![]() |
Screen grab of a video showing a monster tornado mowing through Lake City, Arkansas. The tornado caused extensive damage. |
That was only the beginning. More tornadoes are expected for the next three days. Worse, cataclysmic flooding is still in the cards for the Mid-South.
Here in Vermont, we've had our noisy overnight and early morning with mixed precipitation, bursts of heavy rain, strong wind gusts, thunder and lighting.
For us here in the Green Mountain State, we can thank goodness the weather is at worst an inconvenience, not a disaster.
With that, I'll get into the national picture and toward the end, update you on what's happening in Vermont.
TORNADOES AND FLOODS
We're just getting toward early morning in the Midwest and South as I wrote this at 8 a.m., so as you'd imagine, assessments and casualty counts are incomplete yet. Many if not most of Wednesday's tornadoes hit after dark, so a full picture of what happened is incomplete.
We're already aware of three storm related deaths in Tennessee and a number of injuries.
It appears at least some of the tornadoes were intense. Video taken from around Lake City Arkansas showed a large tornado with some horizontal funnels protruding from it. That's a tell-tale sign of a tornado that was probably of EF-4 strength, with winds of 166 to 200 mph.
Adding to the potential evidence that this tornado was that strong, video taken after the twister shows houses completely leveled and vehicles strewn likely a fair distance from where they originated.
We saw at least 22 reports of tornadoes yesterday and last night, and that number will almost certainly increase as storm paths and damage are assesses over the next few days. Tornado watches and warnings were still ongoing as dawn broke this morning in Tennessee and Kentucky.
Flooding is already breaking out, the start of what will be some of the worst flooding on record in parts of the Mid-South. Memphis has already had more than four inches of rain from last night, including 2.26 inches in just one hour.
Things will get much worse before they get better
Tornado Outlook
Tornadoes are forecast to continue today, tomorrow and Saturday, with a particular emphasis on Arkansas, which as mentioned has already been hit hard by twisters.
Tornadoes, some possibly strong could form in central or southern Arkansas today. On Friday, tornadoes, again some strong, could touch down nearly anywhere in Arkansas and surrounding states.
More twisters are likely in and and near Arkansas Saturday. I
Flooding
The flooding will be even worse than the tornadoes.
In addition to the downpours last night, another seven to as much as 15 inches of rain are in the forecast over the next four or five days for late sections of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and southern Illinois.
Granted this is a repeat of what I reported yesterday. But the flood event is only just beginning. You'll hear and see on the news incredible flash flooding. This is life threatening and will be easily one of the worst floods, if not the worst flood in the U.S. you'll see this year.
I would say it could be almost on par with the extreme flooding we saw in western North Carolina and surrounding areas with Hurricane Helene last September.
Flood watches already extend from northeast Texas through Ohio.
A stalled weather front with intense moisture from the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico feeding into it are responsible for all this horrible weather. Things should finally get unstuck by Sunday, and the weather in the U.S. looks much calmer and much less dangerous next week.
VERMONT EFFECTS
![]() |
The WCAX camera feed from the ECHO Center in Burlington captured this lightning bolt early this morning. |
The wonderful thing is we're avoiding a disaster this time, even if the weather system affecting us are related to the ones causing the extreme weather in the middle of the nation.
Our first salvo was overnight. The parent storm of the weather front that stalled across the Mid-South is noisily moving through.
This storm is a novelty more than anything else, since it brought us our first bout of lightning and thunder of the season early this morning. Most places in Vermont saw some lightning flashes and experienced rumbles of thunder.
Some areas of eastern Vermont experienced thunder sleet and/or thunder freezing rain, which is pretty cool.
Most of the mixed precipitation was over by 7 a.m., though a few lingering pockets of it might still be ongoing in a few cold Northeast Kingdom hollows. There were a number of delayed school openings in eastern Vermont due to the overnight ice.
Rainfall has been pretty heavy under the thunderstorms, but most of us should stay under an inch of new precipitation. A few places that got bullseyed by thunderstorms might go over an inch. Burlington had received 0.7 inches of rain through 8 a.m. and it was still raining there.
Rivers were already running high prior to this rain, so we might end up with pockets of minor flooding here and there later today from the runoff.
That would hit mostly in places with poor drainage. Main stem rivers in Vermont will rise today, but we'll very likely avoid any real flooding from those. Hydrologists with the National Weather Service are keeping an eye on things.
The storm in Vermont peaked generally between the hours of 2 and 8 a.m. Most of the rain should be out of here by mid to late morning.
The wind has been really cranking in parts of the Champlain Valley this morning, again, as expected. On my hillside perch in St. Albans, I'd estimate some of the gusts have reached as high as 45 mph.
So far, between the wind and lightning and the ice in eastern Vermont, there's only been a small smattering of power outages. Nothing widespread.
A wind advisory is still in effect for northwest Vermont until 8 this evening. Winds in northwest Vermont might taper off a little for a few hours late this morning then start to crank from the southwest and west at speeds as high as 55 mph in gusts. Then things will calm down this evening.
At least it will be warm. After the rain departs this morning temperatures should rocket upward well into the 60s in most of Vermont. Maybe upper 50s in the Northeast Kingdom.
Stalled Front
That stalled weather front that is causing so much destruction in the Mid-Mississippi Valley will start to extend up into our neck of the woods this weekend.
But up here, we'll miss out on the fire hose of moisture striking the Midwest flood zone. Instead, we'll see kind of a blah weekend with periods of rain. I suppose a little snow or mixed precipitation could mix in Saturday in high spots and maybe the Northeast Kingdom, but this will be rain.
Early guesses are we'll get a half inch to an inch of rain. Enough to keep river flows pretty brisk, but very likely not enough to cause flooding. We'll watch this, though. There's always a chance this weekend's rain could over-perform.
Doesn't look likely, but we'll see.