Extreme Local Weather Disasters Most Often Hit In The Summer

Aerial view of the aftermath of a massive flash flood in a
mountainous region of southwestern Virginia a couple
weeks ago. 

 During the autumn, winter and spring, weather disasters usually come in the form of large, strong storm systems that wreak havoc over a pretty large area.  

 Sure, large scale heat waves, wildfires and early season hurricanes can hit in the summer, causing major disruptions and threats to life. 

In the summertime, though, it's the pin prick disasters that will get you. Summertime extremes tend to be, well, more extreme, but hit a much smaller, local area.  Two such events recently caught my attention.

VIRGINIA

Last week, storms stalled over mountainous southwestern Virginia, which is always bad news for anywhere in the Appalachians, from Maine to Georgia. The torrents of rain can send walls of water down steep slopes onto sleepy hamlets in the valleys. 

This happened at night, and people suspected the worst. Were people asleep in their homes, unaware everything was going to wash away? After all, a similar summer flash flood in Tennessee last year killed 21 people. 

Initial reports indicated 40 or so people were missing. But that was mostly due to the fact that cell phone service sucks in that mountainous corner of Virginia. Plus, since roads were washed out, people couldn't just drive to Aunt Martha's house in Buchanan County to check on her. 

It turns out everyone survived, which honestly is a miracle. Aftermath videos and photos show houses washed hundreds of feet from where they once stood, utterly destroyed. 

Terrible to think about, though. You go to bed on a muggy evening and everything's fine. Before the night's over, lives are upended.  And you know it could happen anywhere, even here in little old Vermont. 

I love listening to summer downpours roar down on the roof of my St. Albans, Vermont home in the dark pre-dawn hours. It's always pleasant, but paranoid me thinks, what if this downpour doesn't stop?  I choose not to worry about it though. It's not worth worrying about something that won't happen. Probably. 

MONTANA

Last week, a surprising dust storm in Montana didn't have such a positive result. Six people were reported killed when the blinding storm roared across Interstate 90 near Hardin, Montana. 

I didn't know they can have dust storms in Montana, but after this disastrous one, I can see how it can happen. But Hardin is in a relatively open, semi-arid area east of Billings.  

Aftermath of July 15 dust storm crash near
Hardin, Montana. 

The thunderstorm that caused the disaster wasn't even really over Hardin.  It was basically what is known as an outflow boundary from a thunderstorm many miles away.

The parent storm was at least 30 mph away, but created a rush of wind gusting over 60 mph through the Hardin area, said Nick Vertz, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Billings, Montana. 

"'If they looked up in the sky while they're in Hardin, they probably didn't see much of what you'd think of a thunderstorm cloud, maybe not even much at all," Vertz said. 'It was just a surge of wind that kind of appeared out of nowhere.'"

It has been hot and dry before the storms in that part of Montana, so the surge of rainless wind was able to pick up a lot of dust. It was enough to cause what I would call a brownout - very much like a whiteout in the winter when blowing snow cuts visibility to zero. 

Twenty one vehicles piled up, including tractor trailers, and those crashes killed six people. 

It could have been even worse. Video of the scene shows that many other vehicles were able to stop safely behind the wreck without crashing into each other.  Traffic was backed up for miles. 

I'm sure there have been other local disasters in the United States this summer and there will be more. It's a part of the season. 

VIDEOS:

Inside Edition report on that flood in Buchanan County, Virginia. Click on this link if you don't see the video image, otherwise, watch below: 

Local news report on the Hardin, Montana crash, with brief glimpses of how bad things were during the actual dust storm. Click on this link or watch below:

Still Questions About Friday Nor'easter, Cold Weather and I-95 Nightmare

Thousands of cars and trucks stranded for up to 20 hours,
and counting this morning after snow and ice along
Interstate 95 in Virginia.

 Winter has definitely arrived in Vermont after a very late start. Seems flipping to a new year did the trick.   

Burlington got to zero before midnight, so that January 3 turned out to be the first zero or below of the season. 

 Some of the cold hollows in the Northeast Kingdom got into the minus teens.  This is nothing odd for a Vermont January, but it is a real switch from what we've been seeing.

Now that we got those subzero readings out of the way, we can look forward to variable, windy weather, a possible nor'easter and an even worse cold wave next week. 

I'll get more into that in a minute, but can we first talk about what is going on along Interstate 95 in Virginia. 

I-95 DISASTER, VIRGINIA

That flash snowstorm and freeze in the Mid-Atlantic states yesterday turned into a real life-threatening situation along a stretch of Interstate 95 near Fredericksburg, Virginia yesterday and overnight. 

Heavy rain, followed by a few hours of blinding snow during the workday is a recipe for a real mess anywhere. Ice builds up immediately on roads, and heavy snow then makes things even more impossible. I've seen that situation in Vermont.  People end up getting stuck for hours as traffic gets stuck behind wrecks. It happened all over the Washington DC area yesterday. 

At least in DC, things largely got untangled after several hours. 

But I-95 in Virginia got way beyond that. Trucks wrecked and cars got stuck during the height of the storm in the late morning.  Cars got trapped.  The wild thing is they were still trapped there overnight and into this morning along a 48-mile stretch of the Interstate. In both directions. 

As you can imagine, hundreds of people ran out of gas, food and water overnight as temperatures fell into the teens.  Many people did not have warm blankets or coats to keep them warm. Medical needs are going unaddressed.

As I write this at 8:45 a.m., the situation was ongoing.  The state and emergency authorities finally got their act together this morning and were heading out with food, water, gas and tow trucks. There are kids, pets and elderly people in some of these cars.  I need more details, as you can imagine, but I'm wondering why they didn't start dealing with this Monday afternoon.  

The snow abruptly stopped falling in Virginia shortly after noon Monday. Skies cleared. You'd think somebody would have started to untangle the mess during the afternoon.  Yes, people would have still waited for hours, but at least some of them would have been on their way by dark. Or so you'd think.

News reports say they're trying to get people off exits so they could get gas and lodging. But exits are blocked by wrecks and ice. Gas at stations near the Interstate have run out of fuel.  Hotels are obviously booked. 

Unless I find contradictory information about this, somebody dropped the ball in Virginia. I'll update with news of any casualties, and what made this mess go on for so long overnight and this morning.

VERMONT FORECAST

I don't see anything in the forecast that would suggest Vermont will have nearly as bad a time as Virginia, but the weather is going to keep us on our toes.

If you like up and down temperatures, this week is for you.

We get a quick, windy warmup by tomorrow as a storm passes by to our west.  We won't get much precipitation with this, just some light snow and flurries here and there. Valley temperatures will briefly rise above freezing, but it won't feel all that warm with gusty south winds on Wednesday.

Then theres's Friday.  Forecasters are still watching for a nor'easter to develop, but we don't know its path yet.  It could go off the coast, giving Vermont little or even no snow.  It could hug the coast, giving Vermont a nice big snowstorm, especially south and east.

For what it's worth, the American forecasting model, which had been taking the storm out to sea well east of New England, has been nudging it closer to the coast in recent updates. 

But that trend could reverse and the truth is we probably won't have a good sense of how this will affect us until Thursday morning. Even then, the forecast for this thing will go through  updates and revisions even as the storm arrives. Or doesn't arrive. 

After that, we get into gusty or even perhaps strong south winds Sunday with another brief warmup, followed by what could be a cold wave that would be quite a bit more frigid than the one we just had overnight. 

On the bright side, even if we do get a nasty Arctic outbreak next week, it won't last all that long. On the other hand, there's little or no sign of any warm or even warmish weather through the third week of January.