Think It's Snowy In Vermont? Let's Take A Quick Trip To Montreal

Montreal is a mess after two storms within four days
dumped 30 inches of snow on the city. Snow removal
has been slow because of the volume of the snowfall
and people are getting frustrated.

 We spent a lot of time over the past several days talking about all the snow here in Vermont, but if you really want snow, we should talk about Montreal. 

And other large sections of Quebec and Ontario. 

Two storms between Thursday and Sunday dumped nearly 30 inches of snow on Montreal. 

It was the largest amount of snow on record for such a short period of time.  The city had 40 percent of its normal annual snowfall within five days. 

Montrea[ had full blizzard conditions, which are common further north in Quebec but rare in southern parts of the province. Winds around Montreal Sunday and Monday gusted from 35 to as high as 55 mph, whipping the snow into tremendous drifts. 

Sunday's storm was slightly larger than Thursdays, depositing about 16 inches of snow on Montreal and 21 inches in Mirabel. 

Sunday's storm was the fourth largest snowfall on record in Montreal. Thursday's storm was tenth largest.  (Montreal's biggest snowstorm dropped 18 inches of snow on the city on December 27, 2012.

At least one death was reported due to the storm.  A 57-year old ma was found dead inside a snow-covered car with its engine running, Global News reports.

 It's likely the snow blocked the car's exhaust, backing deadly carbon monoxide back into the car where the man was sitting.

In Chateauguay, Quebec, just south of Montreal, a 13-year old girl was in critical condition after she was found unresponsive beneath a collapsed snowbank.  A snow tunnel must have collapsed. 

Montreal has a reputation as being at least somewhat  efficient at snow removal, but this threw the city for a loop. Schools were canceled Monday and the city told anyone who was able to work from home to do so. 

Quiet weather starting Tuesday has allowed Montreal to get the cleanup going in earnest, but officials said it could take to early next week to get all the sidewalks plowed. On Tuesday, only six percent of rte snow had been cleared from Montreal streets. So yeah, this will take awhile.

As of midweek, city streets were still treacherous. Snowbanks made street parking virtually impossible.  Adding to the chaos, pedestrians were walking in the streets because sidewalks were still blocked by snow. 

If you're contemplating a quick trip up to Montreal, I'd wait more than a week before doing it. 

The huge volume of snow is making it hard to get rid of it all. Montreal has these big snow blowers that filled one large 45-foot truck every minute to be hauled to a snow dump. The city either dumps snow into sewer chutes, where it mixes with warmer wastewater, melts, and is then treated by the city's wastewater system. Or it's deposited at dumps, including an old quarry, where the snow gradually melts in the summer. 

 Far away from Montreal, and well northeast of Quebec City, an avalanche swept across a highway and trapping cars. However, everyone escape unscathed. 

Toronto was also reeling from the dual snowstorms.  Main roads there are clear, but like Montreal, Toronto has to load snow on trucks and haul it away, which is taking forever given the 21 inches of snow that fell on Toronto in the dual storms. 

The slow pace of snow clearing in Toronto is frustration residents, much like in Montreal. 

It's unclear if the weather had anything to do with the plane crash in Toronto Monday in which a plane with 80 people on board crashed and flipped over when trying to land.  Twenty-one people were hurt, but miraculously no deaths were reported. 

The plane landed amid blowing snow and strong winds, but pilots are trained to take off and land in such conditions, so it could well have been a mechanical problem. 

Much like here in Vermont, the snow machine as shut off for now in most of southern Quebec and Ontario. Only very light snows are expected in Toronto and Montreal over the next week. In both cities, high temperatures next Monday through Wednesday could rise to levels slightly above freezing. 

Videos:

 Scenes from the Montreal blizzard. Click on this link to view or if you see the image below, click on that. 

News report shows how chaotic things looked in Montreal. Again, click on the link or if you see image below click on that:

Judging from this video, it looks like Ottawa, Canada is very efficient at removing near 30 inches of snow from city streets. Click on this link to view or if you see image below, click on that. 

 

A walk through a Montreal neighborhood Wednesday morning shows how chaotic things still are in the city. Click on this link or if you see the image below click on that. 

 

 

Intense Flash Flooding In Northeast, And Ontario, Some Vermont Flood Risk Today

Extreme flooding again, this time in Connecticut on
Sunday. Photo from WINY Radio via Facebook. 

 While we in Vermont were harassed by scattered, mostly light showers and overcast skies on Sunday, new outbreaks of intense flash flooding hit other areas not too far from the Green Mountain State. 

Parts of Connecticut were under a flash flood emergency when up to ten inches of rain deluged the southwest parts of the state in a matter of hours. That led to a disaster on par with what happened around St. Johnsbury and Lyndonville on July 30 when eight inches of rain fell in a few hours there. 

The flooding in western Connecticut Sunday was described as a one in a thousand year flood event, which means the chances of what happened yesterday in any given year is 0.1 percent. Of course, in the age of climate change, I think this percentage chance need to be altered.

Up to ten inches of rain fell in just a few hours. In some western Connecticut towns, up to six inches of rain fell in just three hours. 

Unfortunately, reports are two people were swept away in the Connecticut flooding but deaths had not been confirmed as of this morning.

As you'd expect damage is severe, with many roads washed out. Homes and businesses are trashed. The same story we've heard way too often this year.

Meanwhile, in Ontario, five inches of rain drenched Toronto Saturday, setting off new rounds of flooding in a summer that has already seen intense flooding in Ontario.  Once again, people had to be pulled from cars suddenly stranded in rapidly rising water. 

This will be Toronto's wettest summer on record, according to Environment Canada.   The wettest summer on record in Toronto was previously 15.6 inches of rain, but already this summer, they've had 18.73 inches and counting. 

Here we go again. Vermont under a slight
risk for flash flooding today. 

I'm struck by how frequently the floods have been in the Northeast and southeastern Canada this summer. Central and northern Vermont on July 11. Vermont's Northeast Kingdom on July 30.  Toronto, Canada on July 15 and August 17. Montreal on August 2. Now Connecticut.

MORE FLOODS?

Today brings one last day for awhile for some flood threats in New England, including here in Vermont. 

The cold front that promises to bring in that chilly air we've been advertising is set to come through today.  NOAA's Weather Prediction Center has upgraded us from a marginal to a slight risk of excessive rain and flash flooding across Vermont today.

That is level two out of four-point scale. 

These risks are always tricky to assess in advance.  Sometimes, the heavy rain moves right along and doesn't linger over one area, minimizing the flood threat. Other times, heavy downpours hit the same area over and over again, and you have a local flash flood.

Today is kind of a tossup, so we'll have to wait until this afternoon to see how everything behaves. 

We know the line of storms ahead of today's cold front will have some torrential downpours. It's just a question of whether they linger over a particular spot for a couple or few hours.  Especially if it lingers over the Green Mountains, that could cause trouble, as the rainwater would gush down the steep slopes and cause some flash flooding.  

If we get any flash flooding in Vermont today, it'll happen between 1 and 8 p.m., says the National Weather Service in South Burlington.  Any flash flooding would take the form of washed out culverts, gravel roads and ditches, flooding of the type of small streams that rise quickly in heavy rains, and street flooding in urban areas. 

I don't think flash flooding today will be super widespread. Most of us should only get 0.75 to 1.5 inches of rain, which is manageable. But a few unlucky spots could get much more. 

The National Weather Service said this morning the ground is still so soggy that we can only handle 1.5 to 2 inches of rain in an hour before flash flooding would probably begin. Some towns that get hit by the heaviest downpours today could see that much rain in such a short time period. 

Seek higher ground very quickly if your area goes under flash flood warning.

We won't have to worry about flooding along main rivers like the Winooski, Lamoille, Missisquoi, Mad rivers and Otter Creek.  Those rivers will see sharp rises overnight, but won't go over their banks or cause anything scary or really damaging. 

I always hate to talk about flash flood risks because we Vermonters are so jumpy now when it comes to floods.  It's happened so much and so frequently, any forecast that mentions flooding probably triggers PTSD in more than a few people.

But, it will be over by this evening, so at least we don't have to sit and worry for very long.

COLD SNAP

As the chilly air pours in this evening, any Vermont flood risk will evaporate for the foreseeable future. The cold air in the atmosphere will probably trigger a fair number of rain showers Tuesday, Wednesday and possibly part of Thursday.  But all those showers will be light and pose absolutely no flood danger. 

After that, it should stay dry until at least next Sunday, or possibly even longer. 

 

Toronto Slammed By Severe Flooding, 3rd Big One In 11 Years

The third huge flood in 11 years just hit Toronto
this week. 

 Severe storms seem to be hitting big cities these days. 

Power still isn't fully restored in steamy Houston yet after Hurricane Beryl roared through more than a week ago.  

Chicago is cleaning up from severe storms and tornadoes on two consecutive days Sunday and Monday. 

And now, Toronto, Canada went under water. 

Toronto on Tuesday had its fifth wettest day on record with 3.8 inches of rain, which is about what the city should see in the entire month of July, not just one day. 

Most of the Toronto rain hit Tuesday morning. The system that caused the flooding evolved into an intense line of thunderstorms that produced tornadoes in New York State, including a particularly devastating one in Rome, New York. 

In Toronto, cars along the normally busy Don Valley Parkway were covered just about to their roofs in floodwaters. The Toronto Fire Department rescued 12 people from the cars on that highway, the CBC reported. 

City officials received at least 700 calls regarding flooded basements. More than 165,000 people lost electricity. 

Several inches of water covered the floor in much of Union Station, Toronto's largest transit hub. Water also cascaded down stairways there. Trains were canceled for hours. 

The rapper Drake's Toronto mansion was among the hundreds or even thousands of flood-damaged properties. He posted a video on Instagram showing ankle deep water gushing into his home as we waded through it. "This better be Espresso Martini," he joked in the caption. 

The Toronto flood was a classic case of "training" that dangerous flash flood phenomenon I often talk about. It's those thunderstorms that line up like boxcars on railroad tracks. Repeated storms goes over the same spot. A typical thunderstorm might last 20 minutes and dump a half inch of rain. 

You get 10 of those storms right after one another and pretty soon you have five inches of rain and flooding.  The terrible flooding in Vermont last week was caused mostly by "training" thunderstorms. 

Toronto City Manager Paul Johnson said this was the city's third so-called 100 year flood in eleven years. A 100-year flood is defined as one that has a one in 100 chance of happening in a given year. 

"I don't even know why we talk about 100-year storms anymore because that definition seems to have flown right out the window," Johnson said. "The challenge is much of the city is not designed to handle this amount of water coming down."

Climate change has made torrential storms like the one that hit Toronto more likely.  The challenge Toronto's city manager cites is shared by many if not most places, including Vermont. 

Floods like the ones in Toronto and Vermont this month used to be rare, but they have become all too common. This will force some kind of reckoning as to what can be built or rebuilt where in countless communities in the world.

 

Toronto Panda Enjoys, Destroys A Snowman, And Makes Us All Feel Good

A panda in Toronto hilariously dismantles a snowman.

A Toronto, Canada panda bear is making us all smile. 

In the video, we find that zookeepers have built a snowman for our friendly panda, named Da Mao. The snowman doesn't last particularly long, but the fun surely does!   

The video was actually taken at least five years ago, but it has gotten renewed attention lately on social media. Mostly because we need something to give us joy these days. 

The video will definitely fill you with joy, I'm sure as it did me. Maybe it's a lesson on how we all should live - goofy as a panda 

Here it is: As always, click on the video to make it bigger and easier to see