Tornado And Flood Nightmare Continues In Mid-U.S. Here in Vermont, A Little More Sneaky Ice?

Tornado debris is scattered far and wide after a deadly
tornado swept through Selmer, Tennessee 

It's going to be another very, very rough day in the middle of the nation with more tornadoes and a rapidly worsening flood situation. 

Meanwhile, up here in Vermont, despite nice hints of warmth here and there, we can't seem to shake the threat of ice raining on our springtime parade. 

I'll get into both, but as usual, first the grim national news:

TORNADOES INCREASE, AS DO FLOODS

So far, at least 44 tornadoes have been reported in the latest outbreak.  The count will rise as storm damage is assessed and as more twisters inevitably touch down today and probably tomorrow, too.

The death toll so far from the storms is at least seven, but that will unfortunately rise as debris is searched and more violent weather strikes. 

While today's awful weather will affect a wide area of the Midwest and South, Arkansas is today's particular victim. That state has the greatest chance of seeing potentially strong tornadoes and it faces the worst of today's flooding.  

That said, a huge area faces a big risk of flash flooding today from roughly Dallas all the way to Indianapolis. 

The rain is falling on already soaked ground. In the 48 hours ending at midnight last night, Memphis had received 6.9 inches of rain already, more than an inch more than what they normally see in the entire month of April. 

After tornado sirens kept blaring through the early morning hours, Nashville was deluged with just under four inches of rain Thursday, flooding much of the city. 

Most of Kentucky was under a flash flood warning this morning after as much as six inches of rain blasted down, and it was still pouring. This same area had one of its worse floods on record less than two months ago. 

The same general areas as today are under the gun with more tornadoes and especially flooding on Saturday. The weather system responsible for all this will finally start to head east Sunday, ending this long bout of punishing storms.

VERMONT EFFECTS

It really felt and looked like spring was arriving in this 
view of my St. Albans, Vermont yard Thursday evening....

Thursday morning's thunderstorm and rain and wind drama tapered off nicely by afternoon. Burlington ended up with 0.81 inches of rain, making it just barely the wettest April 3 on record. 

Not everybody warmed up as much as thought, as the Northeast Kingdom stayed cool all days. At 4 p.m. Thursday it was just 41 in Lyndonville, but 70 in Bennington. 

 Everything west of the Green Mountains did warm up nicely. Burlington got up to 68 degrees. 

It won't get quite that warm again for a little while yet, as a colder, unsettled pattern settles in for at least a few days. 

And guess what? After last weekend's ice storm, and the icy weather early Thursday in eastern Vermont, this weekend we might be in for.....you guessed it, more ice!

I don't think it will be widespread, but there might well be at least some areas with bad roads and maybe even some isolated power outages again. 

Here's the set up:

We're still expecting that stalled front causing the disaster in the middle of the nation to develop sort of a northeast extension that would allow weak waves of low pressure to come through us here in northern New England. 

For most of us, it still looks like that just means a rainy weekend.  But there's a couple of wrinkles.

....but the National Weather Service is still releasing
ice accumulation maps. This is for Saturday affecting
a few locations in eastern Vermont and in the much
of the Green Mountain high elevations. 

When the rain starts Saturday morning, it might be cold enough at first for a little snow and sleet at elevations of above 1,500.  I don't think we'll see much accumulation, but winter ain't over. 

That's not the end of it.  It looks like winds will help bring in a cold layer near the surface to areas along and east of the Green Mountains. 

That could make it cold enough for freezing rain once again. Mostly at higher elevations. But Saturday might, the cold air might creep down into valley floors east of the Greens, too.   

That could mean freezing rain.  

Not everybody will see freezing rain. In fact we don't know yet how extensive this might be. Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in South Burlington are taking a hard look at this and will update as they get more data.

There's a chance we'll see another winter weather advisory east of the Greens if this develops. 

People west of the Green Mountains should be safe from the ice. However, the northern Champlain Valley on Saturday afternoon looks like it will see another round of gusty winds, possibly gusting to at least 40 mph. 

That will just make a raw Saturday feel worse. 

Winter isn't done with us even after the weekend. A pretty strong disturbance and blast of cold air is due Tuesday.  Luckily the disturbance won't have a lot of moisture to work with, but it definitely looks like we might see at least some snow on Tuesday. Stay tuned for that. 

On the bright side, things aren't as bad as they were exactly a year ago. On this date, April 4, 2024, we had about foot of heavy, wet snow.