A Record-Breaking Hurricane Season? One Forecast Group Says So

A University of Pennsylvania team is forecast a 
record busy hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean
this year. It's the second major prediction that calls
for a potentially chaotic and dangerous season.

A forecasting group from the University of Pennsylvania said they expect a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season with perhaps 33 named storms.  

If you think I've already written about a hurricane forecast this year, you're right. A  Colorado State University forecast issued in early April which said 23 tropical storms or hurricanes were in the cards for the Atlantic Ocean this summer and autumn. 

The newer University of Pennsylvania hurricane forecast that just came out is in line with, but definitely more ominous than that Colorado State University prediction. 

The forecast from the University of Pennsylvania team, led by climatologist Michael Mann, actually has a forecast of between 27 and 39 named storms, but 33 is their more pinpointed forecast. If there's 33 named storms, that would exceed the current record for the most number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean in a single season. That was a total of 30 such storms in 2020.

An average season produces about 14 Atlantic storms, about half of which become hurricanes. Seven of the past eight years have been busier than normal hurricane seasons. Warm ocean waters - probably with climate change contributing - have helped force these storms. 

THE REASONING

One big reason for Mann & Co's bullish 2024 hurricane forecast is the already hot water in the Atlantic Ocean in the region where most hurricane develop. Per the Washington Post: 

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects a marine heat wave, or sea surface temperature well above normal, to continue in the tropical Atlantic through at least September. That has forecasters concerned about an active hurricane season because warmer ocean waters typically increase the intensity of storms."

Another reason why the team at the University of Pennsylvania think this year is going to be a blockbuster for hurricanes is that El Nino is rapidly falling apart. El Nino is a periodic warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean.  That warming contributes to strong upper level winds in the upper atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean.

Those strong upper level winds tear apart thunderstorms that are the building blocks for tropical storms and hurricanes. Rip apart those thunderstorms and you rip apart the chances they'll grow into a hurricane  

Long range forecasts for the summer and fall call for the opposite of El Nino, which is La Nina. That consisted of coolish water in the eastern Pacific and calmer upper level winds over the Atlantic. That would more likely allow tropical storms and hurricanes to form. 

If La Nina fails to develop, the number of expected hurricanes in the Atlantic would decrease this year, Mann says. But only a little. That hot water out there would still contribute to storms. 

TRACK RECORD

Here's something that might make people who don't like hurricanes more nervous. The University of Pennsylvania hurricane predictions in most recent years have more often than not predicted fewer such storms than what actually developed. 

Last year, the University of Pennsylvania team predicted 16 tropical storms and hurricanes. We ended up with 20. Luckily the majority of those missed populated land areas.

In that blockbuster year of 2020, University of Pennsylvania predicted 20 storms, ten less than the Atlantic actually produced.

The last time University of Pennsylvania sort of predicted too many storms was in 2016. They anticipated 19 storms and we got 15. Even so, 2016 was within their margin of error. They actually said there would be 19 storms that year, plus or minus four. 

WHERE THEY GO

What really matters, of course, is where hurricanes go after they form. If they have an opportunity to head north well off the coast and hit cold water in the North Atlantic, then no problem. They just go up there and die.

If a strong Bermuda High is north of a hurricane and that high pressure system extends its influence into the United States, chances are the hurricane would head into the Gulf of Mexico. At that point, anything from Florida to Texas could take a hit, or the storm could just divert to Mexico instead. It depends on the steering patterns over the Gulf. 

If there's a dip in the jet stream in the central United States, that dip could steer a hurricane into the East Coast. If that dip in the jet stream is right along or just off the East Coast, chances are that hurricane would be steered safely out to sea. It all depends on the weather pattern when the hurricane is roaming around out there. 

Of course, the more hurricanes there are, the greater the chance that some will hit land. Which is why the University of Pennsylvania forecast is so worrying. 

Already the Atlantic Ocean is beginning and to throw hints of what might be to come. The National Hurricane Center said Wednesday they were monitoring a swirling disturbance in the east central Atlantic Ocean. 

It looked like a nascent tropical storm, though strong upper level winds were forecast to destroy the small storm before it could grow much.  That one was a fizzle, but soon enough, we'll start having tropical storms and hurricanes that could spell trouble. 

 

Back To Spring, And Spring Showers After This Morning's Vermont Freeze

 Temperatures at dawn in Vermont were a couple degrees warmer at dawn today than yesterday. 

Frosty leaves in the garden again this morning
in St. Albans, Vermont. 

That's not saying much, since pretty much everybody in the Green Mountain State was in the 20s, with a few teens in the cold hollows.  

Still, the fact that it was a tiny bit "warmer" than dawn Thursday ist he first sign that spring is about to return after a couple days away. 

 The sky is clear again, and the air is still super dry so temperatures will rocket upward as the sun takes over. 

 It will be a good ten degrees warmer than yesterday afternoon, so it will be in the 50s. Possibly near 60 degrees. Nice, just a little cooler than average.

The dry air will give us another chilly night, with temperatures near or below freezing again by Saturday morning. But if you're worried about any additional garden freeze damage, relax, it won't be that bad.

DRY TO "HUMID"

The super dry air we've had the past couple of days is going to be a thing of the past by Sunday. Saturday will be a transition day, as we get warmer and clouds begin to creep in.  Nice day, though, with highs in the 60s. 

A warm front will come in Saturday night. That will spread a little rain in overnight into Sunday.  Bonus: No snow. There's actually a chance warmer valleys will not see any additional snow again until October or November. So there's that.

After Saturday, I guess you can put away the ChapStick for awhile. By Sunday afternoon, the air will actually have sort of a humid feel to it.  Which is a remarkable switch from what has been the desert dry air we are in now. 

It won't be oppressive, but if you're exerting yourself on Sunday  afternoon, you'll sort of notice it. If sun breaks through, we could get temperatures in the low 70s.Weak weather disturbances and the vaguely humid air will combine to produce some scattered showers and maybe even a few rumbles of thunder, especially north, Sunday.  Kind of like summer. 

I guess if we're going to transition away from basically winter in the desert like we've had the past couple of days, we might as well go all in. 

WARM, BUT NOT THAT WARM

Longer range forecasts had been bullish on a warm close to April and equally warm start to May, but they've backed off on that. But at least it will be, well, normal.  Next week looks unsettled, with frequent chances of showers. It won't rain all the time, but there will often be that risk of raindrops.

We will have to watch for a back door cold front that could make northern Vermont a bit chillier Monday and eastern Vermont cool on Tuesday. That cold front makes forecasting temperatures a little trickier than first thought. 

It depends on where this cold front sets up and how fast it moves. There's a chance this front could hold down temperatures a little in northern Vermont on Monday, and then perhaps east of the Green Mountains Tuesday. 

But nobody is that sure. At least if parts of Vermont get in the cooler air behind the front, it won't be that bad. Certainly not another frost and freeze.  

If garden plants were damaged in this week's harsh freeze, it will be interesting to see how well they recover. They weren't that far advanced, and most of the stuff that was blooming are pretty hardy, so I think we escaped a garden nightmare from our freeze.

Quick Vermont Freeze Update: Just As Cold Tonight As Last Night

Satellite view late this afternoon clues us in for tonight. 
Clear skies overhead, clear skies to our west coming
in means another frigid night, about as cold as it was 
last night, with lows in the teens in cold 
hollows and 20s for the rest of us. 

 Just a quick Thursday evening update on our hard freeze weather here in Vermont, since we're half way through it.   

First, final figures are in for who in the Green Mountain State got coldest this morning. 

East Have, Vermont takes the honors as the state's coldest spot, bottoming out at 12 degrees above zero. Gallup Mills saw 16 degrees, South Lincoln was 17 and Lunenburg was 18.

Tonight's lows statewide will be very similar to last night's.

The overall air mass has warmed up a tad, but conditions will be absolutely perfect overnight for temperatures to reach their coldest possible. 

Chilly high pressure will be pretty much directly overhead, ensuring calm winds and clear skies.

It actually felt nice and fairly warm in the sun today, as breezes were light and the sun angle was high. Dry air heats up more readily the humid air, so we got well into the 40s to near 50 as expected.

Dry air also cools off fast once the sun goes down. You'll see temperatures really, really crash after sunset this evening, getting down below freezing within hours. After midnight, with the air a little warmer aloft than it was last night, will slow the rate at which temperatures fall.

Still, it'll get into the teens in the cold hollows and 20s for the rest of us.  Those lows will be pretty much the same as they were this morning. 

The dry air and warming air will mean temperatures will get nice again Friday, going up into the 50s to near 60. After another cool night Friday night, we will return to spring. 

Vermont Morning Lows Today Near Or Even Colder Than Forecast, One More Frigid Night Before Warmup

These daffodils in my St. Albans, Vermont yard, upright
and perky yesterday, slumped to the ground after
last night's hard freeze. Even if they somehow 
survive, they'll get hit just as hard again tonight. 

Those temperatures really did bottom out this morning in and near Vermont with some impressive low temperatures.  

Final figures weren't in yet when I wrote this after 8 a.m. But up in the Northeast Kingdom, Gallup Mills got down to at least 16 degrees and Eden reached 18 degrees.  

Morrisville reached 19 degrees and Montpelier got down to 20 degrees. Montpelier's low was close to a record low, but not there. The current record low for today's date is 17 in 1965 and that will stay. 

Over in New York State, the perennial cold spot Saranac Lake got down to a wintry 12 degrees. That wasn't a record low, either. In 1956 it got down to 10 degrees at that frigid spot in the Adirondacks.

Plattsburgh, New York, managed to set two record lows. It was 25 degrees there, just before midnight let night, setting a record low for April 24. Then it got to 23 degrees around dawn this morning for another record low.

Data in Plattsburgh only goes back to 1945, so there's a good chance it might have been colder there in past years, like during an intense cold snap in late April, 1919.

It's too soon to tell how much garden damage there is, but even hardy plants appeared to suffer, at least in my yard. Daffodils, perky and upright yesterday, are now slumped to the ground as if in mourning. I don't yet know if they'll recover, or shrivel up and die. Especially since they have another rough night ahead of them. 

TODAY

Dry air will be sort of our friend today. After the cold front passed yesterday, it stayed mostly cloudy, holding temperatures in the 30s all afternoon for central and northern Vermont, at a time of year when readings should have been in the upper 50s to around 60.

Today will be a little better because of that dry air. (Spoiler: The arid air will be our enemy tonight, though, more on that in a moment). 

More daffodils that collapsed in last night's hard freeze
in Vermont. 

The dry air will encourage wall to wall sunshine.  Sunshine heats up dry air much more quickly than humid air. 

Temperatures were already surging upward as of 8:15 a.m. today. That should bring us well into the 40s by afternoon. A few warmer valleys might touch 50 degrees. 

True, that's still quite a bit colder than average, but better than it felt Wednesday afternoon. The high sun angle helps too. It won't be that windy

Tonight will be clear and frigid again as that cold high pressure sits right overhead. Very dry air also loses its heat quickly once the sun goes down. Light winds and clear skies assure that any heat gathered today will drift right off to space.

So it will be as cold at dawn Friday as it was this morning. Yep, teens in the cold hollows, 20s for the rest of us. 

COLD TO END

Friday will be much nicer with highs well into the 50s. Another night of clear, dry air Friday night will ensure another subfreezing night for most of us, but it won't be as cold as the previous two nights.

We're still looking at a substantial warmup over the weekend and early next week.  Highs are still forecast to hit 70 or better possibly Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Nights starting Sunday night will be even warmer, relative to average. Many of us will see lows in the 50s. There's even a chance a couple of record for warmest minimum temperature for the date could be set. Which would be a big switch from what we're experiencing now.

It looks like it will be pretty showery Saturday night through probably at least Wednesday, but it certainly won't rain all the time. No complete washouts, anyway.  

National Break From Tornadoes Ending In A Big Way

A supercell thunderstorm looking north from Sheldon,
Vermont on May 4, 2018. We're safe from any violent
thunderstorms over the next several days. However,
vast areas of the nation's middle are at daily risk of
severe storms each of the next five days at least,
starting Thursday afternoon. 

In an April 19 post,  I mentioned that tornado activity was temporarily stopping in the United States even as we headed into the height of twister season. 

I said that wouldn't last forever, and boy was I right, and so was virtually every forecaster watching the situation. 

We're about to embark on a severe weather outbreak that will last several days.  There's a strong likelihood of at least a few tornadoes daily at least into early next week.

Of course, the U.S. hasn't exactly been immune from severe thunderstorms over the past few days. It's spring, so it's hard to avoid them. 

On Saturday, severe hail and wind storms hit the Carolinas. Rock Hill, South Carolina was hit by baseball sized hail propelled by winds gusting to 90 mph. As you might imagine, damage was pretty extreme in that area.

Video from the Rock Hill storm with the wind and heavy hail is about as chaotic as you can get from a severe thunderstorm. 

Lumberton, North Carolina was hit by hailstones up to 4.5 inches in diameter, which is about the size of a grapefruit.   That size stone would at least tie the record for the largest hailstone ever found in North Carolina.

Tuesday, intense winds from a severe thunderstorm derailed a train near Abilene, Texas.  

However, a weather pattern that is bringing us in Vermont those hard, plant-damaging freezes tonight and tomorrow night also flooded most of the nation east of the Rockies with relatively cool and definitely dry air. 

That combo discourages the types of thunderstorms that can cause big hail, damaging winds and tornadoes,

But that weather pattern is breaking down. Warm, wet air is about to flood into much of the nation east of the Rockies. Dry air will make it into the parts of the southern and central Plains at times.  This pattern will also feature frequent storms forming in the southern Rockies and then moving northeastward toward the Great Lakes.

It's a classic spring tornado pattern and it looks like it will last more or less for a week or more. 

The bottom line: The next few days will be a tornado chaser's dream, but otherwise a threat to tens of millions of people. Unfortunately a tiny percentage of those people are about to lose their houses to tornadoes or other severe weather. 

The best case scenario will be that the strongest tornadoes avoid hitting towns and stick to open rangeland and farms with few or no buildings. 

It's impossible to say how many tornadoes will touch down, but it could be dozens over the next week

DETAILS:

There could be a couple more severe storms and maybe a tornado in west Texas this evening, but the real show starts tomorrow. 

Thursday

Friday afternoon and evening, a broad zone from southern Nebraska to central Texas is under the gun. It looks like western and central Kansas, western Oklahoma and parts of the Texas panhandle have the best chance of seeing tornadoes.

In this part of the nation, population centers are few and far between, so we do have a good chance that even if any tornadoes get particularly strong, they could thread the needle and avoid hitting towns and cities in the risk area. Fingers crossed!

Friday

Saturday's risk areas focus on most of Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas and parts of Oklahoma and Texas.  This area is far more built up than Friday's zone. Big metropolitan areas like Des Moines, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Oklahoma City and Dallas-Fort Worth are in this zone. 

That doesn't necessarily mean any of those cities or suburbs will take a tornado hit. Chances are they won't. But it'll be a day to keep an eye to the skies in those areas. 

One mitigating factor could be that storms left over from Friday would interfere with the development of new potentially tornado-producing supercell thunderstorms. 

Weekend 

The risk zone appears on Saturday to extend in a band from Texas to Wisconsin, with the biggest risk of trouble in central Kansas and Oklahoma. A second storm system coming out of the Rockies will help to re-invigorate severe storms and potential tornadoes. By Sunday, the risk zone looks like it will back almost where it's expected on Friday  - from Iowa and Illinois to eastern Texas

Other Problems

This new weather pattern also carries other risks. Bone dry, windy conditions in parts of New Mexico Colorado and western Texas could set off new wildfires and rangeland fires. It's already been a busy spring in that next of the woods for fires, so this might just make the whole situation worse.

In the humid air further east in the Midwest, repeated rounds of storms over the next few days could touch off some flash flooding. In some instances it could be locally quite severe.

Vermont Effects

The change in the weather pattern means Vermont's weather will change, too. We'll endure the hard freezes tonight and tomorrow night before the air turns a lot warmer over the weekend and the first half of next week. 

Highs could easily hit the 70s. 

The cold and warm fronts and remnants from those Midwest storm systems will head into Vermont as they weaken. That keeps us at risk for rather frequent showers Saturday night into Wednesday. There could even be a few thunderstorms thrown in next week. At this point, it doesn't look like that activity will be scary or damaging. Just the usual spring shower.s 

Vermont Cold Blast Still On. Forecasters Back Off On Snow, But COLD Tonight, Thursday Night

My perennial garden looking pretty good in the rain
this morning in St. Albans, Vermont after husband Jeff
removed debris from the tree that fell on it back on April 12.
We'll see how this garden weathers the hard freezes
due tonight and tomorrow night. 

 It was still pretty mild out there early this morning as our dreaded Arctic cold front still lurked a little to our north and west. 

I guess we should be happy that forecasters have backed off on snow chances this afternoon. 

Instead of accumulations almost statewide, most of any light snow cover should stay at or above 1,000 feet in elevation. It'll mostly be just rain just before and during the transition to cold. 

Snow flakes will still probably make it down into valley floors this afternoon as temperatures crash down through the 40s and into the 30s. Winter arrives today, for sure for a short stay, anyway. 

Of course, a difference of a couple degrees could surprise us with an unexpected burst of heavier snow, but that looks less likely now, 

THE FREEZE

The real story of course is the temperatures. It will be the chilliest night since March 25, when it was in the upper single numbers and teens across Vermont. It won't be that cold tonight, of course, but it will far below freezing across all of Vermont, except maybe right along the immediate shores of Lake Champlain. 

It won't be nearly as cold as it was in late March,   but now we have garden plants and shrubs blooming and budding. It'll be Friday before we know how things weathered the cold. 

Although forecasters have relaxed a little about snow chances today, the predictions have stayed very consistent for the cold tonight. 

The air coming in is super dry, which is common for bursts of air from Canada this time of year. That will allow the skies to clear out very fast this evening.  That, in turn, will let temperatures keep crashing downward. 

By dawn, it will be in the upper teens in the cold hollows, and between 21 and 27 degrees for the vast majority of us. 

HISTORICAL COMPARISON

On a historical basis, such temperatures this time of year are not super out of the ordinary for this time of year. It's been colder than what we're expecting tonight on several occasions this time of year. 

Interestingly, the coldest spell on record exactly mirrors what's happening now, but it won't turn out to be quite as bad.

The high and low temperature in Burlington exactly matched yesterday, April 23, 2024 and on April 23, 1919. The high and low temperatures on both days were 70/33.   Just like today, a very sharp cold front came through on April 24, 1919, dropping temperatures from 56 in the morning to 27 by midnight. 

But that 1919 Arctic blast was much worse than this one will be. The  low temperature on April 25, 1919 in Burlington was 20 degrees, and it only made it to 27 degrees that afternoon. Yes, the "high" was well below freezing. Then it got down to 20 again the next night, and only to 35 on the afternoon of the 26th. It also snowed a little both days. 

This time around, the low temperature forecast tomorrow morning in Burlington is around 25, and it should make it into the mid-40s by afternoon. 

The cold snap we're about to get is less intense but more fraught than in 1919 because of climate change. Gardens and plants in general are much further along now than they were at this time in 1919, setting us up for the chance of frost and freeze damage this time. 

Luckily, most major orchards are not blooming yet, just budding, so that might save some damage. Also, garden plants like daffodils and such are pretty tough. It will still be interesting to see how lilacs do this year after the upcoming freeze. Fingers crossed they'll be beautiful in May despite this expected freeze. 

NEXT UP

Thursday night will be a couple degrees warmer than tonight will be, but winds will be calmer than tonight. That sets the stage for more frost, which can be more damaging to plants than just a freeze with no frost. So we'll see how that goes.

By Friday afternoon, it'll pretty much be over as sunshine boosts us well into the 50s by afternoon. Friday night will be kind of cold again but not as bad as the previous two nights.

After that, the weather pattern will settle into one that's warmer but unsettled Saturday into next week. Highs will get well into the 60s to maybe low 70s during that period, but there will be frequent chances of showers.  

Very Hot Times In United States - Including Vermont - This Summer If NOAA Forecast Is Accurate

NOAA says the vast majority of the Lower 48 of the
United States has a stronger chance of a hot summer
than chances of cool weather. Vermont is among
the areas that have the greatest chance of a hot summer.

We here in Vermont are in for a nasty cold blast tomorrow and tomorrow night, but if long range forecasts are any indication, we might look back at this weeks upcoming big freeze with a sense of nostalgia.  

NOAA this past week updated its seasonal forecasts. If they're right, the United States is in for one scorcher of a summer.

Vermont could be in one of the hottest zones, relative to average that is, if the NOAA forecast is accurate.

The forecast covering June, July and August says that chances favor above normal temperatures for the entire Lower 48 except in North Dakota and small sections of adjoining states.  There, it's a tossup as to whether summer will be warmer and cooler than usual.

The best chances for a hot summer are in a broad area from Texas on up through most of the Rockies, and in all of New England and most of New York. 

Worse, if the NOAA forecast is correct the heat would be combined with a lot of humidity in the eastern United States. Those areas, which include Vermont, lean toward a somewhat wetter than average summer. That spells the risk of lots of horrible, humid days.  

A hot summer is by no means guaranteed around here. Forecasts for general weather patterns two, three or four months in the future are always at risk of being wrong. The hot summer prediction is better than flipping a coin, but NOAA doesn't always get it right. Nobody does for this type of forecast.

NOAA actually does forecasts for consecutive groups of three months. 

These predictions don't bode well for us in Vermont if there accurate

The period encompassing May, June and July - basically early summer - have the highest chances of being hotter than normal in most of the Northeast, including Vermont, western Texas and parts of New Mexico, and in parts of the Pacific Northwest.

Late summer, the period including July, August and September, also have the greatest odds of being on the hot side in New England and the Rocky Mountains. Interestingly, not one bit of the Lower 48 is forecast to be a tossup, normal or on the cool side in late summer. 

In the era of climate change, this hot forecast makes me wonder if we'll set another record in Vermont for hottest summer. 

All but one of the top five hottest summers in Burlington have happened since 2005.  

Although last summer was warmer than average, 2023 gave us a break from record and near record  warm stretches. The summer of 2020 was the hottest on record in Burlington. In 2021, we had our fourth hottest summer. And 2022 came in as a tie for eighth hottest. 

More Vermont Fire Risk Before Wintry Blast, Hard Freeze, Then Spring

Lots of wannabe lilac blooms on my big lilac
shrub in front of my St. Albans, Vermont house. 
Crossing my fingers they will survive 
Wednesday night's expected hard freeze.

 You can certainly tell at dawn this morning where the first stirrings of a warming south wind had started and where it was still calm and cold.  

It was in the low 40s in the Champlain Valley where a steady south wind was already blowing, but in the mid-20s elsewhere in Vermont after a clear, calm night. 

Those south winds will increase areawide today, giving us a quick squirt of warm air before winter unfortunately returns for a brief visit. 

The air is still really dry and is expected to stay that way all day. Winds gusting to 30 mph continues the fire danger that started yesterday.  

Yes, it's muddy underfoot still, and there's vernal pools in the woods. But the dead grass and leaves from last autumn have dried out in the sun. That's what can catch fire. Those fires can spread fast in today's winds. 

So, for the second day in a row, the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation has us in a high fire danger for the day. 

WINTER

The kind of respite from this brief period of fire risk is not the kind we want. 

Rain will break out overnight, then change to snow - yes, snow - during the afternoon Wednesday. That's normally the warmest time of day this time of year, when temperatures should be approaching 60 degrees.

Not on Wednesday! Temperatures in the 40s will crash through the 30s in the afternoon.  Snow will accumulate even in many of the valleys. Not much, though. Perhaps a dusting to an inch.  But it's still harsh. 

That's not the real problem this time of year. It's the temperatures. 

These lilac buds died and failed to bloom after
this harsh winter storm and freeze in April, 2021
Not nearly as much snow as that episode is expected
with the upcoming freeze, but temperatures will
fall far into the 20s by Thursday morning.
Coldest hollows will be in the upper teens. 

They'll go below freezing in the late afternoon and evening and stay subfreezing into Thursday morning.

 Skies will quickly clear and winds will die down overnight. That means lows by Thursday morning ranging from around 18 in the cold spots to maybe 30 degrees right next to Lake Champlain.

That puts most of us in the 22 to 27 degree range. 

That's similar to the horribly damaging freeze of last May 18. Thankfully, plants and trees aren't nearly as far along now as they were last May. 

Trees haven't leafed out.  Fruit trees aren't flowering yet. So damage this time will be much less.  Those orchards are budding for sure, but fingers crossed I think most (but perhaps not all) of those buds should make it through this cold snap. 

Vineyards are probably relatively safe, too.

Because it is before the official growing season, there won't be any freeze warnings in Vermont with this. We should be glad this frigid episode isn't happening a couple weeks later than it is.

Still, this might be a disheartening spell for gardeners, like me. If your magnolia tree is blooming and those blooms survived this morning's freeze, enjoy them today. Those blooms will be brown wreckage by Thursday. 

It'll be interesting to see how hardier early plants do. My lilacs have tons of flower buds, more than in most years, so I was looking forward to a huge lilac season.  

I do worry this will be like 2021, when my lilac buds ended up failing to flower after dying in a harsh snowstorm and deep freeze. We shall see, but I'm not super optimistic. 

This is turning out to be yet another spring in which plants outside start to bud and blossom too early because of oddly warm weather. Then a harsh freeze threatens them. It's become a depressing spring pattern. With this frigid spell, it will be the fifth year in a row it's happened, with varying degrees of damage. Mostly relatively minor, except for last year. 

It's the new, changed climate.  It's generally warmer than it used to be, so spring advances earlier than it once did. But the new climate is also more extreme, so we get these brief blasts of winter air to cause potential damage. 

SPRING 

These spring cold blasts are always very brief, and this one will be no exception. Thursday will be cold for the season, with highs in the 40s, and another nasty frost/freeze is likely Thursday night. Though it won't be as cold as the night before.

By Friday afternoon, we'll be well into the 50s, Saturday will see highs passing 60 degrees and we could get into the low 70s by Sunday or Monday.  

Study: Cost Of Climate Change To Be Much More Expensive Than Mitigating Temperature Rise

Climate change is becoming a big drag on the global
economy and a new study suggests that will keep
getting worse in the coming decades.

 It'll cost six times more money to deal with the cost of unmitigated climate change between now and 2050 than it would to keep global temperatures from reaching more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. 

Doing nothing to blunt climate change would cost roughly $38 trillion per year by 2049, concluded a study published in the journal Nature.  

As Artstechnica.com reports:

"They find that we're already committed to warming that will see the growth of the global economy undercuts by 20 percent. That places the cost of even a limited period of climate change at roughly six times the estimated price of putting the world on a path to limit the warming to 2 degrees C."

A common talking point among those who are fighting efforts to limit climate is that those efforts are too expensive and a drag on the global economy.  The Nature study completely contradicts that position. 

Nations worldwide would feel the economic effects of climate change, whether it be poor developing nations and others considered to be at the top of the economic heap, like the United States and Germany. 

It's not that economies will stop growing in the coming decades due to climate change. It's just they will grow more slowly than they would have without it.

You'd think that extreme weather brought on by climate change, such as floods, powerful storms or intense hurricanes would create the brunt of the coming economic chaos. Those events would indeed have an effect the researchers concluded.

However, just the overall increase in heat distributed throughout much of the world would have the biggest effect. The added heat on balance would harm crops and hinder labor production. (Which, as an aside, makes efforts by Florida and Texas to block municipalities in those states to provide rest and water breaks for outdoor workers look especially stupid).

Southern parts of North America and Europe take an economic hit from climate change while northern reaches benefit. The minority of nations that might actually benefit a bit from global warming include Canada,  Russia, Norway, Finland and Sweden, according to the study. 

The pattern repeats in the United States. Southern states take a bigger monetary hit from climate change compared to those closer to the Canadian border, 

Much of the economic harm through the middle of this century is already locked in due to climate change. But emissions reductions done now could go a long way toward blunting economic hard after 2050 from climate change is already locked.

You can read the Nature study for yourself at this hyperlink. 

 

Some Changes To Roller Coaster, Sometimes Wintry Vermont Week Forecast

That looks like perlite in my St. Albans, Vermont perennial
gardens, this morning, you know, the white pellets
that you see in potting mix. But it's snow pellets that
fell when a cold front passed through overnight. 
Wintry periods are in the forecast this week. 

 Right on schedule, the second of three "bowling ball" shots of cold spring air rolled into Vermont around midnight. It was accompanied by a whoosh of wind, gusting to 40 mph or so, and a few showers of graupel.  

(Graupel is sort of a combination snow and glorified small hail).

Skies cleared behind the front super fast, and it was clear by the time we woke up this morning. It's cold for the season this morning, but not wildly so. It's around 30 to 32, with mid 20s once you get up to 1,000 feet above sea level or so

FIRE RISK TODAY?

The air arriving today is super dry.  The humidity this afternoon will be in the 20 to 25 percent range, which is very low. The sun will be out and winds will gust to at least 25 mph from the northwest.

This is a recipe for fire weather. As noted in a post last week, these bursts of low humidity and wind dry out things super fast. That dead brush from last year can easily catch fire and the winds would spread it quickly. 

The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation has all of Vermont in a high fire danger today.

So: No burning your brush pile, no flicking your cigarette butts out your car window and no playing with fire in your backyard today, please. 

It'll also be cool for the season with highs in the 40s to around 50 in the warmer valleys. Another freeze comes tonight.

TUESDAY

Much warmer ahead of our next bowling ball of cold air. Clouds will increase slowly during the day. Winds will turn gusty from the south. I think there will be another relatively high fire risk during the day. Humidity will be a little higher than today, but those gusty south winds would spread any fire that does start pretty effectively. 

Spring will return by afternoon - briefly - as we get into the 60s.

WEDNESDAY WINTER

We'll start off rainy on Wednesday but cold front - another bowling ball of chilly air - will blast in during the afternoon. It's going to be a crappy Wednesday afternoon to say the least. As temperatures crash downward through the 40s and into the 30s, rain will change to snow. 

The only good news is that the American computer model that I mentioned yesterday has backed away from the idea that it had about us getting several hours of heavy, wet snow.

Instead, dry air will sweep in, ending the snow for the most part in the evening. 

I am somewhat worried about how cold it will get Wednesday night and early Thursday morning. Temperatures will fall well into the 20s, with low 20s fairly common in northern Vermont. A few cold hollows could hit the upper teens. 

So, you magnolia blooms will certainly be toast.  If any fruit trees are blooming early, they're in trouble. Luckily, most are budding so that will minimize the damage. Unlike last May when a killing freeze hit orchards while trees were in full bloom. 

Some garden perennials could get damaged, too, we shall see. Most I think will make it through OK.  

THURSDAY AND BEYOND 

We'll shake our brief excursion back to winter. Thursday will be a sunny, dry, chilly day, much like today. Thursday night will bring us another freeze, but probably not one as intense as Wednesday night's.

After that, regularly scheduled springtime will return. We just have to get through this weird weather week. 

Showers - rain showers to reassure you - might return by next Sunday.  We could even see some temperatures in the low 70s a week or so from now, too. 

Biden, Electrical Transformers, Climate Change, Demand, And Supplies Make For Complicated Mess

The Biden administration proposed
new rules to improve efficiency
of electrical transformers. Aim
was to help combat climate change.
Like most things, though, it got
complicated.

The Biden administration wanted new rules raising the energy efficiency standards for electric transformers. 

You know, those are the hoodickeys attached to a lot of power poles until they blow up in a dramatic flash during a storm or lightning strike, and shutting down the power to our homes

Problem was, in a small piece of a multi-pronged effort to combat climate change, the new transformer rules might have unintentionally done the opposite.  This is a relatively small episode, but in the grand scheme of things, it shows how efforts to confront climate change end up being a lot more complicated than you'd think.  

 Here's the set-up, as HuffPost describes it: 

Transformers are basically the connective tissue of power systems. 

Demand for electrical transformers is high. More development and sprawl is driving part of the demand. Climate change is also driving the market for these devices. People use more electricity on hot or smoky days to run air conditions and air purifiers. 

Climate change is also creating more frequent and intense  storms that make transformers go kablooey when strong winds rip at them or make trees and debris fall on them. Wildfires can also take out a bunch of transformers all at once. 

A third way climate change is creating booming demand for transformers is we're being encouraged to go electric to combat climate change. You need a bigger electrical grid, including plenty of transformers, along with the power lines and generation to feed all those EV plug ins. 

The problem, or potential problem, was that factories would need to use a different kind of steel and buy new equipment for the new rules set to take effect in 2027.  That risked creating a shortage of transformers when demand for them was already sky high. 

So the Biden people backed down. Sure, the rules would have helped an eensy, teensy bit in improving energy efficiency, which is definitely a goal if we want to reduce fossil fuel emissions. 

But a shortage of transformers might have stunted our transition away from fossil fuels toward clean energy.  You need transformers to ferry generated electricity from all those wind whirligigs and solar power stations out there to the outlet you plug your EV into. Or whatever.  

The rules have been dialed back after pressure from a wide variety of stakeholders, not the least of it were transformer manufacturers. 

A requirement for a special form of steel that would have been required in new transformers has been scrapped. That "special steel" would have forced transformer manufacturers to spend millions on new equipment that might end up becoming obsolete a few to several years later. 

Still some new energy efficiency regulations involving transformers are still scheduled to go into effect in five years.

HuffPost again:

"....the new standards still ratchet up efficiency of new transformers by enough to shave what the Energy Department estimated would be $14 billion off utility bills over the next 30 years, slashing nearly 85 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution - equal to the annual emissions of 11 million American homes - during the same period. 

The agency estimated the original proposal would have avoided 340 million metric tons of carbon pollution."

Regulators and presidential administrations seem to be constantly threading the needle between what environmentalists want and what industry wants. 

Environmentalists aren't happy with the transformer energy efficiency rules being watered down some. 

There's obviously a sense of urgency when it comes to combating climate change. It's also easy to get in the weeds when you do try to do something. 

This transformer kerfuffle is just one small example among many. 

 .

 

"Bowling Balls" Of Chilly Air Will Keep Interrupting Vermont Spring

Skies looked rather volatile last evening in St. Albans,
Vermont as a burst of cold air from Canada stirred
up some showers, clouds and downdrafts.

 It got awfully gusty at times and temperatures took abrupt tumbles Saturday afternoon as the first in a series of what I call "bowling" balls of chilly air invade our Vermont spring. 

While the northern hemisphere is warming up as the sun angle rises, it takes time to scour the pools of biting, winter cold air out of the Arctic.

These pools of frigid air tend to wander around up there as pieces of them get dislodged, inching the north toward spring. 

That cold pool for now is near Hudson Bay, Canada, which means it's in fairly close proximity to us her in Vermont.

Lucky us! For now, the pieces of nippy air that are breaking off from that frigid swirl of air in Canada are landing on, or at last near our doorstep. I refer to those pieces breaking off as bowling balls because they're compact, roll down from the north quickly, then move back off to our north and east just as fast. 

They're sort of drive-by cold snaps, if you will. 

A few days ago, it looked like these quick cold blasts would largely miss us here in the Green Mountain State. That forecast has obviously changed for the worse, at least if you like spring. 

We do see these pretty frequently in the spring here in Vermont. They're disheartening, but quick hitting, and spring resumes soon enough. Here's how our bowling match will play out this week. 

BOWLING BALL #1

The first one, the weakest of three that we'll deal with this week, came in Saturday afternoon.

The cold front had a fair amount of oomph to it, but the air was really dry.  The spring sunshine helped created updrafts that ran into the very cold air aloft.  This built up towering showers clouds. But that dry air down in the lowest few thousand feet of the atmosphere evaporated some of the precipitation coming down. 

The showers themselves had downdrafts to them. The evaporating rain and snow cooled the air further. The downdrafts and cold, dense air created by the evaporation rushed downward, causing those strong wind gusts at times Saturday afternoon. 

I'm sure a few places gusted to over 40 mph, perhaps 50 mph. I noticed the National Weather Service in South Burlington hoisted a few special weather statements, warning of gusts that high. 

It was cold enough for snow to fall in the upper elevations. Some places had graupel which is sort of a snow/small hail hybrid.  Our first bowling ball also created some dramatic late afternoon and evening skies over the region. Dark clouds, shafts of bright sun, gushes of rain and snow visible here and there, and some wild rainbows.

Today is cooler, with clouds mixed with some sun and breezes behind yesterday's "bowling ball.

The second one comes through this evening and overnight.

BOWLING BALL #2

Once again the air is dry but the cold front with this is strong. That should set off some gusty winds, scattered showers, and eventually, snow showers overnight. Temperatures will take quite a tumble, and we'll see the coldest air since late March by dawn. 

This by no means will be record cold, but it will be shock to the system. It'll be down in the 20s for pretty much all of us and northwest winds will make it feel colder.

If you have magnolias blooming, there's a good chance they'll become brown wreckage after this unfortunately. But the vast majority of garden plants current growing should survive just fine. 

Monday will be sunny, which will deceive you into thinking it's nice out. It will be cold for the season with highs only in the 40s.  The sun, gusty northwest winds and very dry air could create something of a fire danger.  Tis the season for that, as I explained in a post last week. 

Monday night will be cold, too, though it will warm up west as the cold bowling ball departs.  Tuesday will bounce back nicely to near 60 degrees.

BOWLING BALL #3

This has the potential to be the strongest and perhaps the most disruptive of the three, depending on which computer forecasting model you want to believe. 

The cold front and embedded low pressure will come in from the west and north, so rain will break out Tuesday night and Wednesday. So far so good. 

Then, the cold air rushes in, changing rain to snow, yes snow, Wednesday afternoon or evening. Probably even in the valleys. 

If you believe the European computer models, the storm won't linger much, so only a little snow will fall. If you believe the American model, this thing might linger for several hours, which could dump several inches of snow Wednesday evening and night. That's especially true along the western slopes of the Green Mountains. 

I'm not sure which one to believe yet, but of course I'm rooting for the European model on this one.

We do know we have another hard freeze Wednesday night, and probably Thursday night, and a chilly day Thursday.

After that, it starts to warm up, and we can forget the bowling balls for awhile. We'll go back to our regularly scheduled spring.  

As always, stay tuned for updates. The forecast could well change! 

Last Year's Flooding Catastrophe Not Over For Vermont Farmers

A corn field ruined by flooding near Cambridge, Vermont,
photographed on July 12, 2023.  Vermont farmers are
still contending with the aftermath and damage
of last year's devastating floods. 

 Lisa Rathke over at the Associated Press tells us that far reaching effects of last year's flooding are still torturing many Vermont farmers as we gear up for planting season. 

Silt still in many farm fields, with landowners unsure how to remove it. 

Corn fields from last summer remain unharvested due to mud, silt, and pollutants in the wrecked, unusable crops. Many farmers have to test their fields for pollutants before they can grow any new crops. 

Some farmers kept get hitting.  Rathke highlights one central Vermont farm:

"Dog River Farm, in Berlin, Vermont lost nearly all of its produce crops in the July flooding. The farm removed truckloads of river silt and sand from the fields before another round of flooding in December washed away more precious soils, wiped out the farm's garlic planted in late fall and left behind more oil and several giant holes in a field, said owner George Cross...

'We had 15,000 garlic heads - bulbs growing here which is a significant amount of retail dollars,' he said, pointing to a section of field. 'And now they are gone. They're somewhere down along the Winooski (River)'"

Silt and sand piled up in drifts in floodplain cropland by the disasters of last year are an especially difficult dilemma. You can't dump it back into rivers. You can't pile it up like a dike along the river bank, as that causes environmental harm and might ultimately worsen future floods.

The sand and silt has to be hauled away, somewhere. The farmers have to pay to have that work done. If the sand and silt are not removed, there will be no crops on the affected fields this year. 

A grassroots fundraising campaign called Dig Deep Vermont announced Wednesday that it's giving out its first grants to 32 farms to help with some of those expenses. It estimated farms suffered around $45 million in losses statewide from the flooding, extreme weather and persistent rains. 

Dig Deep Vermont is still accepting donations, by the way. 

Perhaps more than almost anyone else, Vermont farmers are understandably spooked by what kind of weather this growing season will bring. With climate change, storms have gotten worse, and extremes have gotten more extreme. 

Last year, even farmers who suffered no flood losses had a rough go of it. The season started with a devastating freeze that ruined apple and other fruit crops, and disrupted wineries across the state. The summer proved so wet that it was hard to harvest hay. 

That's all bad for farmers. Still, not every growing season will be a mess. Let's do a toast and hope this year brings nothing but perfect farming weather to the Green Mountain State. 

A Welcome Break From U.S. Tornado Risks Before We Gird For Peak Season

This is definitely NOT a tornado, but this storm over
Lake Champlain sort of resembles one, and a tornado
did touch down in Benson, Vermont that day. The
nation is taking a few day break from tornadoes
but they should return within  week. Vermont
hasn't had one yet this year
and definitely won't any time soon. 

 Storm systems in the middle of the nation this week have spun off scores of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, as is typical of April.  

Typical, but still dangerous and destructive. 

It was a relatively busy week for tornadoes, with at least 38 reported so far this week. This number could well increase as National Weather Service meteorologists inspect storm damage to determine whether a tornado or straight line winds were responsible. 

Starting today, we probably have a few days off from tornadoes in the U.S.

A weird quirk in this year's tornado stats so far is as of mid-April Ohio has had the most tornadoes of any state, with 35.  That doesn't include any that might have touched down in Ohio Wednesday.

The first part of the tornado season is usually focused on the South. Places like Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama or Tennessee usually have the most tornadoes through mid-April. Florida has had the second most so far with 34, and Illinois, also somewhat oddly north for early tornadoes has had 30 of them. 

Tornadoes struck Wisconsin, Michigan and New York during February, which is extremely odd for such northern states so early in the season 

Even in the most extreme tornado years, like tragic 2011, there are breaks of a few days in which there are no tornadoes during the peak season for these storms, which usually encompasses April, May and much of June. 

We're about to head into one of those periods, so people in places like Illinois and Ohio can relax. For a little while.

A wide dip in the jet stream centered in southeastern Canada for the next few days will create a flow of air from the northwest from the Plains to the East Coast. 

 This wide area is the zone in which tornadoes often form in the spring. But those northwest winds are dry, and block moisture from invading from the Gulf of Mexico. 

Warm, muggy air is a key ingredient for tornadoes. Without that, you have a hard time seeing a spinup.

So far, I'd rate this young tornado season relatively busy, but we're certainly not at a record pace. As of this morning, there had been 327 reported tornadoes, maybe a bit fewer than average, but definitely not at a record slow pace. 

Both in 2023 and the year before, there had been about 550 tornadoes in the U.S.  But in 2020, there had only been 254 twisters by April 17, according to data from NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.  

The problem is the biggest number of tornadoes, and the deadliest ones more often than not hit in late April and May.  This break it tornadoes will be short-lived, as those breaks often are in April. 

 By next Thursday,  the dip in the jet stream over southeastern Canada will have pushed a little more to the east. That will increase the potential for south winds over the Plains and Midwest. That wind will bring back warmth and humidity. 

Once that steamy air starts to interact with any storm systems coming in from the west, the threat of tornadoes will blossom again. Computer models hint at some sort of storm forming in or near the central Plains by the end of next week. The tornadoes will be back. 

 

I Jinxed It: Vermont Forecasts Shifts To Cold Snaps, Freezes, Maybe Even Snow

A lilac twig in the rain Thursday in St. Albans, Vermont.
Despite a shift in the forecast towards freezes next week
it's early enough so that most garden plants
should weather the cold just fine. 

 In Thursday morning's post, I remarked about how steady the weather has been in Vermont over the past couple of weeks and how it looks like it might stay that way for awhile. 

Boy, did I jinx things!  

It's beginning to look like we have will have two freezes, one of them perhaps pretty sharp, and maybe some snow as it's looking like we're in for more of a typical April roller coaster. Of course, judging how forecasts have shifted since yesterday chances are they'll shift again.

For now, here's how it looks like it will proceed.

Today will be fine with clouds, some sun and maybe a shower around.  It will be a bit mild for the season - upper 50s to near 60. That's fine. 

The weekend will be breezy, partly cloudy and chilly, but again that relatively normal trend I talked about will hold. Highs will be in the upper 40s to mid 50s depending on where you are, with lows in the low 30s. Again, nothing odd.

By Monday, though, temperatures look like they'll only make it into the 40s with brisk winds continuing. There will be a freeze at night, but nothing terrible for April - mid to upper 20s.

That's the start of the roller coaster. Tuesday looks mild, Wednesday looks showery. Then it looks like we get a cold blast Wednesday night into Friday. 

From this vantage point it looks like we are in for some snow showers even in the valleys during this period. Highs Thursday would struggle into the 40s, maybe staying in the upper 30s in colder spots.  Nights will feature pretty hard freezes, with lows in the 20s. 

It's early enough in the season so that not much will get damaged from the late week freeze. Magnolia blooms will probably wilt and turn a disappointing brown, but most everything else should make it through, unless we're surprised by a much more intense cold snap than forecast.

Apple orchards and vineyards are not far enough along yet to sustain damage from the expected chill.

Probably after next Friday, it will warm right back up again. 

Planting Trees Does Not Always Combat Climate Change

 Trees are rightly considered our heroes for a bunch of reasons

Map shows where it's fine to plant trees to combat
climate change and where it's a bad idea to do so.
Blue areas are good places to install trees, orange
areas are bad. Click on the map to make it
bigger and easier to see. 

At least a couple of those reasons involve climate change. They pull carbon dioxide from the air and burp out healthy doses of oxygen.  Plant a bunch of trees in a hot city, and that city will turn a little bit cooler. 

Just like anything else that's a good thing, trees don't work everywhere when it comes to climate change. As Yale Environment 360 tells us, it's actually a bad idea to plant trees everywhere. 

One of those places is in or near the Arctic.  At first glance, that's fine, since nobody is interested in going to middle of nowhere northern Canada and Siberia to plant trees.  The problem up there is, since it's getting warmer in the Arctic. There's a bunch of tundra up north that was always too cold to support trees.

Now, trees are creeping north because they are now finding it warm enough to sprout. Tundra is more often than  not white with snow and ice. That reflects the sun's heat back to space. Trees are darker, so they absorb heat from the sun. 

The result is the trees just help speed up Arctic warming.   

This will seem a bit odd at first glance, but the same problem trees cause in the Arctic do the same in hot desert areas.  In these areas, people are sometimes tempted to plant trees to improve the environment. Perhaps some people innocent think the trees will do their part to combat climate change. 

They don't. Trees in formerly desert areas are darker than expanses of sand and dust.  Just like in the Arctic, the dark trees attract the sum's warmth, making hot conditions worse. 

Thankfully, trees are allies in the fight against climate change in vast areas of the globe. Those include the entire eastern United States, the Pacific Northwest, the Amazon, a huge stretch of central Africa, most of Europe, Southeast Asia and a few other places.

Luckily these areas are precisely where people have chosen for tree planting projects. 

This news is based on a  study by Nature Communications. They include a handy-dandy map, which you can see in this post. It shows where planting trees is OK, and where it's not a great idea. 

Judging from the map, it's A-OK to plant more trees here in Vermont, and anywhere in the eastern United States. 

Vermont Rain Struggling Against Dry Air Today During An Oddly Extreme-Free Spell Of Weather

 If you looked at weather radar overnight and early this  morning, you'd think it was about to rain any minute. 

This batch of daffodils in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens
seem happy enough with weather that has lacked
extremes over the past week to 10 days. So far, at 
least, the weather forecast looks mellow
for the next several days. 

But the rain kept disappearing by the time it approached the Vermont border. Were we in some kind of force field?

Kinda. 

The force field was just very low humidity. 

Dry air stubbornly held on overnight in Vermont, making any inroads the rain tried to make fail. It's the type of super dry air I talked about in yesterday morning's post.  When rain tries to invade, it often evaporates into that arid atmosphere. 

The rain was finally slowly edging into the Green Mountain State as of 7:45 this morning, but it's going to take its time. 

For instance, radar had the rain just to the southwest of my perch in St; Albans, Vermont for a couple hours previous to 7:45 a.m. I could see the rain from my house in the Adirondacks, but it only seems to advance toward me at a crawl.  It took another 45 minutes to just travel roughly ten miles to the point it started sprinkling at my place. 

The rain is moistening the atmosphere, so it will be able to advance across pretty much all of Vermont. But that dry air means it will only grudgingly advance across the state.  By the time it reaches the Northeast Kingdom later today, the weak system causing the rain will have exhausted most of its moisture supply. 

Rainfall will be light, amounting to as much as a quarter inch across western Vermont to only a few hundredths of an inch in the Northeast Kingdom. 

COOL DAY

April can be very temperamental. An example is this
blinding snow squall on April 22, 2021, which was
the second of two very snowy days in an
otherwise warm April that year. 

The light rain will keep the air cool today, holding in the 40s.  In the Champlain Valley, where temperatures sneaked to a little above 50 degrees early this morning, the light rain will chill us back into the 40s.  

Mild weather has been persistent this month.  Starting April 7, each day in Burlington has reached 50 and above.  The forecast calls for temperatures to reach at least 50 degrees for each of the next 7 days. 

Most days have been pretty close to normal, but it's been odd not to have a few chillier days thrown in with highs in 40s or only 30s.

 The only other April I can think of that had no such nippy days after the first week or so of the month was last year. 

For the record, the lowest high temperature on record for this date was 35 degrees in 1926.

I'm sure we'll eventually have a couple more truly chilly days before summer. (Remember last year we had a hard freeze on the 18th, and May 17 of last year featured highs in the 40s with snow flurries).

April is usually a pretty temperamental month in Vermont. Summery warm spells are followed by snowstorms. Warm sun and bone chilling winds can come on the same day, or within the same hour. 

This April has been oddly steady as she goes, at least after we got over that big ugly snowstorm on the fourth and fifth of this month.  And the forecast calls for continued moderation. 

It's as if April has stopped boozing and sobered up for a change. But don't worry, I fully expect our Vermont spring to go on another big bender sooner or later.  

Dubai/UAE Pounded By Unprecedented Rains; Prompts Cloud Seeding Questions

 The glittering dry, desert city of Dubai isn't so dry anymore.

In one day this week, Dubai had as much rain as it
normally has in about a year and a half. The desert 
location was socked by extreme downpours. 

A storm dumped about 5.6 inches of rain on Dubai in just 24 hours.  What makes that especially remarkable an entire year there normally features just 3.7 inches of rain.  

One report indicated about ten inches of rain, which would be more than double what usually falls over the course of two years. 

It's super rare for any spot to have a year's worth of rain in a day, never mind two years. 

The result was unsurprisingly chaos, as video showed planes splashing through floodwaters at Dubai International Airport and dozens of cars drowned in water beneath the city's gleaming skyscrapers. 

The flooding turned tragic in neighboring Oman, where 19 people have been killed amid heavy rain and flooding over the past few days. The deaths included 10 children and an adult swept away in a vehicle, the Associated Press reported. 

There's controversy in this, too, as the Associated Press reported:

"Several reports quoted meteorologists at the National Center for Meteorology as saying they flew six or seven cloud-seeding flights before the rains. Flight-tracking analyzed by The Associated Press showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE's cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country Monday."

UAE has been conducting cloud seeding to enhance rainfall. Groundwater is dwindling in the region. However, the UAE has not commented on whether there was any cloud seeding going on as this storm loomed.

Cloud seeding - something that's been around for decades - involves injecting silver iodide into clouds that have plenty of water vapor. The silver iodide encourages ice crystal formation, which promotes additional rain and snow. 

Many experts question whether the cloud seeding - if it did happen - contributed much to the disaster. Research does indicate cloud seeding does increase precipitation under certain circumstances, but the added precipitation caused by the practice tends not to create a huge amount of excessive precipitation, as the Washington Post notes.

The weather pattern over Dubai was unusual, and that certainly was the major contributor to the downpours. 

A slow moving trough of low pressure moved into the region this week, drawing huge amounts of moisture toward the UAE, setting the stage for downpours. 

As meteorologist Jeff Berardelli explained on X (formerly Twitter), the storm also ingested a large amount of dust.  That dust can also be a cloud seeder, coalescing bits of moisture into a multitude of rain drops. 

We don't yet know whether climate change made this worse or had any influence at all. But in general, climate change does make storms more intense, and rainfall more torrential in many storms.   

As the Washington Post reports, Friederike Otto, a climate scientist with Imperial College London said ie makes sense that climate change could have made the Dubai/UAE storm worse than it otherwise might have been. 

She noted that climate change is producing heavier rainstorms worldwide because warmer air can hold more moisture. "Even if cloud seeding did encourage clouds around Dubai to drop water, the atmosphere would have likely been carrying more water to form clouds in the first place, because of climate change," Otto said 

 

Fire Risk When Vermont Ground So Soggy Underfoot? You Bet!

Dry brush Tuesday in the area behind my St. Albans,
Vermont house.  This is the time of year to be 
very careful with fire and matches, because brush
and wildfires can easily start. Even if it 
just rained a couple days ago 

It was still squishy underfoot Tuesday evening as I cleaned up storm damage on my St. Albans, Vermont property. 

Not exactly mud season, but definitely damp. 

So, why am I not seeking a burn permit to get rid of all the trees and branches that fell on my property during two recent storms?

Because despite the mud, it's fire season in Vermont. 

It's the most likely season for brush and wildfires to break out around here.  It hasn't really greened up yet. so there's all that dried up plant debris from last year. The trees aren't leafed out, either, so the strong spring sun can blast through to the ground and dry things up quickly.

Plus, there's a particular weather pattern this time of year that can lead to fire weather. 

Remember that remarkably dry air we were so fortunate to have back on April 8, eclipse day? The weather that kept all but decorative high cloudiness out of the way?

That's what we tend to get this time of year. 

High pressure systems with fair, dry weather often make their way into New England from Canada. At least in southern Canada, much of the snow is gone buy now. And there's no leaves on the trees to add moisture to the air via transpiration. 

So those fair weather systems are often bone dry. Arid.  Even if it's been rainy, a day or two of that super dry air can suck the moisture out of the dead weeds and plants and such from last year.  Plus, as these high pressure systems approach, they often compete with a departing storm up in the Canadian Maritimes. That causes dry, gusty erratic winds. 

Some springs are more fire prone than others. We can go long stretches - a week or more - without any rain and plenty of super dry air. That's when you most often see fires erupting. 

So far this year, showers have been pretty frequent, which is helping to prevent a lot of fire problems.  Over the next few days, wet weather systems will try to work in from the west, but will tend to fall apart as they reach Vermont. 

Which actually will work out to be good compromise. Scattered light showers will keep things damp. But there will be no day long, heavy rains to keep us indoors. We can still go outdoors and do stuff. 

Fire season in Vermont is still young, so we still might have long stretches of dry weather going well into May.  The risk of fire goes down somewhat, but definitely does not disappear once things really green up later this spring. 

As far as my storm debris goes, I'm stashing it in a far corner of my property for now. Next winter, when there's snow on the ground is when I'll make all that mess into a nice, satisfying bonfire.