Montreal, Quebec City Endured Ugly Ice Storm While Warm Thaw Continued South Of The Border

While rather warm temperatures continued Wednesday
south of the border, Montreal and other areas of 
Quebec endured a day and evening long ice storm.

While places south of the border were basking in relative warmth Wednesday, Quebec was enduring an ice storm. 

Temperatures remained solidly below freezing in Montreal as freezing rain fell all day into the night. 

Even toward midnight, when temperatures in northwestern Vermont soared into the low 60s, Montreal remained stubbornly at 30 degrees, or minus 1 Celsius.

The result in Quebec was widespread travel trouble, closed schools and businesses and power outages.  Among the schools closes were Concordia and McGill universities. 

As of around 9:15 a.m. Thursday more than 212,000 homes and businesses were still without power in Quebec. The number of outages was down to about 65,000 by 4 p.m. today. 

Dozens of flights were canceled in Montreal and Quebec City. 

A similar but worse ice storm hit in April 2023. While trees collapsed under the weight of ice and power flickered out throughout Montreal and other areas of Quebec, areas just south of the Canadian border had thunderstorms and temperatures in the 40s on that occasion. 

So that's twice in three years northern Vermont just barely dodged very, very icy bullets  

Climate Change Exposes Canadian Economic Vulnerability

This map shows an expected 200 to 300 millimeters (7 to 11
inches) of rain in the four days ending tomorrow in
parts of British Columbia, Canada. This will make
an ongoing huge flood disaster there even worse.

 Earlier this month, record flooding blasted through much of British Columbia, Canada, wrecking countless homes and businesses.

Perhaps worse, it destroyed miles of highways and rail lines through the western Canadian province, and that could badly hurt the entire Canadian economy. 

Meanwhile, this weekend and early in the week, another atmospheric river is causing more flooding and destruction in the same areas. 

The British Columbian flooding and the disruptions it is causing are another sign that we are all more vulnerable than we think we are. 

We don't imagine the long term effects of these climate-induced disasters until they happen. We lack the imagination to fully anticipate the greater consequences to come after the immediate effects of any particular climate disaster. 

In this case, the flooding could put a real damper on the GDP of the entire nation of Canada. Geography is not Canada's friend in the age of climate change. 

As Reuters notes, 

"The majority of Canadian exports, which account for nearly exports, which account for nearly one-third of the country's GDP, travel to the Pacific coast to reach Asian markets. 

But the supply chain route relies on two rail lines and a handful of highways through the Rocky Mountains and rugged British Columbia interior to the Port of Vancouver. 

'Geology did not give Canada a lot of options and funneling a huge amount of exports down the Fraser Canyon increases our vulnerability, said Barry Prentice, professor of supply chain management at University of Manitoba.

The Fraser Canyon, which stretches from B.C.'s high interior plateau, through the Coast Mountains to the lower mainland, suffered some of the most severe highway washouts during the storm. It was also ravaged by a wildfire this summer that destroyed a town and closed road and rail routes."

The upcoming new storm is once again focusing on the Fraser Canyon, causing added damage and stalling efforts to pick up the pieces from the last storm. 

 According to Forbes:

"Although this forthcoming storm is expected to be less intense than the previous one, British Columbia has barely had time to recover from the flooding. So, the incumbent storm....will likely exacerbate ongoing flooding and washouts. It will likely increase the number of displaced residents, which approached 18,000 individuals last week and disproportionately impacted First Nation communities that predominantly exist in rural areas."

One example of the extreme transportation disruptions in 
British Columbia, Canada due to this month's record flooding
Image is from the BC Ministry of Transportation and
Infrastructure

Atmospheric rivers off the Pacific Ocean have always hit British Columbia and have often caused floods. With climate change, the atmosphere can hold more moisture now that it is warmer, The more moisture, the heavier the rain. 

The atmospheric river storms themselves are warmer, too. In the winter, these systems take the form of heavy snowstorms and blizzards in high elevations. That snow eventually slowly melts and the runoff is manageable. 

Now, the rain falls at much higher elevations in these warm storms, and the water runs off in giant gushes, contributing to the flooding. 

The summer's fires, and the flooding this month which wiped out key rail and road lines through British Columbia's mountains to the rest of the nation.

As Reuters notes, the easiest way to get goods from British Columbia to the rest of Canada is through the Fraser Canyon, and that is getting more and more untenable. Same is true for Canada's export market, since much of the nation's goods head west through the Fraser Canyon to ports in and around Vancouver on the Pacific Coast. 

Vancouver handles nearly 20 percent of Canada's global trade. 

Climate change will continue to exacerbate these disasters. Canada is going to have to figure out how to make these rail and road passages more resilient, and they're going to need to add redundancy to its transportation network.   British Columbia's experience is probably a good window into the fact that many parts of the world are going to have to adapt to climate change in big ways. 

Reuters said Canada will have to rethink its export market, sending more good south to the United States and east toward Europe. That, instead of west toward the more lucrative Asian markets. 

That's not to say the entire Canadian economy is in ruin from this. Far from it.  It's a large, resilient, wealthy, well-run nation. Imagine if the same set of climate circumstances hit a poorer, more dysfunctional nation.

As it is, even before this weekend's atmospheric river, the floods in British Columbia had caused at least 7.5 billion dollars in damage. The publication Business in Vancouver reported the Bank of Montreal cut its prediction for the  provinces growth in GDP this year from 5.3 percent to 3.8 percent, just because of the flooding earlier this month.  The renewed flooding ongoing now won't help. 

By the way, there was lesser, but still destructive flooding this month in parts of Canada's eastern seaboard, too. 

It's bad enough that a global pandemic, economic forces and bad political decisions are gumming up the works in global trade.  Climate change is going to be an increasing factor. We are going to have to get our act together here. 

 

We Can Forget About That Potential Nor'Easter (I think!)

It looks like instead of a big snowy nor'easter early next week
we'll get more of this. Typical November gloom. My backyard
sure is no longer lively, with mulched garlic, clymatis dying
back brown hydrangea in the background and 
dead leaves strewn everywhere. 

 There's been lots of speculation about a potential nor'easter early next week that would disrupt Thanksgiving travel in and near New England. 

The good news is that nor'easter is looking less and less likely, at least for now. The bad news is there still might be some travel disruptions. 

Disruptions even without any real blockbuster storms to talk about. More on that in a minute.  

The nor'easter speculation came because of a big developing blocking high pressure system near Greenland.  That would gum up the works in the normal, general west to east flow of weather systems.

That would allow a storm coming in from the west to plow into this blockage and help develop the nor'easter and keep it near the coast.

It still looks like that storm from the west will come and generate that nor'easter. But the blocking high pressure area near Greenland now looks like it will develop a little later and a little too far to the east to steer the storm toward New England.

Instead, chances are increasing it will develop well east of New England and meander around, well offshore. It'll be close enough to keep us in a cool northwest flow for the first half of next week, and maybe generate a few snow showers for us, especially in the mountains, but that's about it.

Forecasters will still need to watch this in case the storm does manage to form closer to the coast. It still could happen, but the chances of that seem to be diminishing. I think you're safe from that storm unless you plan to be on a boat a few hundred miles east of Cape Cod next week. 

That's not to say we won't have travel disruptions. Things are so sensitive with airlines now.  They have staff shortages, Covid restrictions, and very heavy travel demand between now and Thanksgiving. It won't take much to throw a monkey wrench into the whole system.

That monkey wrench could prove to be that initial storm coming in from the west. In the grand scheme of things, that storm isn't anything extreme for November.

It will throw some wind and snow through the Great Lakes. The Northeast, including Vermont, will have a bout of wind and rain, especially on Monday.  That all could  trigger a few flight delays, which would have a cascading effect of more canceled and delayed flights as airline staff would end in the wrong places at the wrong times as a result.

So be patient. 

At this point, it doesn't look like we'll have any big snows to screw up driving along Vermont's highways over the Thanksgiving holiday.

On the bright side these mid-sized, but frequent storms recently have been good for Vermont. The U.S. Drought Monitor took northern Vermont out of drought conditions three weeks ago.

Ground water levels haven't fully recovered in far northern Vermont east of the Champlain Valley, so that area is still considered "abnormally dry."  A continued active weather pattern should help with that.

Vermont Will Share In The Snowfall After All, Even If We're Late To The Party

Here's kind of a first stab at snowfall predictions from 
the National Weather Service in South Burlington.
Most of us should get at least six inches of snow
out of this storm. As usual, mountains 
likely to get the most snow. 

As expected, that wide-ranging snowstorm stretching from Illinois to - eventually - New England - is in full force.  And now it looks like Vermont will share in the fun. 

A winter storm watch is up for the entire Green Mountain state, extending into eastern New York.  The watch starts at around sunset Monday and extends through Wednesday morning. This issue will last a pretty long time, as storms go.

It's also a really complicated one, as the pieces that are coming together in the upper atmosphere to create this snowfall are really messy. 

Which means the usual caveat applies, writ large, expect surprises with this. The current forecast pretty much calls for four to 10 inches out of this, depending upon where you are in Vermont.  

I'm sure a few places will end up with more than that, and a few other places will have less than this forecast. 

The only aspect of this storm I'm quite sure about is we won't have to worry about mixed precipitation here in Vermont. We'll just get snow. Easy-peasy in that regard. 

This is a sprawling, slow moving storm, which means most people affected by it will have to live with it for a couple days. This morning, it was snowing from Minnesota all the way to Washington DC. A foot of snow is likely to fall in many places in this vast area.

Usually, when a storm comes in from the west, it will re-form into a single new storm that turns into a nor'easter. That new storm usually plows toward New England and you get a day of heavy precipitation and wind up into the region. Then it ends pretty quickly 

The current setup, as I said, is messy, so you're going to get a few storm centers trying to form somewhere in the Northeast or off the coast, and it's hard to tell which will be the dominate one. 

This means storminess will definitely happen, but who gets hit the hardest is a question. It also means this will last awhile. It'll be later Wednesday before most of New England is really out of rough weather. 

VERMONT SPECIFICS

Like I said in the headline, Vermont is going to be late to the snow party.  Cold high pressure and its dry air will initially fend off this storm. 

The cold air brought the first subzero reading of the season to Burlington late Saturday evening - making it one of the latest first zeros of the season on record - but not THE latest.

It eventually got down to 6 below in Burlington. It was as cold as 24 below in Island Pond and minus 15 in Montpelier, so this was the coldest spell of the winter so far. 

Predicted snowfall with the storm throughout the 
Northeast, showing how widespread this will be.
Everything in pink is roughly 10 inches or 
more of snow. 

We'll stay cold and generally sunny today. Another clear night in northern Vermont will drop temperatures below zero again.

Meanwhile, clouds will finally start to creep in from the south late tonight and through the day tomorrow as the storminess finally tries to work in from the south. 

The way it looks now, a band of warmer air and lift aloft will come in southeast to northwest in Vermont late Monday night and the first half of Tuesday, which would bring us our biggest thump of snow from this storm. Snow could come down quite hard at times during this initial part of the storm. 

The eastern slopes of the Green Mountains will make out the best from this initial burst, and, if predictions hold, pretty much everyone will have a lousy, snowy commute Tuesday morning. 

I think there might be a lull after this initial thump of heavier snow comes through.  Then, the messy mass of storminess will work northward, roughly centered just off the New England coast. Moisture will wrap around to the north of the storm, through Maine and New Hampshire and southern Quebec and back down on Vermont.

This would favor more snow Tuesday, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning mostly in northern Vermont. This is especially true along the western slopes and summits of the Green Mountains.  Most of northern Vermont as a whole, including the Champlain Valley north of Burlington has the potential to do pretty well with snow with this setup.

Overall, the trend since yesterday has been to bring the coastal storm or storms a little further west than initial projections, which is why we now have the expectations for snow in Vermont. 

It'll get windy with this thing, especially later Tuesday through Wednesday, so expect a lot of blowing and drifting snow, even after the heaviest precipitation tapers off. 

I regard this storm as kind of weird, so I expect more surprises than usual from a mid-winter snowstorm. Definitely stay tuned for updates and adjustments from the National Weather Service in South Burlington, and the other fine Vermont meteorologists keeping tabs on this storm. 

THE STORM ELSEWHERE

This storm is going to be really in the news for the next couple days, because it's lasting so long, and hitting highly populated areas. And hitting in areas that are basically media centers - Washington and New York. 

It will be disruptive.  More than a foot of snow is a good bet in the New York City area, western New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, eastern New York all the way up to Albany and western and central New England. A few areas in here could approach two feet of new snow.

It will be very windy, so near blizzard conditions could easily set up in and near New York City Monday and Monday night. 

Bottom line: Don't travel to southern New England, New York and the Mid-Atlantic states for the next two or three days. Ain't worth it. 

Some pretty substantial coastal flooding with storm surges, splash over waves and high winds will hit the Jersey Shore, Long Island and maybe New England.

There will be some pretty wild stories, photos and videos of this storm, I'm betting.  As I keep saying, stay tuned!