ICE Barbie Is Out At DHS; But I'm Not Optimistic About How Replacement Will Manage FEMA

ICE Barbie is out, and this guy, Markwayne Mullin is
nominated as the new Secretary of Homeland Security.
That position also oversees FEMA. It's unclear how
he'll do as that agency deals with an increasing
number of disasters, some of them climate-
related. These might be famous last words
but he likely can't do a worse job than
Kristi "ICE Barbie" Noem. 

As I'm sure you heard on the news, Donald Trump finally had enough and is firing Department of Homeland Secretary Kristi "ICE Barbie" Noem and is going to replace her with a dude named Markwayne Mullin. 

Mullin is a Republican U.S. Senator from Oklahoma and is definitely right up Trump's ally. 

Trump's statement was "A MAGA Warrior, and former undefeated professional MMA fighter, Markwayne truly gets along well with people and knows the Wisdom an Courage required to Advance our America First Agenda."

Part of the DHS Secretary's job is overseeing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is why this news story landed in a weather and climate blog.

With an ever rising tide of weather and climate calamities, FEMA's role is incredibly important in helping people recover from those disasters. The nation's spring severe weather and tornado season this year appears to be gearing up to start literally today and tomorrow with a likely significant severe weather outbreak. 

Oklahoma is in the path of these storms, so I suppose Mullin will be at least a little sympathetic if the storms get too bad.

ICE BARBIE'S DEPARTURE

I'm definitely getting a "Ding dong the witch is dead" vibe coming from both Democrats and Republicans in Washington now that ICE Barbie is headed out the door. 

FEMA mismanagement was the least of the problems people had with Noem. She oversaw the siege of Minnesota by ICE agents this winter. Two border security officers shot and killed two American citizens. Noem lied about those deaths, and oversaw the chaos in Minneapolis and other cities in the past year, Chicago, Charlotte and Los Angeles and others come to mind.  

Pretty much everybody, including Trump, was getting more and more dissatisfied with ICE Barbie. It appears what finally drove Trump to dump Noem was all about him, of course. It always is.  

ICE Barbie testified in front of U.S. Senate and House committees this week and it did not go well.  The part that Trump didn't like, according to NBC News were her answers regarding her role in a $220 million ad campaign encouraging immigrants to self-deport. 

Funding for the ad campaign seemed shady, as is usual in this administration, but Trump was described as "pissed" that Noem said during the hearing that Trump new about her decision to approve the ads.

Speaking of pissed, that can describe likely thousands of disaster victims.  The FEMA work force is decimated, and the Trump administration is still trying to find ways to either get rid of the agency or gut it into near-nothingness. 

Even GOP political were annoyed by ICE Barbie's micromanaging, which seriously delays help for disaster victims. Barbie decreed that she must personally approve each expenditure amounting to more than $100,000. As you can imagine that created huge bottlenecks in getting help to people who lost their homes or livelihoods to extreme weather. 

Noem's interference with FEMA payments might have violated the law. 

ICE Barbie has also advocated eliminating or severely downsizing FEMA. 

WHAT ABOUT MARKWAYNE?

All eyes of course remain on immigration agencies and their lawless campaign to rid the U.S. of non-whites. But FEMA is also an important part of the DHS Secretary's oversight role. 

Frankly, I couldn't find much on Mullin or how he would deal with FEMA and disaster relief. I found a Fox News interview with Mullen in the autumn of 2024 where he said it's the neighbors that help during calamities like Hurricane Helene, and the response if there is any is too bureaucratic.

Reading between the lines, it felt to me like Mullin was advocating a far smaller role for FEMA rather than reforming its bureaucracy, which certainly needed and still needs reform. 

Climate change is driving many of our disasters, and Mullin's record there isn't great, to say the least. He has a 100 percent rating from Independent Petroleum Association of America. He was opposed to the Biden administration's rejoining of the Paris Climate Agreement, and presumably approved of Trump's decision to leave it. 

There is a bipartisan effort in Congress to take FEMA out of the control of DHS and make it an independent agency. It really has withered every since it was put under the DHS purview in the early 2000s.

Mullin needs Senate confirmation before he gets the job, though he could serve as "acting secretary" if confirmation doesn't happen by the end of the month. 

I've found Mullin to be a jerk at times on the Sunday morning news talk shows. But I can't picture him mugging for the cameras and cosplaying like ICE Barbie did all the time. I'll hope that he'll at least be a better administrator that Noem.

In interviews today, Mullin and both GOP and Democratic Congress creatures pledged to play nice during the confirmation process. Let's see how that turns out.  

Yes, Big Blizzards Can Counterintuitively Be A Sign Of Climate Change

Satellite view of the immense nor'easter this week that
caused the record snows in New England

Climate change skeptics scoff, but sometimes, extreme winter weather is made worse because of a warming planet. 

That might well be the case with the big Blizzard of 2026.

Every big storm depends on a rich supply of ocean moisture to do its handiwork. In the northern hemisphere, that moisture usually comes from south of the actual storm.  

Our nor'easter pulled deep, warm tropical moisture off the Atlantic Ocean. That moisture smacked into relatively  cold air over the Northeast. The water in the air froze as countless snowflakes, which piled up to record levels in parts of New England. 

That this was a record snow event was telling.  A warmer world, a warmer ocean can pull more moisture into the atmosphere than our former cooler world would have been able to do.  This is a big reason why our storm this week over-performed. 

It wasn't a one-off either. 

While overall winter snowfall isn't really increasing in the Northeast, individual snowstorms are tending to get bigger..

Six of Boston's 10 biggest snowstorms have occurred since 2003. Seven of New York City's ten biggest snowstorms on record have also all occurred since 2003.

This isn't just a coastal thing. Inland, in Burlington Vermont, eleven of the top 20 biggest snowstorms have hit since 2001.

TEMPERATURE NUANCES

One other nuance helped turn the Blizzard of '26 into the monster it was.

Not all ocean water stays warm all the time in our hotter world. Regional weather patterns over a few weeks or even a whole season can make a big difference.

It's been cold in the Northeast this winter, as you might have noticed. That has made the ocean water right along the Mid-Atlantic and New England coasts chillier than usual. 

Storms like nor'easters prefer to form and more along a steep cold to warm ocean temperature gradient.  Essentially, storms want to "find" the warmer water.  This storm found climate changed hotter water a bit further offshore than it usually does, as the Washington Post reports.  

Many nor'easters like to find that temperature gradient near what is known as the "benchmark" which is 40 degrees latitude and 70 degrees longitude, which is off the southeast corner of New England

This time, that temperature gradient in the ocean water was a little more offshore than usual, this storm passed over about 68 degrees longitude or about 100 miles east of the benchmark. This slight eastward shift allowed the precipitation to stay all snow in Rhode Island and southeast Massachusetts. It also funneled the heaviest precipitation into that area. 

Had the storm gone right over the benchmark, Providence and southeast Massachusetts might have had a period of rain thrown into the storm. The heaviest snow would have fallen in somewhat less populated areas like central Massachusetts and northern Connecticut. 

 Of course, some nor'easters hug the coast or even go inland a bit, temperature gradients be damned. ,  In those cases, interior New England gets all the heavy snow. while areas closer to the coast mostly see heavy rain, high winds and storm surges.  

STRONGER STORMS

Studies are showing that not only are nor'easters getting wetter, they're getting stronger. 

Stronger storms tend to create heavier precipitation. The barometric pressure in thie center of this nor'easter was exceeding low. A deep storm like that creates big pressure differences over a short distance.  The pressure diffeences create strong winds which cause lift in the atmosphere. The vigorous lift  that turned the moisture the storm drew from the Atlantic Ocean into very heavy snow, as the Washington Post notes. 

That robust lift in the atmosphere also help create thunder snow in some areas hit hardest by the storm.

Record big snowstorms in the past like the Blizzard of '78, the hundred hour storm in February, 1969 and the Christmas Week storm in northwest New England in December, 1969 were so severe because the nor'easters involved slowed down dramatically or stalled, adding to the accumulation. 

Those stalling storms are rare, which is one reason why two to three foot deep New England blizzards were once so rare.

More recent record breakers, like this week's storm, moved forward at a decent pace with no stalls  They were able to dump enormous amounts of snow within 24 hours. 

Now, a brief visit by a nor'easter often does all the damage that was once only made possible by lingering storms. 

It makes me wonder if another Blizzard of '26 is not all that far off in our future.  

Once Again, Record Highs In The United States Far Outpaced Record Lows In 2025

A time/temperature sign on a St. Albans, Vermont 
bank building on a record hot day in June, 2025.
Record highs greatly outpaced record lows across
the United States last year. 

Records are made to be broken. 

That's especially true in the realm of weather and climate. 

Weather stations across the United States break tens of thousands of record highs and record lows each year. The recently ended 2025 was no exception. 

But, all those records last year reveal yet another sign of climate change. 

If the climate wasn't changing, the number of record highs and record lows should be roughly equal. Sure, certain months might have more record highs or record lows if there's a persistent weather pattern.

But those persistent patterns rarely last longer than a month. Two at the very most. By the time you count up an entire year, you should get a general match between record highs and record lows. 

In recent years, at least here in the United States and almost surely in the rest of the world, record highs are far outpacing record lows. 

The year 2025 certainly demonstrated that. There were about 2.5 times the number of daily record high temperatures, and record high daily overnight lows than records the cold side. 

The precise numbers were 41,792 record highs and 17,638 record lows.

You might get different figures from different sources depending on how many weather stations were analyzed. In this case and most others, the weather stations that were looked at had decades of records to look back upon. 

If a weather station was up and running for only, say five years, that station would constantly break high and low temperatures, and would not be representative of any particular trend. The Southeast Regional Climate Center, which compiled the statistics, didn't include weather stations that have only been operating for a few decades or less. 

2025 COMPARED AND HIGHLIGHTS 

While record highs far outpaced record lows in 2025, the previous two years were even more extreme. In 2024 there were 4.5 times as many record highs as record lows. In 2023 there were about three times as many as record highs compared to lows, the Washington Post reports. 

Also, in January, 2025, for the first time since May, 2023, there were more cold records than hot records. (1,370 record highs to 1,893 record lows). Almost all the January record lows, about 1,500 of them, hit during one six day cold snap between January 19 and 23.

An El Nino was underway for much of 2023 and pretty much all of 2024, which tends to make the United States hotter. That probably explains why the hot vs.cold records were more lopsided in those years than in 2025. 

The most out of whack month in 2025 was December, with 5,684. Most of the western United States had a record hot December, which explains that high number of records. March and April were also full of record highs. Each month had more than 4,200 record highs. 

Of the cities in the Lower 48 with records going back to the late 1800s, Brownsville, Texas had the most record highs, with 32 of them. Most of those records came in the final three months of the year. However, Honolulu, Hawaii beat out Brownsville with 50 record highs. Thirty-one of those Honolulu record highs were for warm overnight lows 

Fort Wayne, Indiana and Sioux City, Iowa had the most record lows, with just six each.

This first few days of 2026 are picking up where last year left off. There have been numerous record highs, mostly across the South so far this month. We have a couple more days of record highs go. There are signs parts of the U.S. could get a spate of record lows later this month. 

 

November Global Temperatures Were 3rd Warmest On Record

November, 2025 was the world's third warmest on
record. As usual, it was hard to find the few
cooler than normal areas (in blue)

 Continuing a trend that started half a year ago, the world had its third warmest November on record, according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. 

 This was the sixth month in a row that the world had a third warmest month, in each case just behind 2023 and 2024. 

The warmest places relative to normal were in the Arctic, most of the Northern Hemisphere land areas, eastern Antarctica, southern Africa and eastern Europe. 

As always in this age of climate change, November cool spots were hard to find. Those few relatively chilly areas included northeastern Russia, parts of the central an eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, bits and pieces of Australia, and a persistent cold blob south of Greenland. 

We do the following every month to show how entrenched climate change has become: If you under age 49 you have never seen a month that globally was even a tiny bit cooler than the 20th century average. 

Depending upon how the December figures come out, 2025 will either be the third hottest year on record, to it will tie with 2023 as second hottest. Last year was the globe's hottest since people starting keeping reliable records in the 1850. 

The warm November contributed to a year that's messing with a key climate goal the United Nations set nearly a decade ago. 

The UN in 2016 adopted a legally binding compact -- the Paris Agreement -- that aims to keep global temperatures no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the 20th century agreement.

As Yale Climate Connections reports, it looks the warmth of this year will mean the three-year average temperature, 2023 -2025 will end up warmer 1.5 degree Celsius. 

Does that mean the Paris Agreement is violated? Depends on who you ask, because nobody really defined the parameter of what 1.5 degrees mean in the real world. But my opinion, yes. 

The World Meteorological Organization's 2024 State of the Global Climate Report states that they've convened a panel of experts to determine how exceeding the 1.5 degrees would be defined and tracked. 

We probably will have a few more years that average less than 1.5 degrees below the 20th century average, but they will become  increasingly rare.

Elsewhere, climatologists also like to keep an eye on Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, as those are a key indicator of the planet's climate health. 

The news from the top and bottom of the world was not good. Arctic sea ice in November was the second lowest on record for this time of year. Once we got into December, Arctic sea ice ran neck and neck with 2016 as the least on record. 

Antarctica sea ice was the fourth lowest on record, at least since satellites started keeping track of it in 1978. Only 2016, 2023 and 2024 had less ice way down under. 

UNITED STATES

November in the Lower 48 of the United States was the fourth warmest on record. 

November in the Lower 48 of the U.S was the
fourth warmest on record States in darkest 
red had their warmest on record November. 

The warmth was especially strong in the western United States. Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Utah had their hottest November on record. Utah shattered the record by more than a degree, which is a really impressive

New Mexico had its second warmest November. Colorado, Oklahoma and Wyoming each had their third warmest November. 

When the western part of the nation is warm, more often than not, the eastern part is cool. That was true in November, 2025. But the eastern chill was not nearly as extreme as the western balminess. 

The state-by-state rankings go back 131 years. The "coldest" state in the rankings, was New York, which had its 67th warmest, (or 64th coolest) November on record. Here in Vermont, we had our 62nd warmest November out of the past 131. So pretty much in the middle of the pack.  

The Lower 48 had its 26th driest November out of the past 131 years. Dry weather was well distributed around the nation, but the southeast corner of the U.S. was especially arid. South Carolina had its second driest November, and in Florida, it was third driest. 

Only three states - Arizona, California and South Dakota were noticeably wetter than average, but were not nearly soggy enough to threaten any records. 

Meteorological autumn- September 1 through November 30, was the third warmest on record in the Lower 48. This autumn, all states in the Lower 48 except the Carolinas were at least 1 degree warmer than the 20th century average. 

Seven states - Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington - had their warmest autumn on record.  Remarkably, everyone west of the Mississippi Rivet had one of their top 10 warmest autumn on record. All those states except California had one of their top five hottest falls. (California only had its tenth warmest. 

For the record, Vermont overall had its 23rd warmest autumn out of the past 131 years.  

Stick A Fork In It; Vermont Summer Is Over (I Think)

The summer of 2025 has been hot, but cooler,
more autumnal weather has arrived earlier than
in recent years. 

I'm going to declare it: Summer in Vermont is over. 

Sure, we're still going to have summer-like days. We'll still probably have a few afternoons that get into the 80s. Maybe we'll have a couple humid days or stuffy night or two, but I think summer is done.  

Fingers crossed, we might be done with the big heat waves, and the sometimes week long series of nights in which it's almost impossible to sleep without air conditioning. 

This is all subjective, of course. Just because I decide summer is over doesn't mean it is. 

The widely accepted unofficial end of summer is this weekend - Labor Day. Astronomically, summer doesn't end here until 2:19 p.m. eastern time September 22.

But we all have our own sense of when summer is over. The recent cool days, a rather chilly forecast, and an long term expected weather pattern that doesn't scream heat waves has me sticking a fork in summer. 

It's not just me. Down in the nation's capital, the folks at the Washington Post Capital Weather Gang have also declared that summer is over in DC. 

"By our meteorological definition, summer ends when there's no longer a realistic chance of three straight days of 90 degrees or higher. This year, we think we've reached that point," the Weather Gang announced on Wednesday. . 

I don't have a distinct measure for Vermont. Maybe it's when I think another 90 degree day won't hit until next summer.  

That's OK, we've had enough of 'em this year. With 17 such days as measured in Burlington, we're in the top ten list of most 90 degree days in a single year.  Plus, there's always the chance I'm wrong.  A few (but not all!) computer models bring us back to 90 degrees around September 10. You never know.

I usually figure a season has begun or ended through the lens of hindsight. The second half of this August in Vermont has been chilly, at least compared to recent Augusts.  Ever since a strong, autumn-like cold front sliced through the Green Mountain State on August 17, the consistent warmth of this summer disappeared. 

Eight of the last 11 days have been below normal. At least below the "new normal" that has arrived. This "new normal" is toastier than the 20th century average, thanks to climate change. The kind of late August we're having this year would have been typical, even a tad on the warm side if the same series of days had happened, say, in 1960 or 1970 or even 1980.

LONGER CLIMATE CHANGED SUMMERS

Still, this August is also breaking the trend of longer summers. In most recent years, summer weather - and my unofficial definition of the season - has usually lasted into September. 

There's data to back this up. Summers almost everywhere are longer than they were three decades ago, including here in Vermont. 

Per the Washington Post:

"Climatologist Brian Brettschneider examined the hottest 90 days of the year from 1965 to 1994 and compared their frequency over 1995 to 2024. He found that the temperature that used to kick off the hottest three months of the year expanded beyond the calendar definition of summer."

Brettschneider looked at a whole bunch of cities, including Burlington, Vermont.  From 1965 to 1994, the hottest 90 days of summer - when the average temperature was 64 degrees or warmer - ran from June 6 to September 3 in Burlington.

From 1994 to 2004, the average length of summer - the time it was 64 degrees or warmer - increased by 13 days and ran from June 1 to September 11.

Climate change is lengthening our summers and making them hotter. Despite the cool end of this August, the summer of 2025 in Burlington is very likely to be among the top ten hottest on record. 

There are actually 15 summers in Burlington's top ten warmest summer list due to ties. Not including this summer, eight of those top 15 hottest summers have occurred since 2005, and four of them have happened since 2020. So there's a real warming trend here. 

Even though this summer is likely among the hottest on record in Vermont, it is turning into an exception to Brettschneider's longer summer trend. 

You're always going to have exceptions to the rules. Even if those are new rules. Lately, a persistent weather pattern is bringing cool air from Canada. 

Temperatures will continue below normal today through Sunday, then they should rise to near or slightly above normal most of next week. After that, trends indicate another big cool spell starting about a week from today. 

Despite that, who knows?   Summer could unexpectedly come roaring back. Under our climate changed weather patterns, weird surprises happen. 

For instance, in 2017, summer seemed definitely over in late August and early September with consistently cool weather, with even some frost in the cold hollows on September 2. Then, from September 24 to 27, Burlington had an unprecedented four days in a row with temperatures reaching 90 degrees, by far the latest in the season 90 degree temperatures on record. 

Given the track record of recent warm autumn, we might do something weird like that this year.   

Texas Flood Tragedy News Keeps Getting Worse, Dozens Dead, Many Missing; And How It Happened

Aftermath of the Texas flood. At last report at least
27 people had been confirmed dead, and that toll
was expected to rise

 I don't even know where to begin to start with the immense flood tragedy in the Hill Country of Texas, northwest of San Antonio. 

As I wrote this early Saturday afternoon, CBS was reporting 27 deaths so far - 18 adults and nine children. 

A lot of people are still missing -- officials haven't yet told us how many. We know about a dozen people, mostly children are missing from a Camp Mystic, a childrens' camp along the Guadalupe River.

If you try really hard you get glean some good news out of the tragedy. As of Saturday morning, around 850 people had been rescued. There have been 160 air rescues, and as of this writing, swarms of aircraft, drones and boats were looking for more people. 

There have been some amazing tales of survival. KENS in San Antonio reported one woman had been swept 20 miles downstream and over four dams before being rescued from a cypress tree today. The woman reportedly had just minor injuries. 

While I'm sure there will be other tales of survival, I'm dreading what the final death toll might look like. Not to mention the extreme damage to homes and businesses through a big part of central Texas. 

HOW IT HAPPENED

The Texas tragedy had its roots in Tropical Storm Barry, a completely forgettable, weak tropical storm that splashed ashore in northeastern Mexico last Sunday. 

Barry drew extremely humid air into Texas - extraordinarily steamy even by Texas standards. A small drifting low pressure system over central Texas drew in and consolidated that moisture.  This is Texas Hill country, so the winds were forced to rise upward as ti traveled from the Gulf of Mexico to the   rising elevations west of San Antonio, helping to unleash the floods.

This upslope flow has happened there frequently and has often caused floods,  Enough to this area of Texas is sometimes known as flash flood alley. 

The upslope flow, the remnants of Barry, the subtle low pressure system, the extreme humidity all converged over the Guadalupe River drainage basin and its surroundings. And just sat there. The result was extreme rainfall. 

The fact that a crucial ingredient to this tragedy was a former tropical storm shows that people are not necessarily safe after a tropical storm or hurricane makes landfall.  These things can produce floods far from the where the system came ashore. 

Even here in Vermont. The remnants of Hurricane Beryl were a key ingredient of the extreme floods last  July 10-11 in the Green Mountain State.  

Back in 1995, another fairly lame tropical storm named Dean came ashore in Texas, much like Beryl did. Even though Dean was weak, its remnants interacted with a stalled weather front to produce severe flooding across northern and central Vermont - nearly 2,000 miles from where it made landfall. 

We also have to remind ourselves that climate change has made downpours and storms often more intense than they otherwise would have been decades ago. I do not know to what extent climate change influenced this flood, but I suspect it was at least a small factor. 

THE FLOOD FORECAST AND NOAA CUTBACKS

Some officials in Texas are blaming cutbacks at NOAA and the National Weather Service because of the Trump administration and is DOGE federal worker slash and burn program earlier this year.  Their claim is the forecast underplayed the amount of rain that ultimately fell. 

Those DOGE cutbacks might well cause forecasting errors and in fact might have already done so in other circumstances.  

As Texas meteorologist Matt Lanza explains in his blog The Eyewall, the flash flood was well forecasted, even if the amount of rain that actually fell was unimaginable. 

National Weather Service Forecasts on Thursday gave the region a slight risk of flash flooding, which might have created a false sense of security. Lanza said some high resolution forecast models predicted the huge amounts of rain that in fact materialized.  In hindsight (my opinion here) those models should have perhaps been taken more seriously. But hindsight is of course 20/20.

In any event, the National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings shortly before midnight Thursday as the rains began to fall in earnest. In the early morning hours, the NWS declared issued flash flood emergencies, which triggers automatic warnings on everybody's cell phones.

Lanza said the NOAA budget cutbacks did not appear to play a role in this tragedy. Much has been made of cutbacks in weather balloon launches, which offer critical information on impeding storms. The National Weather Service office in Del Rio, Texas, and data from those launches helped prompt the NWS issue those dire "hair on fire" flash flood warnings. 

Then the question was, how were those flash flood warnings received? Or were they?

A blame game has already started. 

Per the Associated Press: 

'AccuWeather, a private weather forecasting business said it also issued flash flood warnings and blamed camp directors for the tragedy. "These warmings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety,' "

As noted, this part of Texas is particularly prone to flash flooding. Lanza asks a great question: "Do we need to start thinking of every risk of flooding as a potential high-end event we should pre-evacuate the highest risk people (like children and elderly in floodways) for? Is that even practical?"

Some variation of that question is a great one to ask anywhere in the U.S., including here in Vermont. Climate change is helping make downpours more intense, and more likely to cause floods, or make floods worse than they otherwise would be.  

FLASH FLOODS DANGEROUS

We do know that flash floods are extremely dangerous, and the United State has a long history of flash flood tragedies.  

Perhaps the most famous and deadly flash flood in U.S. history was the Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1889, which killed more than 2,200 people. Johnstown was hit again in 1977 in a flash flood that killed 84 people. 

Other examples of horrible flash floods include one that hit Rapid City, South Dakota and adjacent areas of the Black Hills in 1972, resulting in 238 lives lost. A flash flood in Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado in 1976 claimed 144 lives. 

Flash flooding in Kentucky killed 45 people in 2022.  Another flash flood in San Antonio on June 12 killed 13 people. 

Additional flash flooding has hit parts of central Texas today. As of early this afternoon a new flash flood emergency was in effect for Burnet County, Texas and parts of Williamson and Travis County. Six to 14 inches of rain fell there last night and this morning. 

This includes parts of the Austin metropolitan area,   The latest update is two people are dead and 10 are missing from this new round of flooding. 

It goes on and on. 

 

Vermont June Beginning To Follow May's Wet Reputation, Except Much Warmer

It's the season of irises and Korean lilacs in St. Albans,
Vermont as we hit early June.  Peonies are budding,
and should get more drinks of water as an unsettled
weather pattern continues. For the first time in years,
we're into June and I haven't had to water the 
gardens yet this season. 

 Picking up where we left off in May, there's June rain chances in Vermont coming almost every day for the next week, starting today. 

True, we've had a couple sunny, lovely if smoky days (those darn Canadian wildfires again). We're now going to be harassed by a series of weather systems. 

At least it won't be particularly chilly under these rain storms.  It'll range from vaguely coolish and definitely damp to warm and humid during this upcoming period of unsettled weather. 

We'll do it day by day here again. Note that the forecast will get more iffy the further we go into the future, as there's greater opportunity for predictions to shift as more information comes in.

TODAY

We're still dealing with a weak cold front bumping into to warm, and now increasingly humid air over Vermont.  Showers and thunderstorms are still expected to blossom today.  A few strong ones could pop up this afternoon.  

The National Weather Service office in South Burlington says those storms could happen anywhere in Vermont this afternoon. But as of this morning's forecast, the stronger cells are most likely in central and south central Vermont. 

In far northwest Vermont, the cold front might come through early enough in the afternoon so there's only a short window before 3 p.m. in which a strong storm could get going there. Unless the front slows down, then the risk would last a bit longer.

The slow moving cold front will probably not even make into southeastern Vermont today, so the chances of  storms there is lower there. But still possible.

For now, NOAA's Storm Prediction Center still has all of Vermont (along with most of New York, New  Hampshire and Maine) in a marginal risk zone for severe thunderstorms. That means a  few isolated thunderstorms  could become severe, with damaging winds.

Even storms that aren't technically severe can pack a punch with gusty winds, torrential rain and lightning, so beware of that. 

This will be hit and miss. I think most places in central Vermont should see at least some rain today. A few unlucky places that get hit by more than one downpour could see very local, minor flooding. It'll be more hit and miss in northwest Vermont, and especially hit and mis in the southeast.

Oh, and it will be uncomfortably warm and humid today, too, so take it easy.

FRIDAY

The further north you go in Vermont Friday, the better off you'll be. Today's cold front will stall over or near southern Vermont. A ripple of low pressure, just a little disturbance, really, will make more showers and a few thunderstorms pick back up again by afternoon. At least in southern Vermont. 

After maybe some morning sun clouds and a chance of showers will work their way north during the afternoon. I'm not sure whether  the showers will make it all the way north past Route 2. So the northern third of Vermont cold eke out a decent Friday. 

SATURDAY

As I've said a zillion times before in 2025, if it's Saturday in Vermont, it will rain. Everybody in the state from Alburgh to Guilford and from Canaan to Pownal stands an excellent chance of seeing at least some rain on Saturday. 

Computer models are continuing to struggle with who gets the most rain. They're agreeing with each other a bit more than they did yesterday, so that's a good trend, I guess. We'll definitely have a better idea of what's going on by tomorrow.

Early indications are the heavier rain would stay over southern and central Vermont, but we still have no guarantee on that. There's even a chance - just a chance - that we could have periods of dry weather on Saturday in some areas.

But don't count on it.  There's also a risk there could be some heavy rains in some areas with this. We don't know exactly if and where yet. But it's something to watch in case we have to worry about some minor flooding again. 

It'll be cool on Saturday under the clouds, but not as bad as last Saturday's washout.  Highs should be in the mid and upper 60s, with some low 70s possible in areas that get lucky enough in which the rain stops for awhile. 

More details on Saturday's mess coming in tomorrow morning's post. 

BEYOND SATURDAY

The weather pattern should stay active into next week, with frequent disturbances coming through. It's too early to tell when exactly it will rain next week and how hard. But count on frequent chances of showers and maybe thunderstorms. 

At this point, Sunday at least looks better than Saturday. We might even get through the day with no rain at all. Yippee! 

MORE PHANTOM HURRICANES

As it has done for more than a week now, the American computer forecasting model keeps spitting hurricanes about ten days to two weeks from the date the computer forecast is released. As I've noted before, it's a quirk of the model, these storms won't happen.

I'm bringing it up again, because the American model from overnight really had too much to drink at happy hour yesterday and brings a powerful hurricane into Florida then races it right north up to Vermont with flooding rains around June 19.

I'm sure this WILL NOT HAPPEN!  This morning's subsequent run of the American model that just came in does not have any signs of that hurricane, so I guess the computer system sobered up.

I'm only bringing this up because some people on social media like to highlight "scaricanes" to power clicks and views. Which unnecessarily frightens people, And cries "wolf" so many times that people will ignore real dangers when and if they arise. 

Your best bet if you're worried about hurricanes and floods and such in Vermont, go to the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service office in South Burlington for actual reality. I'll do my best as I always do to forward their messaging to this here blog thingy. 

 

NOAA Trouble: DOGE Security Breaches, Threatened Major Budget Cuts, Firings, Public Safety Threatened

The DOGE and Trump ongoing attacks against 
NOAA and the National Weather Service aren't 
really about cost cutting as they'd have you believe.
It's all about denying reality while enriching
the billionaire and corporate class at
the expense of the rest of us. 

The oligarch tech bros and their master Elon Musk are now after NOAA and the National Weather Service. 

Which I guess is fine if you want a future where if a tornado bearing down as a complete surprise, because there was no decent National Weather Service to warn you about it.  

Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE is attacking NOAA just like is many other federal departments.  Since NOAA is primarily a science-oriented organization, we can't have that! To the MAGA crowd, Science = Bad.  

The fantasy is that if you deny science and reality, things will just do what you want.  

Until reality bites you in the butt.   

Those bitten butts clearly haven't happened yet, so Trump and Musk and the MAGA crowd continue to have their gleeful field day. 

CUTS AND JOB LOSS

The DOGE crowd is already telling NOAA employees to get ready to pack their bags. 

Per CBS News:

"Former NOAA officials told CBS News that current employees have been told to expect a 50 percent reduction in staff and budget cuts of 30 percent." 

Not that Congress or anybody else in Washington seems to care, but Musk and his snotty-nosed frat pack bros in his DOGE troupe aren't the ones that are supposed to be cutting staff and budgets.  (I swear when somebody asks the parents of these young bucks how/what they're doing, they change the subject).

Congress has the power of the purse. President Trump can of course propose big budget and staff cuts and ask Congress to approve them. Which they might, since so many in Congress are his fan boys and girls. 

So we're so far just standing by while Trump and Musk and their minions circumvent the Constitution in their oligarchical, billionaire ways.

Of course, if there is waste and mismanagement at NOAA, that needs to go. A fact-based review of expenditures is a great idea. But a dictatorial purge?  As the cost of public safety?

As CNN reports:

Further staff reductions at the National Weather Service "means we have a higher - a maybe much higher probability of missing life-saving weather warnings and giving people a heads up they need," said Mary Glackin, former president of the American Meteorological Society and former high ranking NOAA official. 

Hurricane forecasting is just one area of potential trouble. 

As CNN points out, a dozen people work in the National Hurricane Center's specialist forecasting unit.  That's the staffing level that's been in effect for years, even as the number of storms increase. Cutbacks would likely harm hurricane forecasting. 

SECURITY

The big Vermont flood of July, 2023 killed two Vermonters,
but superb warnings from the National Weather 
Service prevented more deaths from this
very dangerous weather event. 

Musk and his minions are just barging into sensitive payroll and computer systems like he owns them, creating security risks, and potentially unilaterally changing payroll, systems and sensitive employee data with no oversight. 

Former NOAA officials told CBS that these DOGE bros showed up at NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland and at the U.S. Commerce Department building in Washington DC . (The Commerce Department oversees NOAA like they owned the place. 

Again, per CBS:

"'They walked through security like it didn't apply to them' Andrew Rosenberg, a former deputy director  for NOAA, said of DOGE staff. 'They were there and they were going through IT systems.....They're not asking substantial questions about what NOAA does and the importance of its role. This isn't a review to figure out efficiency."

At least one Congress creature is making a bit of a public stink about this, so we'll take anything we can get. CBS News reports:

"Democratic Sen. Chris Van Holler of Maryland, who represents the state where NOAA is headquartered, said his office is investigating DOGE's work on NOAA, which includes such agencies as the National Weather Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

'Hearing reports that Musk's cronies are targeting NOAA - infiltrating key systems and locking out career employees,' Van Hollen posted on X Tuesday. "NOAA is vital for weather forecasting, scientific research & more. Their critical work saves lives. My team and I are looking into this & we will not stand for it.'"

It's not just Van Hollen that's hearing about this. Aides to various Congress creatures have heard the same thing.  

SCIENCE 

Getting rid of career employees at NOAA damages the work of science and of weather forecasting, but the Trump administration is going further with this anti-science tirade 

Per Wired:

"'A number of federal employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. federal agency that monitors and models the oceans and atmosphere for the purpose of predicting changes in climate and weather, have received orders to temporarily cease communication with foreign nationals, including those working directly with the U.S. government, WIRED has learned."

 Wired reports that NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service had received orders to pause "all international engagements" including "foreign national colleagues" including emails "with foreign national colleagues."

It's unclear how extensive this directive extends in NOAA.  The Marine Fisheries Service deals with offshore wind energy among many other things, and Trump hates, hates offshore wind energy for some reason 

So that might be part of it. 

But, Wired's reporting gets even more ominous.

"According to another source at NOAA, the incommunicado orders extend to the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service. In addition to gathering data from across the federal government, NESDIS relies on a wide range of international partners. NESDIS's weather and climate data is essential not only to air transportation safety but also to combat drought, monitor coral reef destruction and safeguard railway shipping carriers against dangerous weather."

If the directive to stop communicating with foreign nationals ends up extending across NOAA, that right there cripples our ability to forecast weather.  

What goes on in the atmosphere over other countries doesn't stay there. Weather systems are interconnected globally.  A big change in the jet stream over, say, Mongolia, could well have a big influence on what kind of weather eventually happens in Peoria. 

You want an America First policy? Then you have to keep tabs on what's going on elsewhere in the world. Which means cooperating with other international meteorological an climatological organizations. We need to keep close tabs on weather conditions worldwide to help determine if we in the United States face dangerous storms. 

They of course there's climate science. You know, global warming? It affects the United States, too, though Trump seems not to think so. It's getting to the point that I'm actually starting to hope a climate-powered hurricane storm surge damages Mar-A-Lago just to teach him a lesson. After all, just because Trump decrees climate change is a hoax, doesn't make it so. Jokes on him, right?

You need global cooperation to study and combat climate change, including the effects it has on the United States. America First, indeed! 

THE GOAL

Like all the lofty talk from DOGE and Trump that they're trying to end government waste, this is largely about making billionaire and corporations richer. 

Project 2025 calls for privatizing NOAA and the National Weather Service. Here's one reason why, via The Guardian:

"....it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on NOAA data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services."

You get more details on this from NPR, which noted in one interview that websites made detailed National Weather Service data for anybody to access.  That doesn't sit well with private companies, noted Wailin Wong of the Planet Money podcast The Indicator. "If customers can get sophisticated data from the government for free, maybe they wouldn't pay for that kind of information anymore," he said, 

If you go full bore and privatize the National Weather Service, which seems to be an eventual goal here, people will need to pay for their weather forecasts. Sure, they already do in taxes. 

Each individual taxpayer in the United States spends $3 a year for all that the National Weather Service does. Everything from telling you to bring the umbrella to work with you tomorrow to telling you to hide in the basement NOW because that tornado is headed toward you. 

You can be sure a privatized system would cost all of us more, at least those of us who can afford it.  People who can't would just be out of luck.  I guess in a billionaire's mind, the poors don't deserve the warnings that would save their lives in hurricanes and floods and such.

Americans were sold on the idea of limiting government waste. I'm sold on the idea of eliminating government waste

I think many of the people who voted for Trump had gotten themselves convinced he's the guy who would combat this huge, gaping growing inequality between the billionaire class and everyone else. 

I just hope people soon realize that's not what's going on here. It's not about giving us taxpayers a break.  It's a all a grift. NOAA is the one many pieces of that grift in action. 

And we'll all be the losers because of it. Except of course for Elon Musk and his merry band of oligarchs. 

July Was (Somewhat Surprisingly) The World's 14th Consecutive Record Hottest Month

Very few places on Earth cooler than the 20th century
average through July, 2024.

Data came out this week that shows July was the 14th consecutive month that was the hottest on record for Planet Earth. 

The hottest July ranking was a bit of a surprise among experts. El Nino, which tends to boost global temperatures on top of the warmth of climate change,  has ended.  Chances were, at least according to the experts who watch these things, that July, 2024 would "only" be the second or third hottest.

But nope!  July was the hottest.

There are signs that this long streak of record hot months are ending. Global sea surface temperatures were only the second warmest on record. That ends a 15-month streak in which sea temperatures were record hot. 

Despite continued record heat waves around the world, it's questionable as to whether August will turn out to be another hottest month. It could be close.

After all, climate change sure isn't ending. 

And the last few months of the year could well end up being just a smidge cooler than the final months of 2023. The National Centers for Environmental Information says there's a 77 percent chance that 2024 will be the hottest year on record for Earth. There's a 100 percent chance it will score in the top five, as you might expect.  

Just under 14 percent of the Earth's surface had a record hot month, which is pretty impressive.

Once again, it was hard to find places on Earth that were cooler than what was average in the 20th century. The only places I could find that were ever so slightly chilly were southern South America, a spot west of the Korean Peninsula, another tiny spot between Alaska and Russia, and a small area in the central United States.  

The trend toward warmer months started decades ago, thanks to the release of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels that have made the world all-too toasty. If you are under the age of 48, you have never seen a July on Earth that was at least a little cooler than the 20th century average. 

UNITED STATES

The western and eastern United States were very
hot in July, 2024, but the middle of the nation
caught a break. 

In the United States, July turned out to be just the 11th hottest on record. California and New Hampshire had their hottest July on record. Another 18 states, including Vermont had one of their top ten hottest Julys. 

And as I wrote the other day, many cities on the West Coast and some in the East also had a record hot July.  

But the areas in the middle of the nation were cooler, partly offsetting the overall warmth in the United States. 

Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana were actually a bit cooler than average. They got a break from what was widely expected to be a hot July in that region. 

DISASTERS

Weather and climate disasters costing at least $1 billion in the United States continue to pile up. Four more such calamities were added to the list. They include Hurricane Beryl in Texas (no word if subsequent floods in Vermont and elsewhere in the Northeast also made the cut); New Mexico wildfires in June and July, and hail storms centered in and around Colorado on May 31-June 1. 

We now have a total of 19 weather and climate disasters so far in 2024 that cost at least $1 billion. 

This type of mega-expensive disaster is getting more common. The average annual of inflation-adjusted yearly billion dollar disasters between 1980 and 2023 is 8.5.  The average number in the most recent five years, i.e. 2019 to 2023 was 20.4 such events, says the National Centers for Environmental Information. 

It's pretty much a lock, then, that 2024 will have an above average number of these calamities. We don't know yet if Hurricane Debby cost $1 billion. Or if the massive Park Fire in California or other big wildfires burning out there will also cost more than $1 billion. 

Plus, hurricane season is still very young. Hurricanes making landfall in the United States tend to cause a lot of damage. (The latest hurricane, Ernesto, caused damage in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but is expected to have little effect on mainland U.S.). 

Other than the western wildfires, there doesn't appear to be any mega-storms or climate disasters on the horizon in the United States for at least the next few days. But the way things are going, you never know.  

Disaster Zone: Vermont Is One Of Nation's Biggest Disaster/FEMA Hot Spots

A large, destroyed culvert near Huntington, Vermont
after the big flash flood of July 10-11 of this year.
FEMA data shows Vermont is now one of the 
nation's most disaster-prone states. 

 It's only mid-August, and already two former hurricanes have caused damage in Vermont, either through severe flooding or high winds. 

The rest of the hurricane season is forecast to be busy, so that's not great news. That said, we could very easily get through the rest of 2024 without a tropical system having any effect on us. 

This brings me to an Associated Press analysis I ran across recently. The gist of it is that we associate coastal areas with big disasters, you know, hurricanes, storms.  Plus the West Coast with their earthquakes. 

Turns out, inland counties are the most disaster prone.  The article notes that counties far inland from any ocean are the top victims of disasters and most frequent recipients of aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

There's a nugget in there that's super interesting for us Vermonters: Says the AP:

"Eight of the nine counties with the most federal declared disasters since 2011 - more than a dozen each - are in Kentucky, with one in Vermont."

The nine counties mentioned have had four to five times the number of disasters as the national average for the past 13 years.

The mentioned Vermont is Washington, which has had 14 disaster declarations since 2011. The only county in the nation that has had more is Johnson County, Kentucky with 15.  Washington County, Vermont is tied with three other Kentucky counties for second place. 

Five other Vermont counties - Chittenden, Essex, Lamoille, Orange and Orleans, each had12 declared disasters in the past 13 years.  Addison and Franklin counties have had ten such designations. That's all   far above the national average. 

So much for Vermont being a refuge from the effects of climate change. 

The data comes from a report called Atlas of Accountability from Rebuild By Design, an organization that studies how overlapping environmental and human-made vulnerabilities leave communities at risk, and tries to find solutions to these vulnerabilities.  

A destroyed driveway in Richmond, Vermont on July 11
of this year after yet another disastrous flash flood. 

In the decade ending 2021, Vermont had 17 disaster declarations. Only ten states had as many or more than the Green Mountain State. 

Plus, some of the Top 10 states, like California, Texas and Oklahoma, have much more land area than Vermont, making those other states bigger potential targets for big storms. 

Moreover,  between 2011 and 2021, Vermont had the fifth highest FEMA and Housing and Urban Development costs per capita.

As we know all too well, Vermont's constant drumbeat of disasters and disaster declaration has continued in 2024. Five northern Vermont counties were declared federal disaster zones following twin wind storms in January. 

Vermont is also seeking a federal disaster declaration for the severe flash flooding of July 10-11. Yet another federal disaster might be declared for the July 30 flash flooding in the Northeast Kingdom.  

The data from Rebuild By Design also does not include the Vermont disaster declaration for severe flooding in December, 2023.  

The vast majority of the Vermont disasters are - to nobody's surprise - due to flooding. Climate change, as I've noted so many times, makes heavy rain events more likely. 

Many of Vermont's iconic towns and small cities were built in flood plains by necessity. They were mill towns,  needing the power of rivers to fuel their 18th, 19th and early 20th century economies. 

These towns and cities have always had floods. But now, they're more frequent under the regime of climate change. 

So, we face a reckoning. Whatever needs to be done to save these beautiful downtowns from an onslaught of frequent floods will be incredibly expensive. And disruptive as hell.  Will these communities be saved and how?

We just don't have the answers.  Organization like Rebuild by Design are there to help. But is the Vermont problem too big for even those experts to deal with?  It's a drama that will keep playing out over the coming few years and decades. 

Plenty Of Tree Damage, Flash Flooding In Wake Of Vermont Tornado-Warned Storms. Did Any Touch Down?

For what it's worth, interesting wind shift Sunday in
a tornado-warned storm in the southern end of 
Hinesburg, Vermont. Here, screen grab at 2:12
pm, judging by tilt of the tree, wind is 
coming in from the southwest. ....

As expected, Sunday turned out to be a wild day in parts of Vermont, with tornado, severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings flying.   

Most of the state got through Sunday with no trouble at all. It seems like the middle of the Green Mountain State took the brunt of the weather.  

While there was definitely wind damage, some of the biggest trouble Sunday stemmed from flash flooding. 

Sunday's two most intense storms - both of which carried tornado warnings -  hit pretty much the same areas in central Vermont, touching off tree damage, power outages and flash flooding 

Here's what I saw. 

STORM #1

The National Weather Service in South Burlington at 2:07 p.m. Sunday issued a tornado warning. for an area around Monkton, Starksboro and Huntington, and extended the tornado warning to areas around Waterbury, Waitsfield and Montpelier at 2:28 p.m.

...... Second screen grab, from just one minute later at
2:13 p.m. shows more intense wind and rain with
the wind now coming out of the east to southeast. This
is north of where the storm rotation was, but it's possible
that rotation influenced wind direction away from it.

There was one area of Monkton where trees were reported down.  I was in the southern end of Hinesburg at the time, an area covered by the tornado warning. 

I definitely did not see a tornado, as I was a little bit north of where the storm rotation was. But the area I was in at the Cedar Knoll Country Club experienced gusty west winds, followed quickly by even stronger southeast winds and torrential rains. 

That was potentially influenced by some sort of circulation a little to the south of me, or it could have been simply the orientation of downbursts. 

After the storm I traveled down Route 116 through Starksboro where if a tornado existed it would have crossed. At that particular point along Route 116 the only damage I saw was a few branches down and some minor flash flooding. 

STORM #2

Later in the afternoon, a fairly unimpressive looking storm in eastern New York intensified as it splashed ashore on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain.   

It developed torrential rains and gusty winds where I was in South Burlington and Shelburne around 4 p.m., then intensified further as it moved east. At 4:07 and 4:12 p.m., the National Weather Service issued a pair of severe thunderstorm warnings for a zone extending from central Chittenden County all the way to areas around Morrisville, Waterbury, Worcester, Montpelier and Johnson. 

That severe thunderstorm warning in a broad area around Waterbury was renewed at 4:43 p.m. Meteorologists at this point must have been beginning to see signs of rotation because they added the following sentences to this new severe storm warning: "Remain alert for a possible tornado! Tornadoes can develop quickly from severe thunderstorms." 

At 4:51 p.m., a tornado warning was issued for an area in and around Waterbury. Around that time, numerous trees were reported uprooted or snapped off at Little River State Park in Waterbury, which was in the middle of the tornado warning zone.  

 From what I can tell, the damage patterns reported didn't warrant the National Weather Service going out for a look see. So for now, we can conclude we had rotation, but no actual tornadoes with this episode.  Close but no cigar. Though if something changes, I'll update you.

FLASH FLOODING

Those two intense storms hit roughly the same areas. Both storms contained ferocious downpours. There were quite a few damage reports. I saw some flash flooding on French Hill in Williston, and it goes worse as the storms reached peak intensity further east. 

Torrential rains touched off some flash flooding on a very
flood prone spot on Williston Road in South Burlington.
As the storm moved east, it causes much worse
flash flooding in the Green Mountains especially
near Stowe, Worcester and Elmore 

Parts of the Bolton access road were damage, as was Route 100 between Waterbury and Stowe.  Part of Route 12 in Worcester was closed. 

Part of Route 14 in Hardwick was also shut down due to high water. A bridge washed out on Elmore Mountain Road, and other road damage was seen around Elmore and Worcester. 

In Stowe, Stowe Hollow, North Hollow, Moss Glen Falls roads and others in town were damaged and in many cases impassable.  

Damage from flooding in Vermont Sunday was definitely worse than wind or potential tornado damage.

OUTLOOK

Much calmer today in Vermont. Today was cloudy and showery across much of Vermont, though some afternoon sun broke out in the northwest. It's been a refreshingly cool one after all the humidity we've had lately.   

After a bright and much warmer Tuesday, the next chance of severe weather comes with some weather fronts Wednesday. The prospect for bad storms Wednesday is still really iffy, and so far, trends have been moving away from a severe risk, so fingers crossed!  

Some Interesting Storms In Vermont Tuesday; Structure Would Do Oklahoma Storm Chaser Proud

A much weakened version of what had earlier been a
rotating, severe warned storm approaching the
Champlain Islands. This now garden-variety storm
is pictured here near St. Albans. Though tame,
it still showed evidence that it still had a little rotation.

 As expected, scattered thunderstorms developed in Vermont Tuesday afternoon. Also as forecast, just a couple of them became severe or close to it.   

Not very much harm was ultimately done, but the two or three big storms that did form created drama. 

One storm in the Northeast Kingdom dumped tons of hail and created some street flooding in and around Lyndonville. Images on social media showed a torrent of hailstones covering lawns and walkways in the region around 3:30 p.m in the afternoon. 

The largest hailstones were a little smaller than penny sized so luckily it wasn't enough to dent cars and such. 

In the evening, a thunderstorm quickly erupted in New York State south of Plattsburgh and quickly became intense enough to prompt the National Weather Service office in South Burlington at 5:44 p.m. to issue a severe thunderstorm warning. 

The warning covered areas in and around Plattsburgh and across parts of Grand Isle, Franklin and a sliver of Chittenden County. The warning alerted us to the risk of 60 mph gusts and quarter sized hail..

Luckily that didn't happen. But storm chaser Tommy Horn captured some wild photos of the storm as it prepared to go over Lake Champlain. 

You can Horn's images of the storms here and here. The photos would do an Oklahoma storm chaser proud.

Horn's photos showed a great gush of rain, of course. It also showed what appears to be a rotating section of the storm that I think could have potentially created a brief tornado. It didn't for reasons I'll get into in a second. 

There was apparently enough shear in the atmosphere to help Tuesday thunderstorms spin.  Shear just means wind is changing speed and direction with height in the atmosphere. That's one ingredient to create severe storms and tornadoes

However, there wasn't enough instability in the atmosphere, or enough energy to sustain severe storms for any length of time, or allow them to last long. 

But anyway, Horn's images  shows a rotating wall cloud type feature in the storm. A wall cloud is a lowering section of a severe thunderstorm that spins and could potentially create a tornado. 

One of Horn's images sort of shows what looks like a bit of a funnel, but Horn said that was just a scud cloud rising into the storm. There was never any funnel.  

The storm did produce hail to near penny size in Peru, New York and a 38 mph wind gust in Plattsburgh. 

Next, the storm ran into a buzzsaw, namely Lake Champlain. The lake is quite cold this time of year and creates an area of stable air. When the storm went over the lake, it quickly fell apart in the stable air and weather warnings were lifted.

The remnants of the storm continued on its expected path, right toward my house in St. Albans, Vermont.  It partly regenerated once it hit land in Vermont and escaped the cold clutches of Lake Champlain. But never came close to becoming severe again. 

Still, the now not spinning remnants of that wall cloud passed over my house as just a low, dark gray jumble of clouds. However, you could see as the storm departed St. Albans that its entirety still had some rotation to it, even though it would never come close to causing any severe weather, never mind any kind of funnel cloud.

The storm just cause a brief downpour, a couple of rumbles of thunder and a very few pea-sized hailstones as it passed by my place. 

In a way it was the perfect storm - visually stunning but not really anything damaging or dangerous. 

Today's weather won't be as visually stunning. Low overcast and fog this morning was breaking up into an overcast. .We'll have an increasing chance of showers today. That's because the cold front that caused yesterday's weather is coming back as a warm front. 

The showers this afternoon will be pretty frequent, but also on the light side. No sky drama, though. 

Looking ahead through the weekend, the forecast has trended drier than previous runs, so most of the time will be fine for outdoor activity. There will be just be limited chances of showers. Certainly no rotating storms and wall clouds for the next few days.