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| Tree and wires down on Stone House Road in Enosburg yesterday. Photo by Christopher Bergeron via Facebook |
See last night's post for a complete rundown of record highs and top wind speeds across Vermont.
We won't have anything quite that extreme for awhile. But it's going to stay windy with more yo-yo temperatures for the next several days.
Before we get into that, a couple more aspects of that wild storm we had yesterday. We here in New England were actually the victim of an atmospheric river, much like what hit the Pacific Northwest last week.
Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow regions in the atmosphere, basically rivers in the sky, that transport enormous amounts of water from the tropics. The average atmosphere river carries an amount of water vapor equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River, according to NOAA.
The difference is, yesterday's atmospheric river targeted us only for a very short period of time. The Pacific Northwest event was a fire hose aimed at the same spot for weeks.
Our atmospheric river, which originated in the Gulf of Mexico, was a lot like a firefighter sweeping his hose across a long, burning wall. We only got soaked for a few hours.
But you can tell how strong these wet tropical fire hoses are. We had those record highs, statewide, including that 63 degrees in Burlington. It was also Burlington's wettest December 19 on record, with 0.84 inches. Virtually all that rain fell in just five hours.
Atmospheric rivers, working in tandem with storm systems. more often than not cause strong, often damaging winds. Which is what we saw in Vermont Saturday.
Yesterday's atmospheric river didn't last long enough to cause any flooding. But they can cause havoc in New England, and they have. Our huge, catastrophic flood in July, 2023 was caused by an atmospheric river.
According to reporting by Inside Climate News, researchers have concluded that atmospheric rivers along in the eastern United States are increasing in frequency, while those on West Coast are decreasing, this month's weather notwithstanding.
Between 1980 and 2020, eastern atmospheric river activity from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean increased at a rate of five percent per decade, according to the research. Most of those atmospheric rivers affected the southeastern U.S, but some of them do make it up into the Northeast.
One caveat: The distinction is a little dim between an atmospheric river and just blobs of deep moisture coming off the Gulf and Atlantic. But this atmospheric river situation is a climate change signal that we ought to keep an eye on. It could be helping grow the propensity for extremes in the Northeast, including here in Vermont.
LOOKING AHEAD
Over the next few days atmospheric rivers will be back to tormenting the West Coast. More on that on an upcoming, separate post.
There's no immediate sign of another atmospheric river for us anytime soon. But a fast coast-to-coast jet stream across the northern United States will ensure constantly changing weather here in Vermont, and a more windy days and nights..
Luckily, I don't see signs of winds getting as strong as they did yesterday.
As of 9:45 a.m. today, there were still about 2,800 Vermont customers without electricity. A second big push of wind overnight kept creating new outages even as crews fixed problems created during the day Friday. Other damage included a building in downtown Winooski, where winds blew off a large section of brick veneer from the structure.
The wind has died down, and the sun is out, so we're getting a Saturday break from all the noise outdoors. But it's a short break. Especially in the Champlain Valley.
Another storm passing well to our north will pull in some stiff southerly winds over the Champlain Valley tonight. We won't get much precipitation out of it, maybe a few snow showers tomorrow morning.
The storm will create strange temperature trends again, only this time it won't be extreme. Temperatures will slowly rise into the low 30s overnight instead of falling like they usually do. And during the day Sunday, temperatures will fall in the late morning and afternoon instead of rising like they're supposed to.
For those of you who have no snow left on the ground after yesterday's storm, there's still one last chance of a white Christmas.
It looks like another storm diving southeastward from the Great Lakes will cross New England Tuesday, laying down a stripe of snow across the region. Not much. Early guesses put us in the two to four inch range. And there's a possibility it could get warm enough for the snow to mix with rain.
We'll get updates as we get closer to the event.
Beyond Tuesday, it gets even harder to predict what will happen. With such a fast west to east flow in the atmosphere, it can get tricky to tease out when each disturbance will come through, how strong they might be, and whether enough warm air will come in to mix in some rain or ice with the snow chances.
The weather pattern will mean more spells of gusty winds, so hang on to your Santa hat.
Meteorologists, and probably everyone else will need to stay on their weather toes Christmas week. But I don't see any signs of another big storm anytime soon.
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