Pupdate: Trooper The Dog Famously Abandoned In Hurricane Milton, Has Found A Happy Forever Home

Trooper, the bull terrier left to die in a flooded field
as Hurricane Milton approached, but rescued by a Florida
State Trooper, is now living his best life with his new
mom and dad, Frank and Carla Spinner, and his 
sister dog Dallas. 

 Since I'm a sucker for happy dog stories, or at least ones with happy endings, I have to update you on Trooper.  

Trooper was the dog found tied to a fence in floodwaters as Hurricane Milton approached Florida back in October. 

An eagle-eyed motorist spotted them, call the cops, who came and rescued the terrified bull terrier. The dog's owner, Giovanny Aldama Garcia, was arrested and charged with felony aggravated cruelty to animals.  In addition to his legal trouble, he can never see the dog he abused ever again. 

After his rescue, Trooper was housed at Leon County Humane Society in Tallahassee, where he recuperated and prepared to eventually meet a forever family

To nobody's surprise, there was a ton of interest in adopting Trooper. But Amy Raddar of that humane society said they were looking for a specific type of adopter, given the bull terrier''s rough history with his former owner.

Trooper didn't like men, given that previous owner was a creepy guy. The Humane Society were a bit wary of Frank and Carla Spina, because Frank is obviously a man, as CBS News reports.   

 The Spinas, however, had been raising and giving homes to bull terriers for more than three decades. The couple drove seven hours from their home in Parkland, Florida for a meet and greet with Trooper.,

The couple sat down, and Trooper came over to the couple. The dog got under Frank Spina legs, Frank gave Trooper and nice scratch and that was it, they were fast friends. 

The couple have another bull terrier named Dallas. Trooper and Dallas got along immediately, too. 

The papers were signed, and Trooper became part of the Spina family. "We will take good care of him," Carla Spina said. "We just want everyone to know we are going to give him the best life."

CBS continues:

"For the Spinas, it feels like their family's missing piece was found. "We are like living in a dream,' said Frank Spina. 'We just can't believe that a month ago we saw a news report and now a month later he's in my bedroom.'"

Here's the happy CBS News video to completely fill you in. As always, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

Snow Gods Are Embracing Vermont Mountains, Ignoring Champlain Valley. But Unexpected Warm Hints On Distant Horizon?

The midweek clipper storm should once again create
only lighter snows in the Champlain and lower
Connecticut River valleys, but the mountains
could easily get more than six inches once again.

 Vermont's Champlain Valley always receives much less snow than the mountains during the winter. 

The moisture skips over the low elevations near the lake and smacks into the Adirondack and Green Mountains instead. Or, the Champlain Valley gets rain while the folks at the ski areas serenely play in the white fluff. 

The contrast over the past several days, though, has been even more extreme than usual.  

Through midnight last night, Burlington has gotten a grand total of 0.2 inches of snow since Thanksgiving. Yep, barely a quarter inch.  

Meanwhile, the snow depth atop Mount Mansfield has gone from 6 inches last Wednesday to 18 inches on Monday.  And Jay Peak has had 30 inches of snow dumped on it since Thanksgiving, and at last report, it was still snowing up there. 

The ski areas are clearly off to a good start after a troublingly dry, warm late autumn.

This trend of mountain dumps and valley "meh" for snow will continue for a few days. 

A weak little weather system overnight and today is producing more mountain snow showers, adding a couple inches of fluff to the mountains while the Champlain Valley barely gets some flurries 

Clipper Storm To Hit

Next up is that well-anticipated strong Alberta clipper we've been watching. It'll come in Wednesday and Thursday with snow for everyone, including the Champlain Valley. 

But the valley should only see one to three inches out of this thing, while the mountains once again see a long-duration snowfall running from Wednesday afternoon to at least Friday morning. 

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some of Vermont's mountains to see more than eight inches of snow out of this. The lake effect snow machine will get cranking in western New York again with this system, so they'll get buried further. Some of that moisture will make its way to the Green Mountains ,

The core of the lake effect will aim down New York's Mohawk Valley and eventually smack into the southern Green Mountains in Bennington County. That's where the most snow might fall, and a winter storm watch is up for that area. Areas up toward Searsburg, Readsboro and Woodford could see six to as much as a foot of snow out of this.  

By the way, Thursday could be a nasty travel day region wide, as the the storminess will take the form of locally heavy snow showers or squalls, along with gusty winds that would blow the snow around. 

Surprises In Long Range?

We might have a classic example coming up of why long range forecasts can be tricky. It appeared just the other day that this December might turn out to be one of the coldest in recent years. 

A sudden shift in the longer range forecasts for
mid month from frigid in the Northeast to leaning
warm nationwide suggests we're in for highly
variable weather later in December. I'm guessing
some storminess and swings from cold to warm 
to cold to warm, etc 

The forecasts for frigid weather Friday and through the weekend are still in force. 

 But some of those long range forecasts for the middle of the month are now starting to lean toward perhaps a little warmer and a little wetter than average, rather than frigid and dry. 

There's no guarantees here. The forecast could always revert back to cold again.  There's even more uncertainty than usual in the predictions for beyond a week from now.

Winters in the Northeast are always variable, with wide swings in temperature and storminess. 

We might be looking at wider swings between cold and warm later this month, and perhaps the winter as a whole.  It might get kinda stormy, too, so hang on to your hats if that's the case. 

North Carolina Shows New Crises, Problems Keep Emerging Months After Disaster

Another byproduct of a climate disaster. Even people whose
homes were undamaged are facing homelessness. Closed
businesses mean unemployment and an inability to pay
rent in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. 

We were all shocked by the drama of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina back in September.

The water seemed more extreme than we've ever seen, wiping out entire neighborhoods, hillsides, towns, businesses. You see how high the floods got, and wonder how that was possible.  

No fewer than 103 people died just in North Carolina from Helene. Just unimaginable for a hurricane to do so much harm so far inland.

The headlines have faded some since the initial disaster.  We see glimpses of normality emerging. Water and other services in Asheville are up and running.  Many if not most of the hundreds of destroyed roads and highways are humming with traffic again. 

But new hurt keeps raining down on Helene victims. It's hitting those whose houses were destroyed, and those whose places never had a drop of water inside their living rooms during the storm. 

Some people are learning they can never go home again, and others are being kicked out of their homes into an uncertain future.

EVICTIONS

As the Washington Post reports, evictions are soaring in western North Carolina as people who lost their livelihoods in the storm can't pay their rent, and landlords are unable or unwilling to grant extensions to tenants who are in a real bind. 

Increased homelessness looms just as winter sets in. 

As WaPo reports: 

"From the time Buncombe County courts reopened in mid-October, at least 225 new eviction cases have been filed in the county, according to an analysis of court records by the North Carolina Tenants Union, which advocates for renters' rights. Filing s accelerated this month as people missed November rent deadlines, though some of the tenants represented in these numbers may have started missing payments before Helene."

Rents were high in the region before Helene.  Some housing stock washed away in the flooding, leaving even fewer potential rental units available.

Asheville and surrounding areas are a big tourist hub. The region missed its big fall foliage tourism season as the mountainous area was still in crisis mode and barring visitors as leaves burst into color in October and early November. 

Tourist-dependent businesses that weren't destroyed in the flood had to shut down, leaving many workers out of a job. Which meant they couldn't pay rent. 

Visitors are starting to trickle back into western North Carolina and a lot of businesses have reopened. But it will be months or years before that industry can be back to full throttle. The eviction crisis won't go away soon. 

This type of thing is happening elsewhere with greater frequency, as climate change makes storms wetter, windier and more intense. It might not always be on the scale of what western North Carolina is going through, but it still hurts the victims.

Even here in Vermont, there's a crisis brought on by flooding over the past two years or so.

As Grist reported back in October, our flooding exacerbated Vermont's housing crisis. It put hundreds if not thousands of housing units out of commission, at least temporarily.

And people who wanted to move out of homes in flood danger zones were priced out of the market by sky high housing prices.

Back in North Carolina, there are mounting calls for an eviction moratorium. The moratorium drive is coming from a broad based group of advocates, business leaders and political leaders. The disaster has caused a spike in job losses, since many businesses were destroyed, damaged or crippled by Helene. 

A number of people are in even more dire straights than eviction proceedings. Some people are still living in unheated campers and even tents as winter weather presses in.  This isn't going to go away anytime soon.

Volunteer groups continue to try. Church groups, builders and of course Habitat for Humanity are building lots of tiny homes to offer to people who lost their homes in Helene. Sure, tiny homes are by definition small, but at least they're solid roofs over people's heads, with heat and running water. 

I guess these tiny houses are one positive climate change adaptation method, given that we're going to keep having disasters like this. 

LITERAL SHIFTING LANDSCAPES 

Hurricane Helene produced at least 2,000 landslides in western North Carolina. Many of those swept away homes, killing and injuring dozens of residents. 

To add insult to injury, people who had homes where landslides hit can't rebuild. It's too dangerous. What's left of the land is also worthless. 

As CBS News reports,  geologists are mapping the landslides and assessing where it's unsafe to rebuild. About 13 percent of the mountainous region in western North Carolina is prone to landslides and debris flows, and those places should not have homes or businesses built on them.  Geologist Jennifer Bauer has these risky areas designated as purple zones in her mapping. 

"There are many homes below the purple zones that could be impacted by future landslides, Bauer said. 

As storms get wetter and more intense with climate change, the risk of landslides grows with it.

Not just in North Carolina. Any mountainous or hilly area is prone to landslides and mudslides. It's not just a winter California thing.

The risk includes areas here in Vermont, where I live. The state saw no fewer than 82 landslides during the July, 2023 floods, eleven of which prompted immediate evacuations. One of the landslides swept aside vehicles on a road in Barre, though no serious injuries came out of that incident. 

The increase in extreme weather will keep surprising us with after effects of each disaster that will surprise us and complicate recovery from each event. 

I'm not sure what else to say about it, other than to bluntly say, get used to it. It will be a rough ride. 

 

 

 

Brace Yourself, Vermont: You're REALLY About To Get Slapped By Winter. Also, Not Just Vermont

 Like I noted in a post Sunday morning, it's been an incredibly warm year in Vermont.

A weather map depicting what forecasters think will
be happening Thursday morning. A strong Alberta
clipper is seen here spreading wind and snow
across the Northeast, while a blast of Arctic air
begins to rush southward into the eastern
half of the United States. 

That party is over. 

The chilly winds and snow showers, and itty bits of lake effect stuff the Green Mountain State experienced over the weekend was just a tiny morsel of what's to come.

If you love wind chills below zero, icebox temperatures, lots of wind and bursts of snow blasting into your face, this will be your week. And this could last awhile. 

Today and tomorrow, we'll muddle through with sort of chilly weather for this time of year, but nothing that out of the ordinary.  The sky will probably yield a few more snowflakes from time to time, but nothing major. 

We already had some snow in much of Vermont overnight. My place in St. Albans had 1.1 inches of surprise snow overnight.

Roads early this morning were slick in spots, and as of 7 a.m it was definitely still snowing noticeably in the northern Green Mountains and western slopes. Accumulations won't amount to all that much today, but the dustings in the mountains will continue to slowly add up. 

Tomorrow, it's rinse and repeat. Some of us might get another  dusting, a lucky few maybe an inch or two. And the northern mountains could collect up to four or five inches of fluff.

WINTER SLAMS

The cold drama starts Wednesday. A strong Alberta clipper will come at us from the west and northwest and pass through the region Thursday. 

Alberta clippers, to refresh your memory, are storms that form in or near Alberta, Canada and head southeastward toward us. They can be windy storms, but they they don't usually have all that much moisture to work with.  

They usually bring cold winds and more often than not, less than four inches of snow. 

This particular Alberta clipper will help spread frigid air through almost all of the eastern half of the nation, creating southern freezes, subzero cold in the upper Midwest, more epic lake effect snowstorms in the Great Lakes, and general winter awfulness and cold winds everywhere in the East.

An early guesstimate from the National Weather Service
in South Burlington regarding how much snow
will fall Wednesday and Thursday. It's definitely
subject to change, and I suspect this map might
underestimate how much snow might all in 
the northern and central Green Mountains. 

 As is usual with an Alberta clipper, we won't get a huge dump of snow with this one here in Vermont, but it will get somewhat snowy. .

Ahead of it, strong south winds will get cranking Wednesday, especially in the Champlain Valley. Despite the south winds, it really won't warm up much, so the precipitation that does come in will be snow. 

The storm's boisterous cold fronts will bluster through on Thursday, with more snow showers. Some of them might be squally, with briefly heavy snow and particularly gusty and erratic winds. 

So really, this whole Alberta clipper thing will make travel on the highways a bit much at times through Wednesday through Friday. 

Lower valleys like the Champlain and lower Connecticut probably won't see much new snow, maybe an inch or two. But the mountains (Read: ski areas) should benefit from several inches of snow. 

Starting Thursday and continuing through the weekend, it's going to be COLD.  The howling winter winds will continue. High temperatures Friday and during next weekend will only be in the 20s, with some areas maybe not making it out of the teens Friday. 

Lows will be in the single digits, and wind chills will certainly be below zero. If you  haven't dragged your really cold winter gear out of the closets yet, now's the time to do it. 

Sure, it usually gets cold in December, but this looks like it will definitely a stronger and more intense early December cold wave than we've gotten used to in recent years.  Though in this age of climate change, this won't be as nasty as some historic cold waves decades ago. It won't be a record-breaker.

It's beginning to look like a reinforcing shot of frigid air will come in around Sunday, so the earliest we might see any kind of warm up is more than a week away. 

Update: Widespread Lake Effect Snows Piled Up Big Time

Intense lake effect snow squalls stalled traffic along
Interstate 90 in Ripley, New York. 

 I don't know if the Great Lakes effect snowstorms this weekend were the biggest on record, but damn, they were pretty big. And awfully widespread. 

After a warm autumn, all of the lakes are warm, and the first big cold push of the season really cranked that snow, starting Thursday and going through today. g

The heavy snow covered shorelines from Michigan to New York, and included lots of amazing totals. 

Some of the biggest totals by state so far include: 

New York: 46 inches at Barnes Corners and Copenhagen

Pennsylvania 42.3 inches at North East

Ohio: 39 inches at Ashtabula,

Michigan: 34 inches at Otsego Lake State Park.

Mind you, this was at 10 a.m. Sunday. It was still snowing at a good clip in many locations this afternoon. 

 Parts of Canada weren't immune.  Highway 11, a major thoroughfare north of Toronto, was shut down by blinding snow squalls that dumped two feet of snow within a day and a half. 

The storms caused havoc on Friday and over the weekend in some of the hardest hit towns. The New York State Thruway was shut down roughly between Buffalo and the Pennsylvania line Friday, and hundreds of vehicles were stranded overnight along the highway. 

The snow squalls were so intense they were punctuated by thunder and lightning, and waterspouts were reported offshore of Buffalo over Lake Erie.

Not much snow fell in Buffalo, which was north of the main band of snow, but the Buffalo Bills' stadium in Orchard Park, south of Buffalo, was buried by at least 20 inches of snow.  The Bills requested help from fans to help shovel out the stand-in time for the game today. 

Erie, Pennsylvania endured its biggest snowstorm on record over the weekend with 31 inches, with possibly another foot on the way. After a brief break in the snow Saturday afternoon and evening heavy snow returned to Erie again Sunday. 

It's getting bad enough there that people were up on roofs shoveling, fearful the weight would be too much for some homes and buildings. 

The snow is becoming somewhat lighter and more scattered near the Great Lakes starting tonight and into the first half of the week. But an Arctic cold front due later in the week is likely to restart the intense squalls again. 

Vermont Effects

Radar image from the National Weather Service in 
South Burlington shortly after 10 a.m. today shows
a band of snow from Lake Ontario fading in the
Adirondacks, then getting reinvigorated over 
northern Lake Champlain. A narrow area around
Swanton and Highgate had briefly heavy snow,

The bands of lake effect snow were powerful enough Friday through Sunday to them to make it all the way to Vermont, but in a much milder fashion than seen in western New York. 

Sunday morning, the Lake Ontario band picked up some additional moisture from northern Lake Champlain. That was enough to reinvigorate the snow for awhile to dump two or three inches in a narrow zone around Swanton and Highgate. Meanwhile, in nearby St. Albans, there was barely a dusting of new snow.

The Lake Ontario snow bands also graced the northern Green Mountains. Jay Peak reported 15 inches of new snow between Friday morning and Sunday morning. 

Snow showers through the first half of the week should add some light accumulations to the higher elevations, but likely an inch or less in the valleys. 

Video:

This shows how localized these lake effect snow squalls are Television station WGRZ did a time lapse video of a drive from downtown Buffalo, New York to the suburbs to the south. 

Buffalo was a bit too far north this time to get the squalls. Downtown streets were clear of snow, green grass in parks had absolutely no snow. Drive a few miles and it was a practically a blizzard. You can see the thick snow squalls as the driver approached the snow zone. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

Various scenes from the storm from the Associated Press, including the city of Erie, Pennsylvania buried beneath the snow. Again, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.

November Was Yet Another Warm Vermont Month In An Incredibly Warm Year So Far

The first day of November opened with a sky that
sort of suggested summer and some leaves still on
trees during this near record warm autumn

 As always, we flip the calendar to a new month, so we have the climate stats for the past month, which took us through November.  

It was another warm month. Burlington ended up with a mean temperature of 42.0 degrees. That barely put us in the top 10 list of warmest Novembers. We tied for 10th place on the list with 1975 and 1896.

Incredibly, that means eight months this year were among the top ten warmest on record. All four seasons in 2024 also scored in the top five warmest. 

You'd think that 2024 is a shoo-in for warmest year on record, which will beat the mark set just last year. However, it appears we're gearing up for a remarkably cold December, which might spoil that record. More on that in a bit.

Temperatures

Depending on where you were in Vermont, the month came out anywhere between about 2.5 and 4.5 degrees warmer than average. 

 No surprise, the warmth of November was statewide and consistent. The warmth was punctuated by two heat bursts in the first week of the month. Temperatures climbed as high as 80 degrees in Woodstock. That's only the second time I'm aware of that it reached 80 somewhere in Vermont during November. The other occasion was during a hot spell in 1950 that brought the temperature up to 81 degrees in Bellows Falls. 

It can get below zero across the state in November, but the coldest readings of the month were mostly in the teens above zero, with some places  not dipping below the 20s. 

Burlington's low for the month was a very mild 24 degrees. (That's a full nine degrees warmer than the coldest reading ever in October, never mind November.  Also in Burlington, every day got at least a little above freezing, a rarity for November. 

Only nine days during November in Burlington were regarded as cooler than normal. And remember, this is the "new normal" based on the average of the past 30 years, when climate change had already skewed weather records.  

Precipitation

The only snow of note in November came in the final
days of the month. Most of the time, it was too 
warm for snow. 

With all the talk of drought establishing itself in Vermont, November could have been worse. It was drier than normal statewide, but storms during the final ten days of the month helped a little. 

Soil conditions are still too dry, and we could use a wet winter and spring, but so far, we're mostly hanging in there. 

Most places in Vermont usually get between about 2.5 and three inches of rain and melted snow during a typical November. This year, we were short by about an inch. 

Burlington clocked in with 1.64 inches of November rain and snow. By my count, that was the 25th driest November out of the past 131 years of reliable records in Burlington.  

Southern Vermont had the worst trouble with a lack of rain early in the month. Drought officially took hold there, and rare for the season brush and forest fires vexed that section of the state well into mid-month. 

Recent rains and snows have finally erased that threat. 

Snowfall was light, with most places not seeing any real snow until Thanksgiving. The Champlain Valley missed out on that storm. Burlington only had 0.1 inches of snow in November, tying with 2004 as the second least snowiest November. (Least snowy, totally a trace is a five way tie).

The Thanksgiving storm left a few high elevations in southern and central Vermont with more snow than  normal for November, an exception to the low-snow rule for the month. 

Autumn, 2024

Meteorological autumn, defined as the period between September 1 and November 30, was the second warmest on record in Burlington. The average temperature for the three months was 53.6 degrees. Only the autumn of 2017 was warmer.   

After a remarkably warm year so far, the first half of
December in our neck of the woods is forecast
to be much colder than we're used to. 

We had such a warm autumn mostly because of the consistency of the warmth rather than many long record hot spells. September was Burlington fourth warmest; October was ninth warmest, and as mentioned November was ties for 10th warmest.

Seven of the ten warmest autumns in Burlington have occurred since 2011.

Incredibly, as I alluded to, each season in Burlington in 2024 was among the warmest seen since they started keeping track of these things back in the 1880s. 

Winter 2023-24 was the warmest, spring, 2024 was tied for second warmest, summer was third warmest, and autumn came in second. 

Makes you wonder if global warming is altering the kind of climate we're used to, huh?  Although, we might just have coming up what has become a rare interruption in our warming Green Mountain State surroundings. 

Long Warmth Ending

Arguably, I can't remember any extended periods of cold than normal weather in Vermont since late autumn and early winter of 2019. (We have had brief excursions into record or near record cold since them, but those have only lasted a few days at most).

Forecasters and long range models are consistent in suggesting we could be about to have a December unlike anything we've seen in at least a quarter century. No guarantees on that, but it's possible.

Most Decembers have been normal to warm over the past few decades, but a persistent weather pattern seems to be setting up that would keep blasts of Arctic air coming at us. We almost guarantee the first half of December will be noticeably colder than normal, with some days being really cold. 

The signals are mixed on what would happen in the second half of December. But if it stays cold, 2023 might well end up keeping its position as Burlington's hottest year. 

The chilly December race is on!