Some Of The Best Videos To Come Out Of The Blizzard Of ' 26

Blizzard aftermath in Fall River, Massachusetts. This
city reported the most snow out of the storm - 41 inches. 

The Blizzard of '26 was certainly one of the most photogenic storms we've had. 

The blinding snow, the coastal flooding and the immense effort to clean it all up made for some good visuals.  

There is of course TONS of videos taken in the storm. I'm sure I missed some really good ones But I found some dramatic and cool videos too.

We have some of them here. 

Here's how New York City looked. I'll never understand why New Yorkers try to use umbrellas in blizzards. Anyway, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

As always, videographer John Petramala went out into the storm, hanging out amid the whiteouts, waves and storm tides of Scituate, Massachusetts. Toward the end of the video, I'm not sure what's up with the driver of the white car, but JEEZ! Again, click on this link to view or if you see it, click on the image below. 

One man's experience battling the blizzard from his home in Rhode Island. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.  

News report from Sandwich, Massachusetts on Cape Cod give you an idea of just how extreme the blizzard was.  Click on this link

We have more of the obligatory nor'easter ocean waves crashing onto Scituate, Massachusetts houses, and also the whiteout conditions on local highways, and stuck cars. Click on this link to view or if you see the image below, click on that.

Really cool mostly drone video by Aaron Rigby of people in Providence, Rhode Island neighborhoods trying to dig out from the city's biggest snowstorm on record, the day after the snow ended. You can see  some side streets hadn't been touched by city plows yet. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

In Herbert Von King Park in Brooklyn, New York, area residents turned the open space into a snow sculpture park. It appears dozens of them are there. There's even an igloo where the television reporter conducted part of her interview. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

No Power, More Deaths Sea Tragedy, Cleanup Woes In Wake Of Two Winter Storms

The remains of four houses the collapsed into the sea in
Buxton, Outer Cape, North Carolina over the weekend and
today from the nor'easter that battered the state. 
Image from The Island Free Press/Facebook

 For once, there are no major winter storms hitting the United States today. 

But the two whoppers that slammed the nation over the past two weeks are still having their effects. Sometimes in deadly and dangerous ways. We have some examples as this is still an ongoing story. 

Sadly, the death toll continues to increase. In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves has confirmed 23 deaths in his state associated with the January 25-26 ice storm. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear on Monday morning said that state's death toll had risen to 16. 

As of this morning, nearly 50,000 Mississippi homes and businesses remained without power as of this morning. More than 25,000 customers still had no power in Tennessee.  As of this weekend, pretty much the entire town of Holly Springs, Mississippi was without power, and most roads were too icy to travel on safely. 

In North Carolina, four homes have now collapsed into the waves of the Outer Banks from the snowy, windy nor'easter that hit over the weekend. 

We mentioned here one of those houses collapsed early Sunday morning. But since then, another house went down Sunday night and two more fell in this morning, the Island Free Press reported. 

The storm has departed North Carolina, but the vulnerable homes were weakened by battering waves over the weekend and large swells are still being generated on the Outer Banks from the storm. 

A total of 20 homes in Buxton and Rodanthe, North Carolina have fallen into the ocean since September.

The rest of the Carolinas are cleaning up from the massive snowfall. It was wild that the whole state of North Carolina was blasted. There was a dry spot in the middle of the state that "only" got three to six inches. But the coastline, the southeast corner, the west and mountains all saw reports of at least a foot of snow.

Fresh snow cover meant clear skies and calm winds in North Carolina meant temperatures fell to incredibly low levels this morning. It got as cold as 5 above in the town of Kinston, not far from New Bern. Most places in eastern North Carolina were in the upper single numbers and teens this morning. 

Aside from a small amount of mixed precipitation expected Wednesday night, thawing is expected to set in across the Southeast, which would hopefully melt the snow and ice off the streets by the end of the week.

Elsewhere, amid rough seas off of New England, a 72-foot fishing boat called the Lily Jean sank offshore off Cape Ann, claiming seven lives. One of those who passed away had Vermont connections. Jada Samitt, a recent graduate of the University of Vermont was on board as a fisheries observer from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This tragedy sounds a lot like the famous account of a ship disaster in "The Perfect Storm.'

The Lily Jean was in a 2012 episode of the History Channel show "Nor'Easter Men."

In the Northeast, the cold has been relenting. Rivers, harbors and bays are frozen. Water mains and pipes have been bursting. And hypothermia is killing people. In Pittsburgh, numerous people have been seen on the city's frozen three main rivers, despite the fact that the ice is on top of flowing water. That makes venturing onto the ice especially dangerous.

In New York City alone, 16 people have died outside in the cold, Mayor Zoran Mamdani said. It appears 13 of the deaths were due to the cold and the other three were overdoses. 

New York got one slight bit of relief today as the temperature rose to slightly above freezing for the first time since January 23.  However, a new, intensely cold Arctic blast is set to invade the Northeast at the end of the week and this upcoming weekend.  

Vermont Still Struggles With 2023 Montpelier Flood Damage To State Buildings.

The Pavilion Building in Montpelier in the
immediate aftermath of the July, 2023 flood.
The pipes were for moisture and mold
remediation. The building still needs
a lot of work bringing the HVAC
and electrical systems out of the basement.

In yet another instance that proves it can take forever to recover from a catastrophic disaster, Vermont is still struggling to finish financing and repairs to state buildings from flooding two and a half years ago. 

Extreme flooding hit Vermont on July 10-11, 2023.  In that flood, downtown Montpelier was inundated. That flood affected 17 state office buildings in Montpelier, which is the state's capitol. 

According to Vermont Public, Gov Phil Scott's administration is asking for more time to determine how much it will cost to fully upgrade the state buildings affected by the flood. 

There's a deadline coming up in a few days (January 10) to accept a fixed cost for the work. But the state is going to ask FEMA for six more months to come up with a cost. 

FEMA has already given the state $30 million to clean up the mess left by the floods and to install temporary infrastructure to keep the buildings running. 

Chief Recover Officer Douglas Farnham told Vermont Public the total cost of the project will probably go over $200 million. FEMA would cover as much as 90 percent of those costs.

A main reason for the expense is some of this work is going to be expensive. The five-story Pavilion Building's heating, cooling and electrical systems are all in the basement. Turns out that's a bad place for that stuff when Montpelier floods. They're going to move all that equipment out of the basement, which is a great idea, but it will be a complex and expensive job. 

As Vermont Public reports, three buildings at 132, 134 and 136 State Street are still unoccupied. A fourth flood-damaged building at 144 State Street will probably be torn down. Unlike most of the other buildings involved,  The one-story building at 144 State is not considered a historic structure. so nobody will have to go through hoops to get rid of that building.

Even if the FEMA money comes through after the requested six month delay with that federal agency, it's going to take a long time to get Vermont state buildings up to snuff before the next flood. You need design plans, permits, equipment purchases. Then you have to install and construct everything. 

Another building, at 87 State Street in Montpelier, was flooded and never reoccupied. It's owned by the federal government. Officials this past summer announced the feds are putting that building up for sale. the Vermont state government has expressed interest in buying the building. 

The whole epic is just another example of how long it takes for state governments to fix all the infrastructure taken away by climate related disasters. This is going to keep happening. Perhaps over and over in the same states.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

That has already been the case here in Vermont. We've been through this before.  During Hurricane Irene in 2011, the State Office Complex in Waterbury was trashed by flooding. Some buildings had as much as eight feet of water in them. 

Twenty buildings had to be torn down due to the damage and the fact they were especially prone to additional floods. All the rest had to go through extensive repair. And a new, 86.000 square foot, more flood resilient building was added.  The renovated buildings and the new one were raised to above the 500-year flood level. 

Getting the whole 100-acre back together - and more flood proof - cost $130 million, which was up until now the largest state building project in Vermont  history, reports WCAX. 

Vermont taxpayers paid for most of that renovation. FEMA contributed $36 million and the state's insurance company paid roughly $15 million.

Some of that Waterbury reconstruction went toward projects that didn't have much to do with the flooding, but was still worthwhile. For instance, single-paned glass were replaced by weather-efficient windows. 

The grand re-opening after all this work didn't hit until December, 2015, more than four years after the flood. Between the 2011 flood and the late 2015 reopening, about 1,500 employees had been displaced, dealing with a big blow to the town of Waterbury's economy. 

I imagine this type of saga could happen in Vermont again. And in other states, As the federal government keeps reducing aid to states, it'll be harder and harder for some states to even function if a major disaster hits a state Capitol.  

Los Angeles Wildfires In January Might Have Killed Hundreds, Not Two Or Three Dozen

The cataclysmic wildfires in and around Los Angeles
this past January officials killed 30 people, but a 
recent study suggest the real death
toll might have exceeded 400.

Data emerged this summer suggesting the death toll from the intense wildfires in and around Los Angles last January is much higher than official numbers.  

Officially, 30 people died in the conflagration that tore through Alameda, Pacific Palisades, Malibu and other densely populated areas of Los Angeles County. 

But county death records suggest the fires might have claimed an additional 440 lives. 

These weren't people trapped in burning neighborhoods. They were people whose health suffered in the smoky, depressing, dangerous and contaminated atmosphere during and after the conflagration.

As the Washington Post reports, scientists compared deaths in Los Angeles County between January 1 and February 1 with figures from past years, excluding 2020 through 2023 because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

They found this year, 6,371 deaths were recorded in that months span, compared to an expected 5,931 deaths. That leaves 440 more deaths that need explanation. 

A quote from the WaPo article: 

"The findings emphasize how climate-driven disasters can be far deadlier than they initially seem, with ripple effects in the weeks and months after the extreme events. The disasters are linked to lingering environmental damage and social upheaval that result in long-term, dangerous ills for hard-hit communities."

Calculating excess deaths the way they've done with the Los Angeles fires is a good way to capture the complete scope of a disaster. Scientists discover fatalities that weren't a direct result of the catastrophe. The event caused problems that proved fatal to some people, such as crappy air quality or health care disruptions and delays. 

The number of excess deaths from the L.A. fires surprised the researchers, according to the Washington Post. 

Moreover, there might have been additional deaths caused by the wildfire after February 1, when the study ended. 

The obvious next step would be to figure out how these excess deaths occurred. Was it the air pollution?

"That would require combining estimates of who was exposed to how much wildfire smoke with existing estimates of how given level of smoke exposure affects mortality," said Marshall Burke, a professor at the Stanford University Doerr School of Sustainability.

 The fires also left behind potentially cancer-causing contaminants. That could add to the fire mortality in the coming months and years. 

Looking wider, the study of Los Angeles fire deaths raises questions about the real death tolls of other wildfires and different kinds of disasters, such as hurricanes, tornadoes and floods. Additional deaths probably happen after the news cameras are pointed the other way after a disaster ends. 

For instance, other research after the wildfires in Maui, Hawaii in 2023 reached some disturbing conclusions.  

The official death toll in that fire was 102. But suicide and drug overdose rates on Maui skyrocketed in the month after the disaster. Another study showed that half of adults suffered from depression in the months after the Maui fire and 22 percent had decreased lung function. 

As climate change intensifies wildfires, storms, floods and droughts, it'll be important to get a handle on the real death toll associated with these calamities. Growing evidence suggests you're not necessarily safe if you survived the critical hours of the disaster. 

Weather and climate change can kill long after the sun comes back out, the fires are extinguished, the wind dies down and the water recedes. 

Fallout From Flooding Nearly Two Years Ago Continues To Affect Vermont

Image from Reddit shows the Sterling Market and
other buildings in Johnson, Vermont inundated with
water in July, 2023. Efforts to reopen the
grocery store have failed, and a buyout is
now likely to turn the property into part of a floodplain

 More proof that it seemingly takes forever to recover from a catastrophic flood. 

Towns like Johnson, Plainfield and many other Vermont communities  are still coming to terms and reshaping themselves after the catastrophic floods in the summers of 2023 and 2024. 

The settlement pattern of most Vermont villages, towns and cities in the state.over the centuries is near rivers, in flood plains.   

Water and currents in these rivers aided commerce, transportation, the generation of electricity, and even, unfortunately, garbage disposal.

 Sure, these towns would occasionally suffer serious, damaging floods over the decades and centuries, but they were infrequent enough to be survivable to these communities, at least most of the time.

Modern society does not really need these rivers for economic livelihood as much anymore. That would be OK, if floods didn't happen all that frequently. But they do in our unfortunately age of climate change. 

As that climate change roars on, there's nothing to suggest our onslaught of floods will ease. In fact they'll probably accelerate. 

It's making less and less sense to keep our beautiful, compact and walkable villages and towns near the rivers. But you can't just pick everything up and move it all immediately. 

Still, we're seeing a gradual retreat from the water, and that's slowly changing the face of Vermont. I've brought up this fact before here, but the job continues in fits and starts. It's worth it to keep tabs on this phenomenon, just to assess how it's changing all of our lives and our sense of place. 

It's all about resiliency in the face of climate change. 

 JOHNSON

In Johnson, the flood of July, 2023 filled the inside the Sterling Market, the only major grocery store in town, almost to the ceiling.    

Efforts have been made to re-open the store ever since, with no success. The property is owned by Pomerleau Real Estate, a firm that owns a number of commercial properties around Vermont. 

As VTDigger explains:

"It's former operator Associated Grocers of New England, initially vowed to return, but the proposal was vetoed by its governing co-op board.

....Pomerleau then brought in executives from Shaw's a grocery chain with locations throughout New England. Shaw's was interested opening a store, according to (Pomerleau president Ernie) Pomerleau, but needed the building's owners to commit to installing flood mitigation measures, including a new floodgate, to ensure its protection against future flooding." 

Pomerleau was trying to get a grant through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with support from the town of Johnson, to help with flood mitigation of buildings in disaster zones, like the town was after the 2023 flood. 

Pomerleau's engineers were coming up with plans to make the building nearly impervious to most future flood events. But that was understandably not good enough for Shaw's. That company pulled the plug on the venture late last year. 

Before 2023, the building housing the market was badly damaged in floods in 1995 and 2011, and had several close misses with floods in recent years. 

So now, the only choice left for Pomerleau is to give up on the building the company built back in the 1960s. 

VTDigger again: 

"Lacking any better alternative, Pomerleau has reluctantly joined other property owners in Johnson seeking to offload their flood-prone homes and businesses and become the 17th property to apply for a buyout since 2023."

These buyouts make sense, as if they go through, the flood-prone properties are razed and replaced buy green space and flood plains in which future floods don't really harm anything. 

This plan is full of uncertainly and risks, however. First of all, none of the 17 properties have completed the buyout process yet. Plus, with the new Trump administration cutting spending willynilly and steadfastly avoiding anything that has to do with climate change, these buyouts might not go through. 

Even if they do, they'll really change the face of Johnson. 

Johnson consists of two municipalities in northern Vermont, the village, where the heart of the downtown is, has about 1,300 people. The surrounding neighborhoods - Johnson Town, has about 3,500 people for a total of roughly 4,800 residents. 

So it ain't big. 

Converting 17 once-thriving properties to green space would have a big effect on Johnson's tax base, and basically the way it looks. 

Climate change related-disasters are becoming more and more common pretty much everywhere, including in Vermont, so it's not just Johnson changing. It's many of the state's compact and picturesque villages and tiny downtowns that must radically change. 

One of the other Vermont towns going through a similar process is Plainfield

PLAINFIELD

Plainfield, about 35 miles southeast of Johnson, suffered a fair amount of damage in the 2023 flood. Exactly a year later, on July 10-11, 2024, things got exponentially worse. 

Flash flooding roared through the middle of Plainfield on the night of July 10. The flood swept away most of a large apartment building known as "Heartbreak Hotel."  Luckily the building's occupants fled shortly before the structure was destroyed. Other buildings in town were severely damaged. 

The remains of the so-called Heartbreak Hotel apartment
building in Plainfield, Vermont, July, 2024. Most of the
building was swept away in the extreme flooding
that hit the town.  

Like Johnson, people are waiting on buyouts, the town's grand list is taking a big hit, and large sections of Plainfield village that weren't already swept away by the flood last July will be gone. 

Twenty-eight homes are awaiting FEMA buyouts. (Again, like in Johnson, we're aren't sure if the Trump administration will follow through with this).

The solution they seem to be settling on in Plainfield is to turn traditional settlement patterns backwards. In other words, Plainfield village is headed for the hills. At least part of it. 

As WCAX reports:

"Now the town is considering a plan to expand the downtown and invest $2 million  in water, sewer and road infrastructure to a 23-acre plot of private land. Some acknowledge it will change the nature of Plainfield, but add they can't endure another summer of floods. 'We don't want another repeat of this, that's for sure' said local resident Butch Lakin.'"

The extension of Plainfield onto higher ground is meant to truly be a part of the village and not isolated. The vision is for people who accepted buyouts to purchase plots of land on the 23 acres and build newer, safer homes. 

Of course, we don't know where this plan is headed. But Johnson and Plainfield are just two of many examples of how climate change will eventually radically change what Vermont looks like, and feels like. 

 

 

Thursday Evening Hurricane Milton Updates: Death Toll Rises, Clean Up To Take A Long Time

The yellow house was toppled off its stilts by
Hurricane Milton. In the foreground are the front
steps of a house swept away by Hurricane 
Helene a couple weeks ago.

 Hurricane Milton is gone, but certainly not forgotten. 

The death toll had reached 11 by late this afternoon.  

That could well go higher, but the good news is there are not a lot of reports of people being unaccounted for. So for the potential for another tragedy on the scale of recent Hurricane Helene seems remote. 

There were at least a couple impressive rescues. Officers found a 14 year old boy floating in floodwaters on a piece of fencing in Hillsborough County and rescued him, the Associated Press said. 

A fishing boat broke down in the Gulf of Mexico as the hurricane approached and a Coast Guard helicopter found the man from the fishing boat floating on an ice chest and rescued him.  

That doesn't mean there's lots of trouble.  As of this afternoon, three million homes and businesses remained without power. Some places might not get electricity again for weeks. 

STORM SURGE BAD, NOT WORST

Still, the worst case scenario was averted because Hurricane Milton came ashore south of Tampa.  Had it come in a little north of Tampa, the storm surge would have been drawn up into Tampa Bay, with devastating results.

Instead, being north of the storm center, Tampa experienced east and northeast winds, which actually pulled water out of the bay. So no real storm surge there. Actually it was an anti-surge, as water levels in Tampa Bay actually fell to two to four feet below normal, thanks to those intense east winds. 

The storm surge did strike communities further south. As the Washington Post reports, the storm surge in Naples and Fort Myers was five to six feet. Not as bad as some forecasts, but still terrible. 

The surge in Fort Myers was the second highest on record. Only the epic surge in Hurricane Ian back in 2022 was worse. With Hurricane Helene just a couple weeks ago the top three storm surges in Fort Myers have all happened since 2022.

It doesn't help that the "normal" sea level around Fort Myers has risen by six inches since 1990, thanks in part to climate change. 

There aren't a lot of tidal gauges between Fort Myers and Tampa, in cities like Bradenton, Sarasota and Venice.  Those areas probably had a higher storm surge than Fort Myers, and meteorologists will investigate how high the water got there. 

The best guess is Venice and Sarasota suffered through an eight to ten foot storm surge. 

It's amazing that a difference of probably ten miles made such a difference in the outcome with this storm. 

FORECAST ACCURACY, WHAT'S NEXT

Just as amazing is the forecast accuracy. Forecasts the National Hurricane Center made five days ago on where Hurricane Milton would make landfall were only a dozen or so miles off from where it actually landed.

That's an incredibly accurate forecast for a hurricane that far in advance. Hurricanes paths are notoriously hard to predict.  Most hurricanes land 100 or more miles away from what forecasts indicate five days ahead of time

There's really no town in Florida that was completely flattened by Hurricane Milton or nearly so. But between storm surges, flooding, wind damage and tornadoes, the widespread destruction in Florida from  the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic shores, from north of Tampa and Orlando south almost to the Keys, the damage has to be in the billions of dollars. 

Again. 

No wonder the insurance industry is in such a mess these days. 

I'm not getting into climate change in this post in regards to hurricanes Helene and Milton, but I'll address it in a future post. 

 Also, note that hurricane season isn't over. That doesn't officially end until November 30. And Florida has been hit by hurricanes into November. Hurricane Nicole made landfall in Vero Beach as a Category 1 on November 10, 2022. And Hurricane Kate hit the Florida Panhandle on November 21, 1985 as a Category 2 storm. 

For now, there's no immediate threats for any new hurricanes. Milton is no longer a hurricane and was dissipating northeast of the Bahamas this evening. 

There are signs of renewed tropical activity in late October or early November. But that prospect is uncertain, and even if something happens, we obviously don't know where it would happen or how big it would get. 

Hurricane Milton Departed Florida Early This Morning, Leaving An Incredible Mess Behind

The fury and intense rains of Hurricane Milton in
Tampa, Florida last night. Photo by Julio Cortez AP

To nobody's surprise, much of Florida is trashed this morning, raked by powerful Hurricane Milton which crossed the state west to east overnight. 

The hurricane made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, a barrier island just off the coast of South Sarasota, at around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday with top winds of 120 mph.  

It exited into the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Canaveral with top winds of around 85 mph shortly before 5 a.m. today. 

It was simultaneously horrifying and fascinating to watch events unfold in Florida as Hurricane Milton approached the state, moved ashore, then through the peninsula. 

We're only just beginning to understand the extent of damage, and we don't have a reliable death toll yet, but we do know Hurricane Milton proved fatal to some people. 

At least 3 million homes were without power this morning in Florida.

There's a lot going on and a lot of updates. I'll get to some of them in this morning's post and will do more posts today as warranted .

TAMPA/ST. PETE

There was good news and bad news as the events unfolded, and sometimes good news turned into bad news. 

A few hours before landfall, it appeared Hurricane Milton might hit near Tampa Bay, which would have caused a worst case scenario storm surge in the bay, which is surrounded by intense urban development. 

Shortly before landfall, Milton made a leftward jog, so it made landfall perhaps 25 miles south of Tampa, preventing much of a storm surge in the bay.   

However, that put Tampa and St. Petersburg in the most intense northern eyewall of Hurricane Milton, which gave them a ferocious windstorm and an even more intense wall of rainfall. They never got a break from the eye of the storm, either, because that passed to the south of the two cities. 

Tampa had close to a foot of rain with Milton. St. Petersburg reported a whopping 18.54 inches.  At 9 p.m., St. Petersburg reported winds of 49 mph gusting to 91 mph with 5.09 inches of rain in just the previous hour. 

Video from downtown Tampa showed absolutely zero visibility it was raining so hard. By my estimation, visibility would be better in the most intense Vermont blizzard you can imagine than it was in Tampa, because it was raining so hard. 

As you can guess, flooding is incredibly serious in and near Tampa and St. Petersburg, despite the lack of a major storm surge. 

The roof of Tropicana Field in Tampa blew off. The stadium
had been being used as a staging area for National 
Guard troops and electrical repair crews. 

There heavy rain crossed the entire state to the Atlantic Coast, where Vero Beach reported 9.1 inches of rain. 

.In downtown St. Petersburg, a large crane from a construction site fell onto a building housing the Tampa Bay Times newspaper.

Max Chesnes, a reporter at the paper, posted on X:

"A crane is blocking the road and several stories up, smoke billows out of the building from it appears the crane fell. Smell of gas in the air and you can hear alarms."

The roof of Tropicana Field which normally houses the Tampa Bay Rays blew off.  The structure was meant to be a shelter and staging area for National Guard troops and electrical workers who are in the area to help and to start restoring power. Nobody was seriously hurt, but I'm unsure what they're going to do now with these workers. 

SARASOTA AND ELSEWHERE

In Sarasota, winds gusted to 102 mph. The wind was strongest in the second half of the storm, after the eye had passed. Windows were smashed out of high rises by the wind in downtown Sarasota and Bradenton, so there has to be incredible water damage inside those buildings from all the wind driven rain that came in. 

Near where Hurricane Milton made landfall and points south, there was some pretty horrible storm surges. That was something that forecasters had expected, but it's terrible nonetheless. 

As of early this morning, I don't have a lot of information on storm surge damage. That was going to be assessed as daylight arrived, so detailed reports weren't in yet as of 7:30 a.m today. 

We do know that in Sarasota, right after the calm eye passed, winds picked up to those near 100 mph gusts and a storm surge immediately shoved into the city, including at least parts of downtown. NBC News reported a ten foot storm surge around Sarasota. 

Wind and water have since calmed down almost completely in Sarasota, but the county government is continuing to tell people to shelter in place, as it's still to dangerous to go out with all the debris and lingering flooding. 

Rescue crews were just beginning to head out to likely devastated barrier islands and low lying area of Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, Punta Gorda, Fort Myers and other communities likely slammed by storm surges. 

 Another odd thing about Hurricane Milton was the intense tornado outbreak during the day Wednesday as the storm's outer rain bands moved through.  There were no fewer than 136 tornado warnings issued in Florida Wednesday. So far at least 45 tornadoes have been confirmed. 

Some of the them were strong, Midwestern-style twisters that caused a lot of damage and reportedly caused some deaths in a neighborhood near Fort Pierce.

As noted, assessments of how bad things got were only just beginning this morning. I'm hoping as we learn more details it turns out to be not as bad as feared. Fingers crossed.  

Last Year's Flooding Catastrophe Not Over For Vermont Farmers

A corn field ruined by flooding near Cambridge, Vermont,
photographed on July 12, 2023.  Vermont farmers are
still contending with the aftermath and damage
of last year's devastating floods. 

 Lisa Rathke over at the Associated Press tells us that far reaching effects of last year's flooding are still torturing many Vermont farmers as we gear up for planting season. 

Silt still in many farm fields, with landowners unsure how to remove it. 

Corn fields from last summer remain unharvested due to mud, silt, and pollutants in the wrecked, unusable crops. Many farmers have to test their fields for pollutants before they can grow any new crops. 

Some farmers kept get hitting.  Rathke highlights one central Vermont farm:

"Dog River Farm, in Berlin, Vermont lost nearly all of its produce crops in the July flooding. The farm removed truckloads of river silt and sand from the fields before another round of flooding in December washed away more precious soils, wiped out the farm's garlic planted in late fall and left behind more oil and several giant holes in a field, said owner George Cross...

'We had 15,000 garlic heads - bulbs growing here which is a significant amount of retail dollars,' he said, pointing to a section of field. 'And now they are gone. They're somewhere down along the Winooski (River)'"

Silt and sand piled up in drifts in floodplain cropland by the disasters of last year are an especially difficult dilemma. You can't dump it back into rivers. You can't pile it up like a dike along the river bank, as that causes environmental harm and might ultimately worsen future floods.

The sand and silt has to be hauled away, somewhere. The farmers have to pay to have that work done. If the sand and silt are not removed, there will be no crops on the affected fields this year. 

A grassroots fundraising campaign called Dig Deep Vermont announced Wednesday that it's giving out its first grants to 32 farms to help with some of those expenses. It estimated farms suffered around $45 million in losses statewide from the flooding, extreme weather and persistent rains. 

Dig Deep Vermont is still accepting donations, by the way. 

Perhaps more than almost anyone else, Vermont farmers are understandably spooked by what kind of weather this growing season will bring. With climate change, storms have gotten worse, and extremes have gotten more extreme. 

Last year, even farmers who suffered no flood losses had a rough go of it. The season started with a devastating freeze that ruined apple and other fruit crops, and disrupted wineries across the state. The summer proved so wet that it was hard to harvest hay. 

That's all bad for farmers. Still, not every growing season will be a mess. Let's do a toast and hope this year brings nothing but perfect farming weather to the Green Mountain State. 

Monday Afternoon Update: Snow Totals Near Predicting, Except Lots Of Rain In Lower Valleys

This is the forecast for last night's storm issued Sunday
morning........

It turns out the forecast map issued Sunday morning for the storm that affected Vermont yesterday, last night and this morning was pretty accurately.   

The only major discrepancy was the total lack of snow in lower valleys. Some snow was expected everywhere, but places like the Champlain Valley got pretty much nothing.

There was a report of a foot of snow in the Northeast Kingdom, and several reports in that neck of the woods in the 8 to 11 inch range. 

The big winner seems to be Montreal, which got 13 inches of heavy, wet snow. That seriously disrupted the city! 

Power outages from this storm in Vermont peaked at a little above 12,000 homes and businesses at around 10 a.m. today. That's bad, but still only about a third of the amount we suffered in the nasty November 27 wet snowstorm. 

It does seem that snowstorms in Vermont have been trending wetter and slushier than in the past, which contributes greatly to an increase in power failures. Dry powdery snow typical of winters past does not cause many electrical issues. 

And here's a map of how totals actually worked out.
The forecast was pretty damn close. Click on 
both maps to make them bigger and easier to see.

Power outages were down to about 6,800 as of 3 p.m today. 

There was a LOT of moisture with this storm. It was a wet one for sure. 

Totals for rain and melted snow across much of Vermont amounted to an inch or a little more. I've seen reports as high as 1.57 inches in Johnson and 1.25 inches in Waterbury.  

We're definitely off to a wet start for December. 

If you're sick of dealing with wet snow, rain and clouds, the weather where I am in Edinburgh, Scotland is really bad today, even if the vacation continues to be awesome. 

It was windy and rainy here all day, with tourists and locals alike struggling with umbrellas and such as winds reached up to 40 mph.  

The forecast for both Edinburgh and Vermont is better for tomorrow. It'll be cloudy, calm and 40 degrees in Edinburgh.  Vermont will be colder with a few snow showers in the Green Mountain State - no big deal. 

However, temperatures are falling below freezing late this afternoon and evening, so any water on the roads will freeze. It might be dicey on some of the roads tonight and Tuesday. 

Vermont is in for a spell of winter weather Tuesday through Thursday, with highs not getting out of the 20s most places. It's December, it happens! 

Signs still point toward a possible warm up and rain next weekend in Vermont. So if you got snow today, enjoy it while you can. 

Stubborn Power Outages Continue In Vermont Post-Storm; Watching Potential Danger End Of Wee

Was too busy working to clear much snow from my St.
Albans, Vermont driveway today, so I have to get my
butt in gear today to finish it off. 

 Power outages from the big wet snowstorm we just had remained disturbingly high in Vermont this Sunday morning. 

As of 8:30 a.m. Sunday, about 24,500 outages remained, mostly in central and southeastern Vermont, according to Vermont Outages.  The only part of Vermont that was now totally in the clear was the five most northwesterly counties in Vermont.

This is by no means a dig at the crews working to restore power were doing a heroic job amid tons of snow, cold temperatures, and a tangle of fallen trees, branches and wires. 

As of last evening, Green Mountain Power said it had restored power to about 62,000 customers but had about 33,000 to go. They warned that some outages in more remote areas could last for days. 

So yes, this does easily rank as Vermont's most destructive snowstorm since December, 2014. This storm was kind of sleeper mini-disaster, as it has not gotten much publicity.  Of course, the storm did a lot of good as well. Ski areas got a huge boost ahead of the Christmas holiday, and the snow is pretty.

As I mentioned last night, I hope the hardest hit towns are establishing places for people to go to warm up.  I'm sure a lot of houses are cold and dark, something especially dangerous for the elderly and ill. 

We should be thankful it's only seasonably cold out there. Low temperatures over the next few nights will be in the upper teens an 20s with high temperatures near 32 degrees. Temperatures this time of year can go into the teens below zero at night, which would be really horrible in this situation. I think it will be warm enough in most houses without power that the pipes won't freeze. 

Although the weather in Vermont will remain pretty mellow today through Thursday morning, danger still lurks at the end of the week. 

Forecasts still call for a terrible Arctic outbreak to plunge into the middle of the United States and blast all the way down through Texas, then spread east.

On the front side of that Arctic blast, a huge storm is still forecast to blossom and cause plenty of pre-Christmas havoc.

We still have lots of questions about how that storm will play out, but similar to last night, the current forecast has a powerhouse of a storm forming somewhere in the vicinity of Tennessee, intensifying and roaring up into the eastern Great Lakes.

That would cause a blizzard in the Midwest and Great Lakes, and strong, potentially damaging winds in most of the eastern United States.

For us in Vermont, we'd be at risk for mixed precipitation, then rain and possible flooding. Strong winds would also be an issue. With trees weakened by our recent snowstorm, powerful winds would cause additional power outages.

A strong cold front with the storm would also cause a flash freeze, which is kind of ugly.

That said, since the storm's nascent energy is still somewhere up near Alaska, the computer models won't have a great handle on how this storm will shape up until at least a couple days from now.  The scenario on this storm I just outlined has a huge potential to change radically. 

Basically, expect something Thursday, Friday and into Christmas Eve, but exactly what is a little hard to tell at this point. 

Flip Flop To Warmth, And Couldn't Resist One More Cold Video

The obligatory throwing of boiling water
in the air during the record cold snap in 
Texas last week.  Such a scene is impossible
now in Texas. Temperatures reached 80
degrees there Tuesday afternoon.

Several days ago, I posted a series of videos about last week's brutal cold wave and winter storms. 

I couldn't resist one more, as Texans on TikTok expressed their humor, frustration and pratfalls as they dealt with the icy weather.  

It has since warmed up dramatically in Texas, so everyone is relieved. The change in just seven days is impressive to say the least. 

Dallas was at minus 2 on February 16.  Yesterday, exactly a week later it was 81 degrees in Dallas. The change in Oklahoma City was even more impressive. It went from 14 below on February 16 to 72 degrees yesterday 

The weather is certainly much better now in Texas and surrounding areas, but unfortunately, problems obviously remain after such a big disaster. 

Many thousands of homes, apartments and businesses remain badly damaged after pipes burst. This will be the most expensive disaster in Texas history, surpassing even Hurricane Harvey. 

President Biden will visit Texas Friday to check out the disaster, as presidents do when calamities are especially bad.

There's plenty of political fallout from this, too.

The now badly named Electric Reliability Council of Texas,  or ERCOT, which manages and operates the Texas electrical grid, clearly badly mismanaged it, as they failed to weatherproof the system over the years, though they were warned to do so. 

The result was the massive power outages in Texas that came with the cold weather. That lead to dozens of deaths and the billions in damage, as we've all heard on the news. 

Five board members of ERCOT resigned Tuesday.   It was the least they could do.  

Anyway, now for some fun with that TikTok compilation. Note that it's NSFW, as there's plenty of understandable swearing in here:

 

When Weather Disaster Strikes, Picking Up The Pieces Takes Forever, Unfortunately

Damage from a huge hailstorm in Calgary, Canada
lingers four months after the storm. It shows the slow
pace of recovery typical of big disasters.
Photo by Helen Pike/CBC 

 We see it over and over again.  

A big, devastating storm strikes, and the media swoop in and cover the destruction, the heartbreak and loss, and then move on. 

It makes it easy to forget that the aftermath, the effort to pick up the pieces, often takes years.  You wonder if it will ever get done. Sometimes it doesn't. 

One example is a hail storm that struck Calgary, Alberta, Canada four months ago. The storm caused $1.5 billion in damage and severely damaged thousands of homes. A thick barrage of tennis ball sized hail wrecked so many walls, windows and roofs. 

Now, with winter setting in, most of the damage is still not repaired. 

It takes time for insurance adjusters to settle claims.  Then, thousands of people all at once compete to hire a limited number of contractors to fix the damage. Good luck getting anything done within a reasonable amount of time. 

Now winter is settling into Calgary.  This being Canada, it can get awfully cold up there. It often gets below zero there each winter, and the coldest it's ever been in Calgary is 46 below.

And now you have a lot of houses with damaged windows, roofs, and siding. Which allows cold and moisture to enter these houses, causing added damage. 

Making matters worse, the Alberta provincial government has provided disaster relief for flooding from the storm, but not hail damage, according to the CBC.  Just an example of bureaucracy not helping matters. 

The Calgary hail storm, bad as it was, didn't come close to the biggest calamity a town or city could endure. 

There's plenty of for instances.  The town of Paradise, California was practically wiped off the map by a deadly wildfire in 2018.  The town isn't close to being rebuilt.  Lots of people in the area have PSTD, made worse by nearby wildfires this year that choked the air in Paradise with smoke and briefly threatened to cause new destruction in town. 

A month before Paradise was literally lost, the town of Mexico Beach, Florida was flattened by Category 5 Hurricane Michael.  This is another town that hasn't recovered and won't anytime soon.  

Mexico Beach still has no gas stations, and the bank just re-opened early this month.  The town has so far only gotten half the money it needs to get its infrastructure back and running, as television station WFSU reports. A few houses have been rebuilt, but Mexico Beach is still largely empty lots. 

Here in Vermont, it really took at least five years to pretty much fully get the Green Mountain State back up to snuff after the extreme floods of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. 

The point of this post is to show that disasters are coming at a dizzying pace.  They dominate the news cycle for a day, a week, sometimes a month. Then we all forget, because the next catastrophe has hit. Meanwhile, the people in the earlier disaster zones are pretty much left to solve it on their own. 

I don't have a good solution here.  However, if the scientists are right, the pace of big weather disasters will continue to accelerate as the planet warms.  Which means more and more of us will find ourselves picking up the pieces and not sure if we have a decent future. 

Here's the CBC news piece that inspired today's post: