Friday Cold Front Caused Some Vermont Drama; Fire Hazard Remains, But Rain Monday?

Drama in the skies over Vermont with a gusty cold 
front Friday, but again, precious little rain. 

Friday's cold front passing through Vermont caused created some dramatic skies and winds strong enough to cut power to a few places in the Green Mountain State.  

But the front failed to provide what was really needed: A soaking rain did not happen. 

There was never much rain in the forecast. But the front did give us something to watch.

 The dramatic clouds, combined with with shafts of bright, golden late afternoon sun looked quite spectacular. And several places were treated to huge rainbows from the very brief showers. 

If nothing else, then, it was a great day for Vermont sky watchers. 

This was an odd line or two of showers and storms for this time of year. The rare times you get strong gusty winds with a line of showers and storms is along a storm front is when a powerful cold front from one of these Great Lakes "gales of November" storms smashes through.    

But we haven't really had one of those storms yet. 

Instead, yesterday, we had a dry cold front coming in from the northwest. It was moisture-starved, but it made the best of what it had, thanks to some nice lift in the atmosphere and a strong push of northwest winds behind it.

The main line of storms was strong enough to be able to spit out some lightning strikes near Montreal, and in the area where Quebec, New Hampshire and Maine meet. 

A shelf cloud on the front edge of a line of gusty showers
Friday over St. Albans, Vermont. 

By the time it got into northern Vermont, the storms were still strong enough to create a shelf cloud o the leading edge of the line. A shelf cloud is common in summer thunderstorms but you don't often see them in November. 

Gusts exceeded 40 mph, reaching 50 mph in a few spots. Close to 3,000 homes and businesses in Vermont lost power as the winds were strong enough to pull down a few trees and branches. Some spots were briefly pelted by pea sized hail. 

FIRE WEATHER

Since very little rain fell, with none in much of southern Vermont, there's still a risk of brush fires today. It's still windy, too, with gusts as high as 35 mph this morning before beginning to diminish this afternoon. 

So you want to be careful.

As has been the case all autumn, the fire risk is greater in the even drier areas of southern New England and Mid-Atlantic States. Friday's gusty weather set off brush fires in New Jersey's Palisades sent smoke billowing across the Hudson River into upper Manhattan

Massachusetts has really been burning the past couple of days.  Two firefighters were injured fighting a brush fire in Mansfield, while another fire threatened homes in Braintree.

A large brush fire also burned near an apartment complex and a commercial district near Saugus and Lynn, Massachusetts on Thursday and Friday. Another brush fire that began Thursday along the Mass Pike near Chicopee in western Massachusetts forced the temporary closure of that busy highway due to thick smoke. 

RAIN OUTLOOK

It still looks like it's going to rain Monday, which is nice, but this will not be any kind of blockbuster storm. It'll suppress the fire risk in Vermont and the rest of New England, at least for awhile, but won't do much to stunt a building drought. 

Another storm looked like it would give us a bunch more rain toward the end of the week. As of now, long range forecasts are looking less and less bullish on decent rain chances toward Thursday and Friday. 

 

Another Picturesque Thunderstorm Day In Vermont, With A Cold Air Funnel For Added Fun

Dramatic thunderstorm clouds near Sheldon,
Vermont late Sunday afternoon

 After a gloomy start to our Sunday in Vermont with steady rains and a bleak overcast, the sky turned interesting once again over the Green Mountain State.  

That's one of the things I love about summer. The sky is almost always more fun to look at than in the winter.

The pattern was the same as it's been since about Friday. Upper level low pressure was parked nearby. That's a pool of chilly air aloft. 

If you get that weather pattern in the winter, all you usually end up with is a flat overcast and snow showers. 

In June,  you have the sun at peak strength. The surface warms quickly as soon as the sun comes out. The air cools quickly with height with the upper level low around. The updrafts inspired by the sun condense into those big billowing clouds that: A. Are often very pretty and dramatic B. Create showers and thunderstorms (I always like hearing thunder for some reason)  C. Offer cool surprises.  

So it was Sunday, with black clouds gushing downpours and pea sized hail right next to bright sunshine and deep blue skies over emerald green Vermont forests.  It was one of those days that were simultaneously inclement and gorgeous, and even exciting, at least for a few moments. 

THE COOL SURPRISE 

One thunderstorm that passed through St. Albans, Vermont Sunday afternoon had a literal strange twist. The storm fell well short of severe limits. If featured a few flashes of lightning, rumbles of thunder, a torrential but rather brief downpour and outflow wind gusts I'd estimate at a very tame 25 mph. 

An apparent "cold air funnel" forming over St.
Albans, Vermont Sunday afternoon. 

As the storm began to depart, I saw a small but noticeable rotation overhead. It was nearly directly over the house when I first saw it, and it moved on to the northeast, in tandem with the parent storm. 

A section of clouds were clearly spinning, and there was a sort of bulbous-shaped funnel type thing associated with it.  

I was witnessing what was likely  a cold air funnel. WPTZ Meteorologist Matt DiLoreto took a look at a video I shot of this, and concluded I was probably watching a cold air funnel. 

What I saw was not a wannabe tornado or anything dangerous.  A "real" tornado involves a supercell thunderstorm within a soup of very warm, very humid air.  

The supercell usually spits out damaging winds and hail and very often develops a large scale rotation that can easily be detected on radar. This spin can sometimes translate into a dangerous tornado. 

As you noticed, Sunday was not especially warm or humid. 

Cold air funnels can form in showers and weak thunderstorms when the air aloft is much colder than normal.  That was certainly the case Sunday, as an upper low - that pool of chilly upper altitude air - was centered nearby. 

These spins in the clouds or funnels happen with a steep lapse rate, meaning temperatures cool with height at a greater rate than usual.  The spin associated with cold air funnels is pretty weak and small, and weather radar usually doesn't detect it. Cold air funnels almost never touch down and are not dangerous. Just kinda fun to watch. So I had a nice treat Sunday afternoon. 

MORE RAINS

The storms were able to squeeze out more locally heavy rain, so some areas are pretty soaked from the showers and storms that started Thursday. Between Friday and Saturday, I collected another inch of rain, making the total here in St. Albans since Thursday evening an impressive 3.8 inches. 

Storm clouds loom over fishing enthusiasts at St. 
Albans Bay, Vermont Sunday afternoon.

I think a few areas a short distance to my north and east have had four or five inches. I noticed some very minor flash flooding around Sheldon Sunday just after an especially intense downpour had passed.

We're near the end of the rainy regime as that pesky upper level low begins to depart. We had quite a few showers around northern Vermont this morning. It was raining at a pretty good clip at around 6:45 am here in St. Albans.

I think those showers will be fewer and further between by this afternoon so you'll be able to get more done outside. 

From there, we have a brighter week with a noticeable warming trend in store. Tuesday will be in the 70s, Wednesday will get close to 80 and by Thursday it should be in the 80s with higher humidity. 

Another cold front appears to be due Friday, so we'll need to watch that for showers and storms.  It might turn briefly cooler, but not chilly by next weekend. 

Long range forecasts, though, suggest any comfortable weather next Saturday or Sunday will be fleeting. If these forecasts are correct, (and that's a big if as forecasts beyond a few days can change dramatically) we could be seeing some awful heat and humidity in a little more than a week from now,

If that happens, I don't know how long it would last or how bad it'll get. But take advantage of the cool weather now to do anything outdoors that would work up a sweat.  

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. 

Dramatic Video Shows Extreme Waves Crashing Into Marshall Islands

Rogue waves crash into a U.S. Army
base in the Marshall Islands. 
Miraculously, nobody was
seriously injured or killed. 

Dramatic video making the rounds shows immense rogue waves crashing into a U.S. military base in the Marshall Islands.  

Judging from the news video that you can find at the bottom of this post, I'm grateful and pleasantly surprised that nobody was killed. 

In the video, you see two people standing outside the door of what looks like some sort of lounge or restaurant. The immense wave crashes in, and the people disappear and the door gets violently smashed in. 

It looks like it hits a woman in the head as she goes under water. The water rushes into the room. Then, just when you think everybody is starting to recover, an even larger wave crashes through the open doorway and the windows.   The power goes out.

Some minor injuries were reported, but unbelievably, nobody was seriously injured. Including the woman who was hit by the door and disappeared under the water in the video.  

The waves caused lots of damage at an important U.S. military base, though. According to ABC News:

"Flooding from the waves inundated one-third of the island of Roe-Namor, located in the Kwajalein Atoll in the northern Marshall Islands, according to the U.S. Army. The U.S. Army Garrison-Kwajalein Atoll base serves as a space and missile defense test range for the U.S. Department of Defense and contains some of the Army's most sophisticated tracking equipment."

ABC continues: 

"Ocean water had washed over the northwest side of the island. Standing water was found in several buildings on the base, such as the dining facility, the chapel and a theater, the Army said, citing an initial aerial damage assessment."

 There was no particular storm to set off the big waves, though Pacific Ocean storms this time of year can make surf higher than it is other times of the year.  Also, no earthquake that would have produced a tsunami.

Instead, wave energy combined to make even bigger blasts of water from the oceans.  

A photo taken at a U.S. Army base in the Marshall Islands
after massive rogue waves swept through. 

Says ABC News:

"Jon Sienkiewicz, chief of the ocean branch for the NOAA Ocean Prediction Center, said the extreme was was much larger than the average size of the waves hitting the island's shores.

'If there are multiple wave sets, then it's possible that the energy can just double in an area from two different set of waves,' Sienkiewicz told ABC News."

The waves probably would have caused havoc and damage on the Marshall Islands even if climate change wasn't a thing. But since sea levels are higher than they used to be, waves can really penetrate onto shore much better, causing even more damage than you'd otherwise get.

The Marshall Islands are in the remote western Pacific Ocean roughly half way between Hawaii and Australia.  

Here's the video from Good Morning America. Click here to watch the video, or if you see the image below, click on that.