfall, it's too late. It won't weaken enough to prevent most of the inevitable carnage with this.
I expect there's a high chance that Ian will be among the top five, or at least top 10 most expensive hurricanes in U.S. history.
The winds will cause immense destruction, but that's the least of it.
Incredible storm surge flooding in populated areas is expected to unfold as Ian makes landfall probably mid to late afternoon today. The storm surge might be as high as 18 feet above normal water levels in and around Port Charlotte.
That figure is actually higher than forecasts from earlier this morning. The extent of the storm surge also depends on the timing of high tides, of course.
There's more bad news there. As of this morning, the storm surge is expected to come in roughly around the time of high tides.
Storm surges are easily the most dangerous of all the deep hazards of a strong hurricane. The quick surges of water are accompanied by battering waves because of all the wind. Even in a protected harbor the winds stir up strong currents and waves.
A disturbing screen shot I took of the Naples, Florida pier at around 10:15 a.m. People foolishly there as Hurricane Ian's immense storm surge began to make its way toward shore.
So not only does the water get into buildings, it batters those very buildings. I imagine many will not hold up under the onslaught.
The maps show thousands of buildings flooded. I hope all of the 2 million people who were asked to evacuate did so. Sometimes, people don't evacuate because they can't afford it. Gas, lodging, food, everything else costs money and not everybody has that saved up. I don't know the income levels of the neighborhoods in Evan Fisher's flood maps, so I don't know how big a problem this is.
Now, if anybody changed their minds, it's too late. Conditions outside are too rough to evacuate as of this morning. All anybody can do if they didn't evacuate but should have is to hunker down and hope for the best.
The only glimmer of good-ish news in this storm surge forecast is it now appears Hurricane Ian will make landfall south of Tampa Bay, not north of that location. That will somewhat limit the storm surge in Tampa Bay. Forecasts there call for four to six feet of surge. That's really, really bad, but not as terrible as it could have been.
The other enormous problem with Ian will be inland flooding. The storm's forward motion is at a crawl, so rainfall rates of up to three inches per hour will linger over the same spots for a long time. Up to 20 inches of rain is in the forecast for western, central and northeastern Florida. Extreme flooding will result.
This particular danger zone includes the Orlando metro area, which can expect more than a foot of rain and winds gusting to well over hurricane force at times. Not surprisingly, Disney World is closed, for only the eight time since 1971.
Even before the main show, Ian has already caused a lot of damage. Key West suffered its third highest storm surge on record last night. Outer rain bands spit out tornadoes that caused damage in scattered areas of the state
Conditions were rapidly going downhill in southwestern Florida by mid-morning. As of mid-morning in southwestern Florida, wind gusts were approaching hurricane strength along the coast. Heavy rain was lashing most of western and central Florida already.
Up until now, this had been a fairly quiet hurricane season, at least compared to recent years. But they've always said even in quiet years, it only takes one to create a cataclysm. Ian is tragically proving that point.
A tipping point is when a threshold is reached in which something big will happen. Once you get to the tipping point, a substantial change is inevitable.Carbonbrief.org, I think, explains tipping pointswith this little relatable example:
"Imagine a child pushing themselves from the top of a playground slide. There is a point beyond which it is too late for the child to stop themselves from sliding down. Pass the threshold and the child continues inevitably towards a different state - at the bottom of the slide rather than the top."
Climate tipping points create changes that do happen much slower than the kid on the playground slide. But they're fast enough go have big implications for us, or your children or grandchildren.
As Science.org explains, in the dry language that scientists use that still scare the bejeezus out of us.:
"Climate tipping points are conditions beyond which changes in part of the climate system become self-perpetuating. These changes may lead to abrupt, irreversible and dangerous impacts with serious implications for humanity."
According to the Paris climate agreement, we need to limit the world to a 1.5 degree Celsius or less of global warming. We're already close, as temperatures since the Industrial Age began have gone up by 1.1 degrees.
Looking at this report, let's start with the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Climate change is already causing a lot of melt from those ice sheets. The melt water flows into the oceans, which makes sea levels rise and increasing coastal flooding across the globe.
You'd think if we rein in global warming, we can reduce the amount of melt from these ice sheets and things would be relatively copacetic.
But, as the study suggests, if we go past a certain point. around 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius of warming, we'd reach a point where nothing can stop the ice sheet from melting, even if we entirely shut off global carbon emissions.
That could lead to the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets entirely melting. The bad news is that would raise sea levels worldwide by 30 feet. The relatively good news is it would take 500 years or so for that to fully happen. But even a foot of sea level rise in a more short term interim is a big issue.
Many of the world's most populated areas are within a foot of sea level. Or just a few feet above sea level, meaning they're prone to flooding during storms if sea level rises.
There's other weird things that can happen if we reach tipping points. A key ocean current in the North Atlantic would stop. The currents have pretty much always kept Europe fairly warm in the winter, given that much of the region is so far north.
For instance, Paris is just below 49 latitude north. For comparison's sake, the Vermont/Quebec border is at 45 degrees latitude. So Paris is north of Vermont.
But those ocean currents keep Paris' normal January high temperatures in the mid-40s, compared to the upper 20s in Vermont. If those warming ocean currents or slow down significantly, Europe could become much colder in the winter despite the overall global warming trend. I think summers would continue to warm in Europe, so the end result would be a much more extreme climate.
Which would put Europe's climate somewhat closer to that of Siberia, where it can be in the 40s and 50s below zero or even colder in the winter, but in the 90s or even near 100 in the summer.
You can imagine the kinds of disruptions this type of European climate change would cause.
By the way, if we go beyond these tipping points by increasing global temperatures further, we get into even more tipping points. Above two degrees Celsius, we could lose the Amazon rain forest, which helps regulate the global temperature.
Worse, permafrost in the Arctic would really, really melt, releasing more carbon and methane into the atmosphere, which would help accelerate climate change despite humans' attempts to cut back on emissions.
It's not like it's now too late, that we shouldn't even try to reduce emissions. It's not too late, but we ought to act fast. The quicker carbon emissions decline, the better the world will be for many generations to come.
A pretty strong disturbance in the air flow was approaching us from New York Monday morning and early afternoon. Ahead of this disturbance,the sun broke through and it was actually an unexpectedly nice, mild day.
Sunshine boosted temperatures into the 60s to near 70, which destabilized the atmosphere some.
A band of showers and thunderstorms approached. The northern end of it in particular weakened noticeably on approach to Vermont. But as this band got into the Champlain Valley, thunderstorms erupted along the back end of it, right before a break in the clouds.
The result was some surprise downpours, thunder and rainbows. The neat thing about it is how fast those storms developed. Here in St. Albans, it appeared moderate showers would pass by to our north and south with lighter rain for us.
Then a fairly strong thunderstorm developed directly overhead. Same thing happened just to the east of Burlington, and in a few other locations.
As noted, the video I tookof all this shows how the sky began to show instability, the band of rain approached, and then things suddenly erupted into storms, then sun and rainbows. The video is below the update on Ian, that I'll get to in a bit.
I saw no reports of severe weather with this. Just a fun, late season, thundery turn of events. All garden variety in Vermont, as opposed to the terrible threat from Hurricane Ian in Florida
HURRICANE IAN
The hurricane was centered over western Cuba this morning with a large eye visible there from radar images.
Top winds had increased overnight to 125 mph. After Ian emerges from the northwestern coast of Cuba later this morning, it will have an opportunity to strengthen further over very warm water.
There's another problem with Ian other than its strength. Its forward motion will be very slow as it heads toward and into Florida over the next couple of days.
Satellite image from this morning shows the eye of Hurricane Ian getting ready to emerge off of western Cuba into Gulf of Mexico. The warm water in the Gulf should strengthen this dangerous storm even more as it heads toward Florida.
That would prolong the opportunity for more and more water to be pushed onshore with the storm surge, making it worse. The most intense storm surge would be right where Ian comes ashore, and just a little to the south and east of that landfall.
The problem is, although forecasters have narrowed down where they think Ian will come ashore, there's still some question as to whether it will come in near or north of Tampa Bay, or a little south of that. Any of these paths will be catastrophic, but if it moves right over or a tiny bit to the north of Tampa Bay, the damage will be exponentially worse.
Currently, forecasters think the worst storm surge will be somewhere between Fort Myers and Tampa Bay.
The slow movement will also prolong the torrential rainfall, which in turn would make the flooding worse.
At the moment, they're expecting 10 to 16 inches of rain in parts of western and central Florida, with some areas closing in on two feet. Remember, also, all that excessive water trying to drain off the land would get blocked by the storm surge as the water on land tries to reach the sea and bays.
The weather is already deteriorating in Florida with heavy rains across southern portions of the state. Tropical storm conditions are expected by later today, and hurricane conditions by Wednesday morning.
Everybody who had been ordered to evacuate and hasn't yet, should leave now if not sooner. It was heartening in a strange way to seepre-dawn traffic on Interstate 4 eastbound jammed upas people fled coastal homes and went inland.
Anyone in Florida who has not completed their preparations for Ian should get it done today, preferably this morning.
VIDEO:
Sunny day turns briefly dark and stormy in St. Albans, Vermont but the end rewards us with sun showers and rainbows.Click on this link to view, or if you see image below, click on that. The beauty of an autumn storm.
Sunflowers do their best to brighten a fading autumn garden on a damp Monday morning in St. Albans, Vermont.
Good Monday to all!
Given the weather pattern, we'll stick with the format we had yesterday, to update a somewhat soggy Vermont, since it's our home state, then move on to hurricanes.
Spoiler: Vermont's weather will continue to be much, much tamer than in all those hurricane zones.
But you knew that already. So on to the damp details.
Rain moved in a little ahead of schedule in Vermont Sunday afternoon. That's OK. Even though it's been quite wet this month, rain is still needed. Ground water in much of the state has not fully recovered from a dry summer.
Yesterday's rains brought the month's precipitation total in Burlington to 6.14 inches. We're now at the 8th wettest September on record. We might move a little higher in the rankings this week, as some more rain is due. Nothing extreme, but precipitation chances are pretty high early this week.
Unfortunately, once again, the northwest corner of Vermont is generally expected the most rain, with more than a half inch through Wednesday. This part of the state doesn't really need the rain that much. Meanwhile, the southeastern part of Vermont, which really does need more wetting is expected to get the least -barely a quarter inch, if that.
We have a little break in the action this morning, with nothing more than scattered, light showers. And the sun might even break through the clouds in some spots at times, imagine that!
But another round of showers comes through this afternoon. We might even have enough instability in the air to trigger a few thunderstorms in the mix.
A pocket of chilly air will hover thousands of feet above us, which will contribute to instability. Any sun this morning might add a little more. So, there'a chance that a couple storms might contain some strong gusty winds and small hail.
Tomorrow will only bring a chance of scattered showers. They'll be more numerous on Wednesday, but again, nothing too heavy. Another spoiler: No guarantees yet, but chances are increasing that the remnants of Hurricane Ian, after it moves ashore later this week, will get shunted out to sea to our south, so at this point the storm won't affect Vermont much, if at all.
So let's talk about Ian, as it's the big news of the day
HURRICANE IAN
Hurricane Ian south of Cuba this morning, with its expected target Florida further north.
It was fascinating, if a little horrifying to watch Ian on satellite images on Sunday. In the morning, it was weak, but it had taken on that "look." The storm had become symmetrical, and it took on the look of a hurricane, even though the storms swirling around the center seemed weak.
At first, anyway. Ian is now undergoing a rapid intensification. It was up to 75 mph this morning, a Category 1 storm. By the time Ian reaches western Cuba early Tuesday morning, it's expected to be a 130 mph powerhouse.
Computer models remain stubbornly divided on the path of Ian after Cuba. Florida is under the gun, but will it be an area on the west coast of the state near or a little north of Tampa? Or will it hit the panhandle, up by Pensacola or Panama City?
By the time Ian gets up to a spot off or near the west coast of Florida, forecasters think it might start to weaken. Strong winds aloft and dry air from the northwest would gradually take the power away from the storm.
Of course, if the weakening trend begins just as Ian is making landfall say, a little north of Tampa, it won't matter all that much, as it will still be a major hurricane.
If Ian takes a course toward the Florida panhandle, it will have a greater shot at weakening noticeably before landfall, but that doesn't mean anyone is out of the woods.
Often, when a hurricane starts to weaken offshore before hitting land, the oceans beneath the storm doesn't immediately get the memo.
The big storm surge that was building when the hurricane was at peak intensity keeps going as the storm itself begins to fade. The most famous example of this might be Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It was a monster category 5 storm in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, but weakened to Category 3 at landfall.
However, the storm surge was still Category 5 even after Katrina began to diminish, and New Orleans ended up drowning.
I'm not saying Hurricane Ian will be another Katrina, but Florida better keep an eye on storm surges in particular. That's especially true if the storm comes close to Tampa Bay.
No matter which of the two paths Ian takes, it's trajectory would shove water up into Tampa Bay, so I'd expect at least some storm surge flooding there later this week. Remember, storm surges are the most dangerous hazard from a hurricane. Just ask the people up in Atlantic Canada, who dealt with Fiona's surge over the weekend.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, it's gotten a bit quiet again, which is a good thing. Tropical storms Gaston and Hermine have dissipated.
There's a disturbance roughly halfway between Africa and the Lesser Antilles that has a strong chance at developing into a tropical depression soon. So far, it's not any kind of immediate threat.
TYPHOON NORU
In the Philippines, a typhoon this weekend created a nasty, dangerous surprise.
Typhoon Noru slammed a large, heavily populated section of the nation Sunday.
"Typhoon Noru put on a spectacular, unexpected and extremely dangerous rapid intensification feat in the waters just east of the Philippines on Saturday,becoming one of the fastest-intensifying cyclones in modern Earth history. Noru's peak 1-minute wind strength, as gauged by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center increased from 50 mph tropical storm strength) at 2 p.m. EDT Friday to 155 mph (top end of the category 4 range) at 2 p.m. EDT Saturday."
Noru ended up making landfall in the Philippines with top wind speeds that had decreased just slightly to 130 mph.
That storm has already killed at least five people. The five were rescuers trying to retrieve people from floodwaters when a wall collapsed on them.
Noru also forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate and created widespread flooding. In the capitol, Manila, classes and government agencies closed as the storm lashed the vast city with heavy rain and wind.
VIDEO
If you'd like an idea of the kind of destruction a hurricane storm surge can cause, watch this incredibly sad news report from Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, Canada. Click on this link if you don't see the image, below. Otherwise click on image to watch on YouTube
A perfect autumn afternoon in St Albans, Vermont on Saturday. Those will be the last clear blue skies we see for several days.
I hope you enjoyed Vermont's perfect September weather on Saturday.
What could be better? Deep blue skies, a few puffy clouds, a cool breeze, and spots of fall color here and there, promising more to come.
I'm sure more sunshine is on the way, eventually, but not for awhile. Starting today, we're stuck under the clouds again for several days.
An upper level area of low pressure looks like it's getting stuck just to our west, and will only slowly get its act in gear and move slowly out of our hair. But not until Thursday at the earliest.
Within this big patch of unsettled weather, several disturbances will come through, each triggering some rain. It's not always easy to time out the worst of the rains, but it looks like one batch comes through this afternoon and evening, and another during the day Monday.
Unlike the past two storms, this one won't include particularly heavy rain. But it will add to this September's reputation as a soggy month. Burlington only needs 0.16 inches of rain out of this to have us enter the top 10 list of wettest Septembers.
Total rainfall today through Wednesday night looks to be about a half inch, give or take.
Light showers and clouds will persist midweek. Some flurries might hit the mountain summits again Wednesday or Thursday nights, but again, it won't amount to anything. We might get some clearing by the end of the week, but that will set us up for a risk of some frost Thursday night. We'll see!
Another sign of impending winter is what this upper level low will do to areas just downwind from the Great Lakes. Heavy lake effect rain showers are likely for the next few days downwind of lakes Erie and Ontario. It will be too warm for the more famous lake effect snows. But the same process that causes the lake effects snows will be responsible for the rain.
Cool winds blowing across warmer lake waters will pull up moisture and create those showers.
FIONA UPDATE
Hurricane Fiona is finally gone, but the devastation in Atlantic Canada is something else.
Screen grab from video showing houses being swept out to sea in Canada by storm Fiona.
Many other Atlantic Canada homes suffered serious damage as roofs blew off, and windows caved in under the pressure of the hurricane gusts. Many other homes were damaged as large trees fell on them.
In Halifax, Nova Scotia, just as a for instance, 100 people were hastily evacuated from an apartment complex when the roof blew off. In Prince Edward Island, 95 percent of the population lost electricity.
This storm is consistent with climate change. Sea surface temperatures are way above normal off the Canadian coast, and that allowed the storm to maintain its intensity, even as it transitioned from a true hurricane to a sort of North Atlantic storm hybrid.
Hurricanes or transitioning hurricanes have hit Atlantic Canada before, but this one was very likely the most intense on record.
TROPICAL STORM IAN
Despite extra efforts by the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service to obtain more detailed atmospheric data, we still don't have a lot of clarity yet on how Tropical Storm Ian will affect Florida.
It does still seem Florida is the target, but at this point, it could hit anywhere on Florida's west coast or in the state's panhandle.
The tropical storm as of early this morning had top winds of just 50 mph, which isn't that big a deal. But it does look poised to rapidly intensify into a powerful hurricane as it makes its way northwest toward Cuba.
Forecasts for Ian's strength as it approaches Florida is also divided. Some forecasts call for some weakening, while others keep it pretty powerful as it nears the coastline late this week.
The view of storm damage from Fiona from the offices of the Wreckhouse Press in Newfoundland.
As expected, Hurricane Fiona, while in transition to a non-tropical powerhouse of a storm, slammed into eastern Nova Scotia overnight.
Its central pressure at landfall was estimated to be at 932 millibars, which would probably make it the most intense storm in Canadian history.
Reports were only just starting to trickle out of the Canada Fiona zone early this morning as I wrote this, so we don't have all the details yet. Winds were still howling up there at dawn.
About 410,000 people in Nova Scotia were without power this morning. I know there are lots of downed trees, coastal flooding, inland flooding, so yeah, it's a mess in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and nearby areas. Video emerging from Nova Scotia documents downed trees everywhere.
Somebody in Nova Scotia REALLY didn't want their trampoline to blow away in Storm Fiona.
I saw a report out of Sydney, Nova Scotia around dawn local time that showed winds there at 61 mph gusting to 88 mph. Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island police tweeted,"Conditions are like nothing we've ever seen. We are logging reports of downed trees and wires but will only be responding to emergency calls."
The storm will continue on into Labrador today and then head toward southwestern Greenland.
TROPICAL STORM IAN
The next biggy that will be in the news isTropical Storm Ian. As expected, its forecast path has been narrowed down slightly, and Florida seems to be the target, at least for now.
As of this morning, Ian was still a fairly weak tropical storm southeast of Jamaica.
However, conditions have become favorable for strengthening as it moves northwestward through the Caribbean.
Ian is expected to become a hurricane by the time it reaches the Cayman Islands on Monday, and it will be threatening western Cuba by early Tuesday.
From there, Ian becomes a threat to the United States. I think places like Houston and New Orleans can mostly breath a sigh of relief, as Ian doesn't seem like it wants to go that far west in the Gulf of Mexico.
Chances are, Ian will aim for Florida. It won't get near there until Wednesday. Since there's several days to go, the forecast on exactly where Ian might hit are fuzzy. Honestly, it could be anywhere between Miami and Pensacola, or even to the left or right of this range.
Forecasters are worried that Ian could be a powerful hurricane, perhaps Category 3 or higher, as it nears Florida next week.
A worst case scenario would be Ian as a major hurricane directly entering Tampa Bay, or going by it just to the west. That would push huge amounts of water further into the bay, badly flooding a huge expanse of low lying, heavily populated land.
Of course, we don't know whether anything like that will happen. It's just a sign that people in the possible cross hairs of Ian ought to be starting to get their hurricane plans in gear.
This isn't scientific, but it seems to me that in the past few decades tropical storms and hurricanes that begin with the letter "I" seem to end up being particularly nasty. Ida last year. Irma in 2017. Also, Ike in 2008, Ivan in 2004, and who in Vermont can forget Irene in 2011?
There's a couple of other tropical storms spinning way out in the Atlantic Ocean. They are Gaston, not far from the Azores and Hermine, a little off the west coast of Africa. Neither storm looks like a big threat, and neither will get particularly strong.
Golden evening light and dark clouds behind a sharp autumn cold front Thursday in St. Albans, Vermont.
As expected, it's chilly today, probably the coldest Vermont day we've seen since the end of April.
Of course, that's not to say the cool breezes, the morning clouds, the risk of mountain top snow flurries and the chances of pockets of frost tonight are unusual.
I actually did see video of it snowing in Lake Placid, New York this morning. All this is par for the course for late September.
Maybe less so than in the past, but still, we're blasting through autumn, heading for winter.
Under the climate change "new normal" we're currently in, this month looks like it's going to work out to something you should expect in September in our now- altered world. It'll be a contrast to recent record hot Septembers, so I guess you can enjoy the fact you haven't roasted this month.
However, by historical standards, this September would definitely be warmer than what would have been expected.
Cool snaps like we're having now, or even near record cold will will continue to happen in September once in awhile. But over the years, they'll gradually become less frequent, or not as chilly as the weather we're having now.
As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, frost was pretty common even in the Champlain Valley in late September. The record lows in Burlington this week are pretty much all in the mid to upper 20s.
You can feel the chill in the air just looking at this photo in St. Albans, Vermont Thursday after a sharp autumn cold front passed through.
So it could be worse.
As for frost, the best chances of tonight are over the Adirondacks and southern Vermont.
You'd think the Northeast Kingdom would be under the gun for frost, and it will be close up there. But the wind should continue to blow from the northwest overnight.
The strongest winds will be east of the Green Mountains. Nothing scary, just a breeze, really.
That potentially frost-preventing breeze tonight in the Northeast Kingdom has everything to do with Hurricane Fiona
HURRICANE FIONA
Rare hurricane warnings are up in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and parts of Newfoundland, Canada.
Environment Canada is telling residentsof these areas to be prepared for winds exceeding 100 mph in some spots, with the risk of structural damage. Serious flooding, storm surge, coastal erosion are all in play as Fiona races northward toward Canada tonight and into tomorrow.
One good way to measure a storm's strength is to look at how low the air pressure is at the storm's center. Fiona has the potential to be the strongest storm in history to hit anywhere in Canada, if you measure by central air pressure. Some forecasts have Fiona's air pressure at 930 millibars when it makes landfall in eastern Nova Scotia tomorrow\. The record strongest storm in Canada had a central air pressure of 940 millibars.
Fiona, as it heads north, will be gradually turning from a tropical system to a non-tropical low. Which means it will expand in size to engulf a large area. High wind warnings extend as far west as Down East Maine.
THE NEXT ONE
A tropical depression has formed in the Central Caribbean Sea, as expected. This is one to watch, because there's a high chance it will eventually turn into a hurricane. It also has a strong chance of eventually hitting the United States.
We just don't know where yet. If it does hit the U.S., the best I can narrow it down to is anywhere between Houston and Florida. Or possibly the Southeastern U.S. As the storm develops, forecasters will begin to be able to narrow down the risk zone.
Skies cleared suddenly over Richmond, Vermont Wednesday after a temperature inversion suddenly lifted. It was almost completely overcast ten minutes before this photo was taken. More clouds began arriving a couple hours later as the next system kept our rather cloudy September going.
Septembers in Vermont often bring us long strings of sunny, mellow pleasant days.
This hasn't been one of those Septembers, as you probably guessed.
We've certainly had nice, bright days this month, but we've also endured strings of cloudy, sometimes downright gloomy days.
It's just the luck of the draw, I guess. We've been victimized by stalled or nearly stalled weather fronts at least three times this month. Frequent storm systems have also been able to take advantage of plenty of moisture working its way up toward us from the Gulf of Mexico.
I guess you can find the beauty in rain, overcast and fog. The spookiness and darkness of it all is pretty interesting, in my view. I put a video up, which you can see at the bottom of the post, that sort of embraced the rain, fog and dreariness we dealt with this past Sunday and Monday.
Today dawned with another round of rain and scattered downpours. Though we'll see glimpses of sun today, a cold front will also bring scattered showers and plunging temperatures this afternoon.
Some sun will break through Friday, but we'll have quite a chill in the air. We'll actually have a rather sunny, though not completely clear weekend before another long stretch of cloudiness takes over.
I don't really have statistics on how this September ranks in terms of cloudiness compared to other Septembers. How do you define a cloudy day, anyway? Does it have to feature a solid overcast, or could you get an hour or two with a few small breaks in the clouds? Is a high, thin overcast in which the sun can filter through a little bit truly a cloudy day?
Yeah, it's subjective.
To me, I'd register this year as a cloudier than average September. Which is contrary to earlier long range forecasts for the month which predicted warmer and drier than average weather.
Early next week, another trough of low pressure will linger nearby, creating another three days in a row or so of cloudy, showery weather.
The cloudiness we've seen this month is a prelude to what normally happens in late autumn in Vermont By November, we can expect near constant gloom. Sorry I'm not cheering you up there.
Part of the problem with late autumn is you get inversions, which is a layer of warm air atop cooler air. This will often leave us sulking under a low overcast. The tops of the mountains poke up above these clouds into sunshine, but the rest of us are stuck under the gloom.
This actually happened during the first half of Wednesday. An inversion kept low clouds, fog and drizzle going through midday. Again, another prelude to late fall. The low overcast persisted in Vermont until increasing south winds abruptly scoured all this out.
Of course, the south winds were announcing the arrival of the new weather system that came through last night and this morning. The sunshine in Vermont was short lived as clouds swept in during the late afternoon and evening.
It's the story of this September, I guess.
Video. If you don't see an image below click on this link to view. Otherwise, click on the image below to watch.
Satellite view of powerful Hurricane Fiona east of the Bahamas this morning.
This week,the Atlantic Ocean has really gotten active with hurricanes, tropical storms and wannabe tropical storms.
As of this morning, we had one major hurricane out there, a tropical storm, a really worrying cluster of storms that will probably turn into a tropical storm, and two other disturbances worth watching.
Some of these will ultimately affect land. So far, up here in New England we're safe, though we'll feel a few effects from that powerful hurricane. Let's take 'em one at a time.
HURRICANE FIONA:
Yesterday I posted about Hurricane Fiona's destructive slap at Puerto Rico, and how its rickety, corruption-riddled electrical grid collapsed in the face of the hurricane.
Fiona also caused quite a bit of damage in eastern Dominican Republic, the Turks and Caicos Islands.
This morning,Hurricane Fiona was formidable, a Category 4 storm with top winds of 130 mph. It'll head northeastward, brushing past Bermuda and flinging tropical storm force winds through that island.
A strong cold front heading into the Northeastern United States will help keep Fiona well off the United States coast. But that same cold storm system will turn the northeastward traveling Fiona more directly northward starting Friday night when its center is far off the southeastern New England coast.
Many things make this bad for Canada. For one thing, Fiona will be racing northward, so won't have much time to weaken over colder waters. Worse, the water isn't that cold. Sea surface temperatures off the coast of New England and Canada are much, much warmer than normal, and that will slow down any weakening trend.
The expected track of Hurricane Fiona is worrisome for those in eastern Canada
Still, Fiona will be making a transition from hurricane to large non-tropical storm, which means it will expand in size.
Intense winds are forecast over the weekend, especially in eastern Nova Scotia, and flooding rains are expected in the rest of the region. This could be the deepest, strongest hurricane on record in that region.
Here in New England, the expanding Fiona, combined with that strong polar high coming in, will create pretty strong north winds starting tomorrow and especially on Friday.
Here in Vermont, the winds won't be nearly strong enough to cause damage, but you'll notice a lot of autumn leaves blowing through the air.
The good news for us is the persistent winds Thursday and Friday nights will keep frost from being as widespread as it would otherwise be in this weather pattern.
TROPICAL STORM GASTON
This tropical storm formed yesterday way out over the central Atlantic Ocean, sort of halfway between Virginia and Portugal.
It had top winds of 65 mph this morningand probably will get a little stronger. I wouldn't worry too much about this one. It'll just meander out there in the central Atlantic for a few days. It'll just be a storm that bothers the fishies.
DISTURBANCE 98L
The National Hurricane Center gives a number and letter to areas of suspicious tropical weather that might develop into something. They're keeping a very close eye on one called 98L. Unlike Gaston, this one is worth worrying about.
Lots of tropical activity in the Atlantic this morning.
It's southeast of the Leeward Islands at the moment, headed toward the Caribbean Sea. It's almost guaranteed to develop into a tropical storm, and perhaps eventually a hurricane. Although it's too soon to tell what it will eventually do, many computer models bring this system into the Gulf of Mexico or near the southeastern United States around the end of this month. Stay tuned!
TWO OTHER DISTURBANCES
One other disturbance way out in the tropics is not expected to develop anytime soon, but still bears watching. Yet another thing about to enter the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa has a better chance of developing, but early indications are it will quickly turn north and not bother anyone. We hope.
Wreckage of a Puerto Rican home after Hurricane Fiona. In a glimmer of reassurance, the sign was written after the hurricane by the person who lived there and translates to "I am alive."
Puerto Rico this morning is reeling from massive flash flooding and power outages thanks to Hurricane Fiona. The entire island of Puerto Rico was blacked out as Hurricane Fiona swept over the island Sunday.
That was a function of both the fury of the storm and the scandal of a badly mismanaged power grid.
Winds gusted past 100 mph in communities along the south shore of Puerto Rico, so you can understand why power would have failed there. On the northern end of the island, in places like San Juan, winds only gusted to 40 to 50 mph.
In a normal world, those winds, combined with the severe flooding would have caused some outages. But the fact that everyone is blacked out is an infrastructure scandal and not entirely a hurricane disaster.
"LUMA Energy, the private company that handles the transmission and distribution of electricity in Puerto Rico, stated that full restoration could take days 'due to the magnitude and scope of the blackout,' but the company has the necessary resources to respond to Fiona's effects on the grid."
Given LUMA's track record, and the power authorities in Puerto Rico before that, I'm not convinced.
"The hurricane winds that knocked out power to the entire island of Puerto Rico over the weekend encountered an electrical grid that experts liken to a house of cards: a fragile, decrepit, patchwork system running on old equipment that has failed to substantially modernize since the U.S. territory's deadliest storm, Hurricane Maria, swept through five years before."
A state-run utility that should manage electricity generation is bankrupt and negotiations to restructure a nasty $9 billion in debt is still mired in mediation and recrimination. Even before Fiona, power disruptions were increasing in Puerto Rico, suggesting incompetence or worse.
Most of Puerto Rico's power is generated on the southern side of the island. Transmission lines run north through mountainous terrain, then on to the more heavily populated north. Storms in the remote mountains often disrupt these transmission lines. Puerto Rico ought to rethink its power grid, but that takes tons of money, which the territory clearly doesn't have, and imagination, which seems to be lacking, too.
Hurricane Fiona is forecast to make a beeline for far eastern Canada as a powerful storm over the weekend.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has funded billions to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria, notes the Washington Post. A large share of that money was to go toward modernizing the electrical grid, but distribution of those funds have been slow to say the least.
It'll be even slower now. Rainfall on Puerto Rico was cataclysmic, with up to 33 inches of rain reported. Some of the flooding was even worse than what happened during Maria.
Fiona moved on to trash eastern Dominican Republic with more wind and flood damage. It cruised through the eastern Turks and Caicos today after having gotten even stronger, with top winds of 115 mph.
Forecasters predict the hurricane will continue northward, passing close to Bermuda as a powerful Category 4 storm.
A strong cold front that will give us in Vermont a chilly end of the week will keep Fiona well off the U.S East Coast. However, chances are growing that Fiona, while transitioning to a powerful non-tropical storm, will blast eastern Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador over the weekend.
Video:
Summary from Inside Edition, either click on this linkor click on image below:
Thick, heavy clouds in St. Albans, Vermont Monday amid the drizzle and repeated downpours that swept through all day.
Flood and flash flood alerts crackled over the airwaves in Vermont during Monday's downpours, but based on the lack of reports, I don't think there was any serious issues.
Still, given the rainfall rates in some areas, I'm sure there were pockets of back road washouts, water collecting in low spots, that kind of thing. As expected, larger rivers rose by two to five feet, but since they were low before the storm, they didn't flood.
I think what saved the day from any bigger flooding were the odd breaks in between the downpours. There were a lot of them, but they zipped right along. So you'd get a five to fifteen minute dump of heavy rain, then a half hour of just light rain or drizzle, rinse and repeat all day.
Those little calm periods between the downpours likely kept things in check.
Burlington received 4.4 inches of rain in just a week. So the month will certainly end with above normal rainfall, which was needed. It very likely won't score in the top ten list of wettest Septembers, and certainly won't be number one.
(The wettest September was in 1999, with 10.26 inches of rain).
Montpelier set a record for the date for rainfall, too, with 1.37 inches.
Tuesday's storm was another weird one, with a weather front draped over the region and energy running generally west to east along it. Lightning strikes were recorded at least somewhere in Vermont from early morning into the evening. It's really odd to have such a long period of thunderstorms around here this late in the season.
I'll be interested to see rainfall totals along the western slopes of the Green Mountains, as it seems like the wet air flow, going up and over the mountains seemed to enhance the brief downpours.
Here in St. Albans, I must have seen about two dozen downpours from Sunday afternoon to late last evening. Almost all of them lasted five minutes or less. On radar, I noticed these little downpours formed overhead of where I am or less than a mile to my west. I think the effects of relatively small St. Albans Hill managed to contribute to these little storms.
In the end. my very unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans collected 2.1 inches of rain since Sunday.
The real heavy rain is over, but showers continue. I actually just had a surprisingly heavy shower around 7:35 a.m. this morning in St. Albans as I write this. These showers are part of an upper level low that is lumbering across Vermont this morning. The showers will tend to taper off later today.
As I noted yesterday, the active weather isn't finished with us.
A strong cold front will come through Wednesday night with a new batch of showers and maybe some rumbles of thunder. Though the rain could be briefly heavy with this system, it'll be moving so quickly that the rain won't linger long enough to cause any new flood threat.
Thursday and Friday will be blustery and cold. Canadian high pressure will be coming in from the northwest. Meanwhile, Hurricane Fiona will be making a beeline for the Canadian Maritimes. We'll be in the squeeze play between the two systems, so the wind will be gusty and noticeable. Not damaging, but you'll feel it.
We still have the possibility of a few snowflakes atop the northern Green Mountains Thursday night as well.
The gusty winds might prevent any frost from forming Thursday and possibly Friday night. Toward Sunday, it will warm up a little, out ahead of our next anticipated rainy cold front.
