West Coast King Tides Causing Floods And Aggravation This Weekend

King Tide flooding in Marin County
Friday. The flooding was expected to
be as bad or worse today.

 King Tides are swamping parts of the West Coast this weekend. 

Coastal flood warning and advisories and beach hazard statements are in effect up today all the way up and down the West Coast.

King Tides are related to this weekend's full moon, known as the Wolf Moon, after the howl of wolves you might hear on cold January nights. 

The Wolf Moon is also a super moon, meaning the full moon is closer to the Earth than at other times of the year. The full moon and the fact that Earth's orbit is now closest to the sun are making high tides even higher this weekend. The sun, Earth and moon are all aligned, adding to the extra water on the shorelines at height tide.   

On the West Coast, an offshore storm is driving wind and water toward the beaches, marinas and bays in California, Oregon and Washington, which adds a storm surge to the king tides. This double whammy is what has so many people concerned.

The National Weather Service office in the Bay Area issued a coastal flood warning for today with the following alert:

"Numerous roads will be closed. Low lying property including homes, businesses and some critical infrastructure will be inundated. Some shoreline erosion will occur."

At the San Francisco tidal gauge, forecasters said this morning's high tide would be 2.5 above normal, the highest since 1998

The tide fell just short of that on Friday in San Francisco, peaking at 2.2 feet above normal. That flooded streets and some businesses in the Bay Area. 

The Corte Madera area of Marin County was especially hard hit by Friday's King Tide. And presumably today's. High tide was approaching as I wrote this.

Employees of a fitness center surrounded by water were seen trying to bail out the business with buckets. Cars in the fitness center's parking lot were flooded and stranded. Television station KTVU showed a neighborhood flooded by the king tide Friday. 

The offshore storm is creating other headaches in the Bay Area, including gusty winds and heavy downpours which could cause some non-tidal flooding.  The high tides are blocking rain swollen rivers where they empty into the Pacific, adding to the flooding hazards. 

In the Los Angeles area, a large sand burn was bulldozed into place in hopes of preventing flooding in parking areas, the pier, homes and buildings nearby, as KTLA reports. 

As KPBS in San Diego points out, this weekend's king tides are giving Californians a glimpse into the future. "What the California Coastal Commission is telling us is that the King Tide is approximately what an average high tie will be by 2050," said Karin Kirk, executive director of Friends of Rose Creek. 

The East Coast is not being as seriously affected by this weekend's King Tides.  Weather patterns are keeping the worst of the tides at bay. 

But this episode is a warning to all coastal areas. The water will keep coming up in the years and decades to come as climate change continues to raise sea levels. 

In a few decades, the high water on the West Coast will seem quaint. Maybe it's time for people living right on the water to start pulling back, hard as that is to do.  

 

West Coast Storm Waves Harbinger Of Upcoming Stormy U.S. Including Here In New England.

Two men trapped on debris in the water after the 
end of the Santa Cruz, California wharf collapsed
under an onslaught of huge waves from offshore
Pacific Ocean storms. 

 Huge battering waves have been smashing into the California coast for days, and that state of affairs is likely to continue into the weekend. 

As it is, the part of the Santa Cruz Wharf fell into the Pacific Ocean Monday after waves tore at its supports. Three people were stranded on the floating debris. Two were rescued and the other managed to swim to shore. 

However, at Sunset State Beach along Monterey Bay, a man died after waves pinned him beneath debris. 

Residents along part of the shore south of Santa Cruz were also evacuated due to large, battering waves.   Many boats were sunk or otherwise damaged as huge swells crashed into Santa Cruz Harbor. 

Although the waves have diminished slightly since Tuesday, high surf advisories linger along the California Coast through Sunday. Large breaking waves of up to 10 to 15 feet are likely along the central coast.

The huge waves are tied to immense storms out over the Pacific Ocean. Some of that storminess is making its way inland along the Washington, Oregon and northern California coasts, and that has implications for storminess in broad sections of the United States, including here in New England.

The storms are already smashing ashore in the Pacific Northwest.  As of this morning, the coast of Washington State was under coastal flooding and high wind warnings, and high surf advisories. 

 One of these storms impulse from the Pacific has already crossed the Rocky Mountains and will start to cause trouble in Texas and Louisiana today.  There, severe thunderstorms, perhaps a few tornadoes and some local flash floods and perhaps a couple of tornadoes will menace the region on this Boxing Day.

That one should largely fade, giving us only clouds and the risk of very light precipitation Saturday. 

Hot on the heels of this storm will be another the will have blown in off the Pacific Ocean and then dived down into the central Plains. This one, like the one today, also seems destined to create some severe weather and flash floods, this time in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Eventually this storm will curve northeastward and affect us here in New England Sunday and Monday. Unfortunately for you winter lovers, this one looks like a rain event, with maybe some freezing rain to start, especially in eastern Vermont.

Morning temperatures this morning were only in the single digits, with some spots below zero. Same thing should happen tonight. That's really chilling the ground, so when rain arrives Saturday night or early Sunday, it will probably freeze on many surfaces even if the air temperature is a little above freezing.  So we'll keep an eye on that. 

This could be a fairly wet storm for us.  Early guesses range from a half inch to an inch of rain, but we'll know more about that as we get closer to the storm's start time.

After that yet another storm will blast into the Pacific Northwest, cross the Rockies, get into the Plains, redevelop and create a third storm that would affect us around New Years Day 

  We still have lots of questions as to whether that one will be mostly rain, mostly snow or just one of those All Of The Above storms. 

We also don't know how strong it will be, but it's possible it could be a fairly strong one. As usual we'll just have to wait and see. 

EDITORS NOTE: Apologies for the lack of photos or other illustrations with this post earlier. Either a problem  with the Blogger platform, or an issue with the WiFi at the hotel I'm staying at is not allowing me to add photos. I hope the problem will be fixed for future posts. Once I got home to a better connection I was able to fix it 

 

First Major West Coast Atmosphere River Getting Their Wet Season Off To A Doozy Of A Start

We've entered the season in which pretty big storms come off the Pacific Ocean and hit various parts of the West Coast, sometimes intensely, sometimes not.  

Satellite view shows the strong "bomb" cyclone centered off
the Washington and British Columbia coast this afternoon.
It's the comma shaped thing on the right hand side of the 
image. Part of the atmospheric river is visible as that
long white streak heading west from the storm

The first major storm of the season looks like quite a doozy. What is known as a bomb cyclone will team up with an atmospheric river .

A bomb cyclone is a storm that's intensifying super fast. A storm is a center of lower air pressure. In general, the lower the air pressure in a storm, the stronger it is.

 Technically, if the air pressure in a storm drops by 24 millibars within 24 hours, the storm is a bomb. 

Bomb storms are often dangerous they are simply strong and getting stronger. You can plan on a lot of wind and precipitation if you're hit with a bomb cyclone, and that will be the case with this "bomb"

This storm could be the most intense in the region since at least the 1940s. 

 An atmospheric river is a long narrow corridor of deep moisture.  When one of these comes a shore, a 200 to 400 mile wide band,

So we have a strong storm and a stronger than usual atmospheric river. The result is a West Coast mess that started today. 

THE RESULT

Between this afternoon and Sunday evening, ten to as much as 15 inches of rain to northwestern California and southwestern Oregon. 

NOAA's Weather Prediction Center says that by Thursday, there's a high risk of dangerous flooding in parts of northwestern California. High risk flood alerts from NOAA happen only about four times a year and it's exceedingly rare for them to be issued three days before the event, as this one was.

High risk days account for two-fifths of all U.S flood deaths and at least 80 percent of all flood damage. So this is serious. 

Emergency managers are especially worried about mudslides and debris flows, especially on slopes that suffered wildfires in recent years.

The storm is accompanied by those high winds. Many neighborhoods are pretty heavily forested, which means trees could fall on houses. People are being warned to stay in interior rooms on the lowest floors of their homes because of this risk, 

Those winds tonight could gust to 70 mph, with possible 85 mph gusts near the beaches. 

Ten to as much as 20 inches of rain could
fall in the yellow shaded area of 
northwest California and southwest
Oregon over the next several days. 

The rough weather extends all the way to Washington and British Columbia. High winds are expected even in the big cities of Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver, Canada. 

Blizzard warnings are up for Washington's Cascade mountains, 

Previous to this storm, some strong systems have hit British Columbia, and sideswiped Washington State with some decent rains. But points further south have had just small introductory systems to introduce the rainy season.  

This will be a real slap of reality and could be the start of a rough winter on the West Coast, especially roughly from San Francisco north.  There's a La Nina weather pattern, albeit a weak one, and that often cause extra storminess in the Pacific Northwest

WEST COAST STORM AND VERMONT

The West Coast storminess is unrelated to the super welcome precipitation that we're expecting starting Thursday. That one got energy from a previous storm that came ashore from the Pacific a few days ago. 

Despite the power of what's hitting the West this week, I so far see few signs of that storm spawning anything extreme in our neck of the woods.   

One piece of that atmosphere river should come through New England in about a week as a modest system with light precipitation. After that, the weather pattern seems like it could be active for us, but that's uncertain.  

Persistent July Heat Broke Impressive Records In Several U.S. Cities

Clouds billow up on July 17, taking advantage of another
in a string of steamy very warm days in Vermont this summer.
Many cities on the west and east coasts had their hottest
July on record, and those who didn't came close. 

 We in Vermont weren't the only ones who endured what seemed like never ending summer heat during July. 

Plenty of other cities, mostly in the West, with some in the East were even more impressive. 

Death Valley, California had the hottest month ever observed at any place on Earth in July. The average temperatures, as measured at Furnace Creek there, was 108.5 degrees during July. That breaks the old record of 108.1 set in 2018.

The list of cities reporting their hottest July include Sacramento, Bakersfield and several other California cities, Las Vegas, Portland, Salem, Redmond and Eugene, Oregon; Spokane, Washington, St. George, Utah, Albany, New York, Hartford, Connecticut, Concord, New Hampshire and Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 

I'm sure I'm missing many other cities that had a record hot July, but you get the idea.

Here in Vermont, Burlington "only" managed to see its third hottest July on record this year. 

While the East and West coasts were hot, the middle of the United States was near normal, or even a little cooler than average in spots. 

Within a few days, we should see July data that assesses the United States as a whole. At mid-month or so, we'll know how July fared across the globe. Early indications are July ended a 13-month long stretch of consecutive record warm global months. Even so, July for the world as a whole will surly come in much warmer than the 20th century average 

We do know in some areas, including some weird spots, the extreme heat continued into August. For example, how about a nice tropical beach vacation on the Arctic Ocean shores in far northwestern Canada and northern Alaska? 

Deadhorse, Alaska, right on the Arctic Ocean shore in not normally a tropical paradise, but it reached 89 degrees there on August 6.  That is likely the hottest it's been anywhere in the world north of 70 degrees latitude. 

In the neighboring Northwest Territories of Canada in the far north, all time record highs were set a Little Chicago, 96.6 degree; Fort McPherson, 94.8 degree, Inuvik, 94.6 degrees and Trail Valley, 33.6 degrees. 

Although much of the eastern United States has cooled off somewhat from the persistent heat of July, it's still quite warm in much of Canada as a strong ridge of high pressure in the middle of that nation holds firm.

Summers are getting longer in the northern hemisphere with climate change. Which of course means this summer is definitely not over yet.  

Heat Waves This Week Are/Will Be One For The Record Books, Especially Out West

The 6 to 10 day outlook favors warmer than normal
temperatures across the Lower 48. This covers July
12-16. The darker the red, the greater the odds
of above normal temperatures. If you want 
cool weather, go to Alaska

The Desert Southwest, Las Vegas, and valleys in California and Oregon away from the coast get hot every summer, but this is ridiculous.   

The East Coast has been baking as well, even up here in Vermont. Long term prospects have heat reigning in most of the nation through most of the rest of the month.

More on that in a bit, but first, the western heat wave is withering and wowing people all over that region.  

RECORD HIGHS

The intense, long lasting heat wave in the west began in earnest Friday and only intensified over the weekend. has begun, and all time record highs in some cities could well fall. Some already did. 

On Friday, Palm Springs, California reached 124 degrees, setting a new all time high there.  Blythe, California reached 123 degrees, tying the record for the hottest reading in the month of July. 

Several other cities reported record high temperatures for the date. Redding, in north central California, reached 119 degrees Saturday. breaking their all-time record for the date. 

  Ukiah, in northwestern California, tied its all time high temperature Saturday, reaching 117 degrees. That also beat the record high for the date by a whopping nine degrees. 

More all time record highs could easily fall in various western cities between today and Thursday.  

 The world record for hottest temperature recorded on Earth is 134 degrees, set in Death Valley back in 1913.

However, experts say that measurement is suspect due to an improper placement of a thermometer. The actual world record is probably actually 130.

That said, there's a decent chance that between today and Thursday, Furnace Creek in Death Valley could reach 130 degrees.    It was 128 degrees in Furnace Creek Saturday, a record high for the date. 

Also, each day today through Thursday has the potential to at least tie the all-time record high in Las Vegas, which is 117 degrees. 

All heat waves are dangerous, but this one has meteorologists really sounding the alarm.

"It cannot be stressed enough that is is an exceptionally dangerous and lethal situation....It may not seem so if you live near the coast, but an event of this scale, magnitude and longevity will likely rival anything we've seen in the last 18 years for inland areas," wrote the National Weather Service office in San Francisco. 

The hot conditions are extending even up into the Sierra Nevada mountains, which are better known for epic snowstorms, not heat waves.  A rare heat advisory is in effect through Friday for areas around Lake Tahoe.  

A more extended outlook covering July 14-20
doesn't really release the nation from hot weather.
Best odds of hot weather are in the Northern Rockies
with high chances across most of the nation's
northern tier, and Florida. 

Officials are warning of all kinds of deep trouble associated with the heat wave, including hot weather related deaths, rolling blackouts and wildfires. Two dozen wildfires were already burning in California as of Friday. 

EASTERN/NATIONAL HEAT

Meanwhile, it's hot in the East, too.  Raleigh, North Carolina on Friday reached 106 degrees, setting a new mark for the all time hottest temperature on record there. Temperatures of 100 degrees reached as far north as Maryland Friday.  

The National Weather Service Heat Risk map forecasts large areas of major and extreme heat impacts in the western third of the United States through at least next Friday. On the East Coast, widespread major impacts are forecast through Tuesday. 

After that, the heat in the East should temporarily ease in the second half of the week before possibly re-surging again 

Major impacts means.the heat endangers everyone who has not adequate access to cool rooms and hydration.  Extreme impacts are considered rare and will impact health systems, heat-sensitive industry and infrastructure.  

As we well know, the heat has invaded Vermont.  It reached 90 degrees both Thursday and Friday in Burlington, so now the total number of 90 degree days so far this year is seven - about average for an entire summer.

There's a low, but not zero chance Burlington could make it to 90 degrees again today, and a somewhat better chance of achieving that level Monday and Tuesday. Rain and clouds should hold temperatures down toward Wednesday (But that rain might cause other trouble. More on that in another post later today).

The outlook beyond this coming week in terms of heat is not great here in Vermont, or almost anywhere else in the nation for that matter.  Long range forecasts - always somewhat iffy I know - suggest the two heat domes in the West and East might sort of merge to make the whole nation roast starting in about a week.

The trend toward above normal temperatures in mid-July comes at the climatological peak of summer, so any hot spells would be especially so.

As a reminder, we know that heat waves happen every summer. The problem is the new extremes we've been seeing in recent years in the United States and globally.  Climate change is tilting the odds of turning regular old heat waves into torturous, dangerous new all time record highs. 

The hotter it gets, the the more persistent the heat, the more dangerous it gets. Climate change increases the odds that we'll get summers like the one that seems to be underway right now. 

Not every summer going forward will be super hot. But the general trend because of our greenhouse gas emissions will continue to be more and more all-time record heat. 

That's especially dangerous in areas where heat waves might not be as historically common. If it's 100 degrees in Phoenix, that's bad, but for them, manageable. Up here in the Great No Longer So White North, it's a recipe for disaster. 

 

The Nation's Weather Is Wayyyy Off The Rails. Again. Details Here

Extremely rare snow on the coast of northern California
at the Carson Mansion in Eureka.
Photo via Twitter by Kenneth Pinkham. 

 The weather here in Vermont lately in the grand scheme of things was only moderately interesting this week.

 In many other places around the United States, it was off the charts wild. It makes Vermont look like the calmest oasis in the world. 

Temperatures in the nation Thursday ranged a whopping 137 degrees, from 35 degrees in Lyman, Wyoming to 102 in Falcon Lake, Texas. 

Plenty of areas are seeing weather not seen in decades or ever.  Let's go over the highlight reel. 

CALIFORNIA/WEST COAST

In sunny southern California, it's neither sunny, nor warm.  They're bracing for an epic, very oddly cold storm, the worst of which is sweeping in today and Saturday.

Up and down the California, high elevation highways are already closed, including the notorious Grapevine, which is busy stretch of Interstate 5 between Los Angeles County and the San Joaquin Valley. 

The high elevation stretch of the Grapevine sometimes gets shut down in the winter by snow, especially along a small section whose elevation rises to 4,000 feet.   This time, though, it's expected to be much worse up there since snow levels are expected to fall below 2,000 feet, which encompasses much more of the highway 

The Grapevine section of I-5 closed at 1:30 Friday morning, and officials have no idea when it will re-open. It was snowing hard at the 3,800 foot level of Interstate 5 this morning. 

Some snow, small hail and ice pellets have already pinged down in areas of southern California that haven't seen frozen precipitation in a decade or more. School children in Pasadena rushed outside to enjoy the spectacle of pea sized hail. 

A little snow dusted the famous Hollywood sign in L.A. early this morning. Even more snow might accumulate around that sign Friday night or early Saturday.

The cold storm is also volatile. The National Weather Service office in Los Angeles issued its first tornado warning in three years Friday morning. It was for an area southwest of Santa Maria. As of this writing, it's unknown if a tornado actually touched down. 

Several normally balmy California cities had record low high temperatures Thursday. These included 52 in Palm Springs, 54 in Newport Beach and 57 in Anaheim. Los Angeles also had a record low minimum of 41 degrees Thursday. We've had low temperatures at that level a couple times this winter in Vermont. 

Incredibly, a blizzard warning is up for mountains in Los Angeles County. (These mountains are as high as 8 to 9 thousand feet).

I was mistaken the other day.  This isn't the first time the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles has issued a blizzard warning for its forecast area. It's the second. But Thursday evening, the National Weather Service office in San Diego issued its first ever blizzard warning for the San Bernardino mountains northeast of the city. 

The lowest elevations in southern California are seeing heavy rain.  People have already been evacuated from portions of Ventura County as the rains are expected to cause flash floods, mudslides and debris flows. 

Further north, snow fell on the East Bay hills near San Francisco for the first time in gawd knows how many years. Higher elevations in those hills could see even  heavier snow tonight. Snow levels early today in the area were as low as 700 feet. Most areas in the Bay Area had rain, with embedded thunderstorms, hail and sleet.  

Rare snow also fell at the famed Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. The castle is no more than 1,000 feet from the Pacific Ocean beach on a hill about half way between San Francisco and Los Angeles. 

Portland Oregon unexpectedly received 10.8 inches of snow Wednesday night, its second largest snowstorm on record.  "Worst case scenario" forecasts ahead of that storm only called for two inches at most. The surprise storm hit during rush hour, and people were stranded on snow clogged roads around Portland for seven hours or more. 

With clear skies and snow on the ground, Portland also reached a record low of 25 degrees Thursday morning. 

Further south, KTVU reported an inch or two of snow in Woodside, California, near Alice's restaurant. That area gets snow on average perhaps once a decade.

Several record lows were set out west, including 11 below in Denver and 13 below in Boulder, Colorado. Rawlins, Wyoming dipped to 25 below, exceeding the previous record low by a full 10 degrees. 

SOUTHEASTERN HEAT

While the West Coast shivered, it was summertime this week in the southeastern quarter of the United States. 

While some cold records are being broken in the West, the Southeast onslaught of record heat is absolutely astounding. 

Amazingly early blossoms this week in 
Washington DC. Photo via Twitter 
by Brad Herson

I don't know where to begin with all the heat records broken, especially Wednesday and Thursday. 

On Wednesday, Atlanta reached its all time high for the month of February at 81 degrees. Thursday, the low temperature in Atlanta was 69 degrees, the warmest low for any date in any February. That low temperature is about normal in Atlanta toward the end of June. 

According to @extremetemps on Twitter , also known by his real name Maximiliano Herrera, this was  "the harshest winter heat wave in history." He backs that up with a litany of all time new February record high temperatures:  

 During Thursday afternoon, most of North Carolina was in the low to mid 80s while one town in the state reached 87 degrees. Pensacola Florida reached 83 degrees for a new February high temperature. 

The heat extended down into Cuba, where Santa Lucia reached 95. That exceeded both the record for the months of February and January. Havana, Cuba, was close behind with an all-time February high this week of 94 degrees. 

The all-time heat records also expanded westward to Mississippi and Alabama.  All time February record highs were set in these Mississippi cities. Columbia (88); Tupelo (87) Laurel (86); and in Alabama, Muscle Shoals (86) and Haleyville (82)  

Nashville, Tennessee, also reached its all-time February high of 85 degrees. Previously, the earliest it had ever been 85 degrees in Nashville was on March 12, 1967.

Thursday, the temperature at Reagan National Airport in Washington DC zoomed up from 68 degrees to 81 degrees between 2 and 3 p.m Thursday. 

Magnolias are already blooming in front of the White House. Green leaves popped open as far north as Philadelphia. 

More ominously, peach and other crops are blooming in the Southeast, weeks prematurely. It will only take one powerful, but seasonable cold front in March to wipe out as much as  $1 billion in crops.  

This is a similar or even worse set up than 2017. That year, another warm February led to a winter storm in March  that killed 85 percent of South Carolina's peach crop and 80 percent of Georgia's blueberry harvest. Total frost damage in March, 2017 was around $1 billion. 

The region is set up for another agricultural disaster this year. Warm, pleasant weather is most definitely not a good thing. 

ELSEWHERE AND OUTLOOK

Ice storms in the Midwest and southern Ontario this week cut power to as many as a million people. 

The ice in Michigan caused the most widespread power outages in that state since a wild squall line of thunderstorms in August, 2021. At one point last night, more than a half million homes and businesses were without power due to the ice.

Parts of the upper Midwest are still digging out from 12 to 20 inches of windblown snow amid nasty wind chills. 

A shopping mall parking garage in Wisconsin partly collapsed under the weight of snow and ice, but thankfully nobody was hurt. 

Forecasters are now worried that the storm in California, as it moves east, could spawn a severe weather and tornado outbreak Sunday and Monday in the southern Plains and parts of the Southeast.

Although the nations' weather will become somewhat less extreme over the coming days, the same basic weather pattern should remain intact through at least the first week in March. That means more cold storminess in the West, and more summer like warmth in the Southeast.

For us here in Vermont, we're kind of in a sweet spot.  For the next week or two, expect active, but not extreme weather. That means temperatures more or less near normal, and frequent precipitation, but nothing super heavy. 

West Coast Weather Woes Were Overshadowed By Eastern Bomb Cyclone

An icy street in Seattle last week. The ice has since
melted and now Seattle is under a flood watch. 
This is part of a weather pattern change that will
bring warmer, wetter weather to most of the
nation, including Vermont.

 While the eastern two thirds of the United States was swallowed by that bomb cyclone are Arctic blast through the Christmas holiday, the West Coast has been enduring its own weather woes.  

And will continue to do so. Although the news isn't 100 percent bad out there. 

By the way, what happens on the West Coast doesn't stay on the West Coast. We'll see some effects up here in the Northeast/Vermont. More on that in a bit. 

The Pacific Northwest shared in the cold weather as Christmas approached. The problem was, so did a warm front. Warm air rose up and over the frigid conditions around Seattle, so they had a rare ice storm. 

Seattle is a hilly town and social media erupted with videos of vehicles sliding down steep slopes and hitting other obstacles like bumper cars.  People resorted to sliding down hills on their butts because they couldn't walk on the slick ice. Around 15,000 people in the region lost power. 

The warm front eventually moved through and it warmed up nicely, at least west of the Cascades. But that introduced new trouble. It rained, pretty heavily, thanks to an atmospheric river off the Pacific. This came as snow and ice melted, so there's a flood threat now. 

On top of that, coastal King Tides are flooding some spots, and a high wind warning is up today for the Seattle area. The soggy ground will make it easier for winds to topple trees. And there's a risk of landslides.

So it's a mess. 

Further down the coast, Oregon and California are getting rain again, with of course snow in the higher elevations. 

For the mountains, this is more good news. The Sierra Nevada mountains got off to a good start with snowfall earlier this month. This raised hopes that accumulations might be good this winter, which would replenish reservoirs when the snow melts in the spring. 

There were also fears things would go like last year, with an initial burst of precipitation then nothing.  There was a lull in rain and snow in California for the past week or two, but that's over now. 

Over ten inches of rain or water equivalent is forecast in the Sierra Nevada in just the next seven days. This week of storms doesn't solve all of California's drought problems, but it will probably put another small dent in it. 

However, the rain might come down heavy enough in California's lower elevations to create flooding.  Especially in burn scar areas where wildfires eliminated vegetation earlier this year and last year. 

PATTERN CHANGE

The storminess in California is part of a major weather pattern change that is flushing the Arctic air out of the United States.

Pretty much everybody gets to share in the warmer air as the week goes on, including us Vermonters.  High temperatures that have been in the teens and 20s in recent days will rise into the 40s starting Thursday and probably continuing through the New Year's weekend. 

New Year's Eve will feel very different from Christmas Eve. Instead of snow, treacherous roads and rapidly falling temperatures, New Year's Eve looks like it will above freezing temperatures and a risk of rain.

Yes, I said rain. That same new weather pattern that is flooding the nation with relative winter warmth is also bringing storminess. Those storms slamming into the West Coast have to go somewhere. The first storm, due New Year's weekend in the Northeast, doesn't look like it will be any kind of blockbuster like the last one. 

It seems like it will bring inclement, but not extreme conditions.

However, there will be more storms waiting in the wings after that. Going into mid-January, it seems we might have frequent chances of rain, snow, or mixed storms. Stay tuned! 

Signs Of Autumn Amid A Warm Pattern

A scene from last autumn in Vermont. We had a taste
of autumn weather yesterday and last night and it won't 
be long before it looks like this again.

 Well, that was an introduction to fall!

We're not setting any records, but we definitely are feeling the effects of autumn closing in, to quote the Bob Seger song.

Yesterday's high temperature of 67 degrees in Burlington was the coolest since June 23.  This morning's low in Burlington was under 50 degrees for the first time June 20.  

It was 34 degrees in the perennial cold spot Saranac Lake, New York, and it was 37 degrees in Island Pond. 

I noticed in my travels yesterday quite a few spots of fall color amid the greenery of late summer.

Going forward, as is typical of September, we're going to rock back and forth between summer and autumn for awhile. 

Temperatures will zoom upward well into the 70s by this afternoon, and be back at summertime levels in the low 80s for most of us by Saturday afternoon.

Then a cold front looks like it might make things pretty contrasty in Vermont Sunday. Highs in the north will only be in the 60s again, but back in the 80s in southern Vermont. 

I'm unfortunately not impressed by the amount of rain that will come with this cold front. Most of us will receive less than a tenth of an inch. There is a glimmer of hope for southern Vermont, which is the driest part of the state. 

That front might stall out on Sunday night and Monday, and if things work out, could bring a fair amount of rain. Maybe. If that happens, it might ruin Labor Day plans, but still provide needed moisture. Rain is less likely north with this. 

Stalled fronts are tricky to forecast, so meteorologist will be keeping an eye on it.

As we go through the week, we'll return once again to summer. Temperatures later in the week will pop up into the low 80s again, and humidity looks like it might begin to creep upwards as well.

ELSEWHERE

If you are really done with summer, you should be glad you don't live in the western third of the United States. A record heat wave has taken hold, and will continue through the Labor Day weekend at least. 

Record highs were already established this week from Montana to southern California. On Wednesday, Anaheim, California reached 112 degrees, its hottest temperature on record for the entire month of August.

Death Valley reached 123 degrees Wednesday, also its hottest August day on record. It could reach 126 degrees there Monday or Tuesday. If it does, it will set a record for the hottest temperature anywhere on Earth in September.

Nights are staying hot in this long heat wave, so people are not seeing any relief. That raises the risk of people, especially the elderly, of having heat related illnesses or deaths.  Wildfires are breaking out in the hot, dry conditions, and those are expected to worsen over the weekend. 

Heat waves do sometimes hit the western U.S. in September, but this one is much worse than past episodes of late season hot weather. 

After a remarkably quiet month of August in the tropical Atlantic, there are signs of life out there now. Tropical Storm Danielle formed yesterday and will soon be a hurricane. It formed and is pretty far north, at about the same latitude as Delaware.

But it's way, way out in the central Atlantic. It'll meander around aimlessly for a few days then head north into colder waters and die. At least that's the current forecast.  Much further south, a disorganized mess of showers and storms could eventually turn into a tropical storm near the Leeward Islands.