Monday Was An Interesting Vermont Weather Day But All Eyes On Ian

A thunderstorm that abruptly formed over St. Albans,
Vermont late Monday afternoon ended with this rainbow

 Monday was kind of a day for weather geeks like me in Vermont. 

There wasn't any super extreme weather, but it got interesting. Video is at the bottom of this post. 

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 took of 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 see pre-dawn traffic on Interstate 4 eastbound jammed up as 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.