Cold Storm Departs. Much Weaker Cold Storm Arrives Today But Summer Is Around The Corner!

Yes, that was snow gleaming at the summit of Mount
Mansfield, Vermont Saturday after a cold storm blew through

That storm yesterday really left its mark on New England with mountain snows and wind and rain and chilly temperatures reminiscent of March in some places. 

Here in Vermont, the weather got nice, if chilly. The afternoon sky lit up blue, with patchy, cold-looking stratocumulus clouds. 

The tippy top of Mount Mansfield gleamed white with new snow. Yes, on May 30. Nice contrast between the green slopes just below the snow. 

The weather wasn't so nice in so nice in eastern New England. The storm evolved into a nor'easter,, with many communities in eastern Massachusetts never getting above 50 degrees and wind gusts exceeding 50 mph. Hull, Massachusetts reached 60 mph. 

Adding to the drama, a meteor exploded over Cape Cod Bay somewhere between Boston and Provincetown Saturday afternoon, creating a loud boom and some shaking

Back here in Vermont, rainfall was more generous than predicted. Most places north and east of Interstate 89 had more than an inch of rain. Many towns in that wet region has more than 1.5 inches of rain. The town of Morgan was drenched with .2.19 inches of rain. Westfield had 1.9 inches.  

More rain is in the forecast, but nothing like we saw Friday night and early Saturday. 

TODAY

Skies clouded up overnight, preventing temperatures from getting cold enough for a frost. The clouds are from the next batch of showers and cold air aloft diving down through Quebec toward us. 

Unlike in eastern New England, skies cleared during the
late morning to reveal a delightfully sunny, breezy, 
cool afternoon to enjoy the outdoors,

This one is much weaker than the small-sized but big powerhouse we dealt with Friday night. So we'll see much less rain.  

Most places will only see 0.1 to 0.2 inches of rain, so this is only a slight wetting compared to what we saw Friday night. 

A few places will get a little more, because there's a chance a thunderstorm or two could be embedded within the mess of showers heading our way. 

If some thunderstorms get going, a few might  have pea sized hail since the air high above us is so cold. 

As far as timing goes, we already had a few light showers going on north as of 9 a.m. There will be a rising chance of showers north, spreading south through the day. The greatest chances of getting wet will probably is between 4 and 8 p.m., but of course there's chances of rain before and after those hours. 

Since its a cold system, it'll be cool for the season again today with highs in the 60s.

REST OF THE WEEK

We will slowly emerge from this cool spell and welcome back early summer.  Some potential complications that would keep us chilly longer are starting to seem less and less likely. 

Monday will probably start off cloudy, but clear up as temperatures rise only into the 60s, with maybe a spot 70 in warmer valleys far south and upper 50s in hilly terrain north. That's still a little cool as we start off June, but it's nothing incredible. 

The rest of the week looks pretty sunny and really nice. Highs should be near 70 Tuesday, well into the 70s Wednesday and probably into the 80s by Thursday. 

Cold fronts coming along toward next weekend look like they'll lack the oomph of the ones we saw in May, So generally warm weather will get June off to a great start, 

Not On My Bingo Card: Ice Fishing Can Lead To Dangerous Methane Fires

Ice fishing shanties on Harriman Reservoir near 
Wilmington, Vermont. Methane escaping through
a hole in the ice created by an auger is believed
to have contributed to a flash fire that burned
a father and his two daughters recently on the lake. 

We know how long term methane emissions can be dangerous. 

It's a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so it's contributing to climate change in a serious way. 

But it turns out methane can pose a more immediate danger.  To, believe it or not, people out on frozen lakes enjoying a day of ice fishing. 

 A terrible incident happened in southern Vermont on February 1, proves the rare but dangerous phenomenon. 

A father and his two daughters went out onto frozen Harriman Reservoir in far southern Vermont for a day of ice fishing. A propane-fueled heating device of some sort warmed their ice shanty. 

Then, horror struck. 

A flash fire erupted inside the shanty, burning the dad and the two daughters. Police said there might have been a defect with the heater, but another factor might well have contributed. Methane bubbling up from rotting leaves at the bottom of Harriman Reservoir became trapped under the ice. 

The hole in the ice the family created inside the shanty allowed the methane to escape and build up inside that shanty. The heater then ignited it. 

The man and two girls were taken to a hospital in Brattleboro, Vermont, and then transferred to a Boston hospital for treatment.  Reports are the three are recovering, but we don't know how long that recovery will take. 

This apparently isn't the first time methane seeping from Harriman Reservoir has caused methane fires. Per the Brattleboro Reformer:

"Police contacted a witness who had provided the injured people a ride off the ice to a parked vehicle following the incident. They 'learned that this person had witnessed several instances where pockets of methane released through holes in the ice surface were ignited and burned, the (Wilmington, Vermont) news release states.

"During the investigation, police also received several phone calls from people providing information about other incidents involving flash burns of methane released through holes in the ice.

'These incidents were reportedly witnessed over the last several years during the ice fishing seasons,' the news release states. 'These incidents had not been reported to the Wilmington Police Department until after this tragic accident had occurred and an investigation was started."

Police said it's not worth it to drill a hole in the ice on Harriman Reservoir and wait to let methane disperse because shifting ice can keep methane billowing out of an ice hole.  Authorities advised people to not bring ignition sources near ice fishing holes and to be especially careful not to do so inside fishing shanties. 

I haven't figured out yet if the methane releases from Harriman Reservoir are unique to that body of water or whether it occurs elsewhere and if so, how often.

You do see methane bubbles frozen or encased in lake ice from time to time. Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada sometimes draws tourists who want a view of some unique methane bubbles stacked in the ice covering the lake in late winter. 

Some stunning photos were also taken of methane bubbles frozen within the ice on Lake Baikal in Siberia back in 2022. The lake is the world's deepest, and has a large storehouse of methane due to rotting organic material at its bottom.  

I can't imagine that all lakes are ticking time bombs for ice fishing enthusiasts. But I guess you need to be extra careful while trying to stay warm in an ice shanty. You never know where methane lurks. 

I hope that family victimized by the Harriman Reservoir methane in southern Vermont have a speedy and full recovery.  

Proof That You Can't Bomb A Tornado Out Of Existence

The moment last Saturday when a Tennessee tornado 
struck an electrical substation, causing a massive 
explosion. The explosion did not really disrupt the
tornado circulation, and it went on to cause more damage

 Full disclosure: I have mixed emotions watching tornado videos. 

On the one hand, a as a weather geek, those damn things are so fascinating. Each one is so different. The violence, and yes, sometimes the beauty is something to behold.  

On the other hand, tornadoes obviously kill people. So there's a sense of guilt when watching a tornado video, knowing the storm ended the lives of innocent people caught in the path of these twisters.

That disclaimer aside, one of the most interesting tornado videos I've seen in ages was from this past Saturday in Tennessee.

One of the strongest tornadoes - one that killed three people - scored a direct hit on a Nashville Electric Service substation.  Video of the event is at the bottom of this post. 

When it hit the substation, it caused an explosion that caused a big orange fireball to erupt inside the tornado. Smoke from the explosion appears to get sucked into the tornado, but at the same time, you lose sight of the tornado's funnel.

Did the explosion weaken or even at least temporarily short-circuit the tornado? Unfortunately, the answer is no. 

After hitting the substation, the tornado continued on with its path of destruction.  The fact that the funnel disappeared doesn't mean the twister went away, too. 

As the Washington Post explains, tornadoes can be invisible.

"The reason we can see a tornado is due to moisture, which produces a 'condensation funnel.' Water vapor the gas form of water is invisible - until it condenses and forms a cloud droplet. That happens when the tornado's low pressure expands and cools the air (and the water in it) to the point of condensation - described by meteorologists as the 'dew point.'"

Many tornadoes, especially in the drier Plains states, don't have a condensation funnel. Or at least don't have one that reaches the ground. The air is dry enough so the tornado doesn't form that condensation funnel, which is basically a cloud. 

Even though the visible funnel isn't touching the ground, the tornado will still damage or destroy any  house or other building that it encounters. 

In Tennessee, the air was wet enough so that when the tornado formed, the condensation funnel became visible. Then the explosion at the Nashville Electric Service substation hit.  The flames from the explosion heated the air within the tornado, making the temperatures rise above the that dew point. 

That made the condensation funnel disappear.  We'll let the Washington Post explain the next step:

"And for a moment, viral video captures footage of the tornado's vortex appearing to disappears the fireball explodes. But it doesn't, in reality.

Tornadoes themselves are technically, invisible. The definition of a tornado is just a 'rapidly rotating column of air extending vertically from the surface to the base of a cumuliform cloud,' according to the American Meteorological Society. And you can't see air."

The heat released by the fireball made that condensation funnel go poof. You couldn't see it anymore. But the tornado continued to spin violently. 

Sure, the explosion might have briefly disrupted the very bottom of the tornado circulation. If there was a house immediately next in line from the electrical substation, it might not have suffered as much damage as it would have had there been no explosion. 

But the overall tornado circulation remained intact, and the very bottom of it quickly regained its footing, do the twister continued on with its path of destruction. 

You would need a huge explosion to disrupt a tornado. You'd basically have to blow up the entire parent thunderstorm. And the heat released by a massive explosion could make the updrafts in the thunderstorm even more intense, worsening a tornado or other dangerous weather associated with the storm. 

The tornado gods and goddesses at the National Severe Storms Laboratory answer the "Can we blow up a tornado" question for us: 

"No one has tried to disrupt the the tornado because the methods to do so could likely cause even more damage than the tornado. Detonating a nuclear bomb, for example, to disrupt a tornado would be even more deadly and destructive than the tornado itself. Lesser tactics (like deploying huge piles of dry ice or smaller conventional weaponry) would be too hard to get into the right place fast enough, and would likely not have enough impact to affect the tornado much anyway."

So we're stuck with the only method of surviving a tornado: Getting out of its way. That means fleeing to a storm shelter or basement. Or, failing that, getting into an interior room without any windows, putting on a bicycle or motorcycle helmet, perhaps surrounding yourself with mattresses and hoping for the best. 

And don't even get me started on the idea of blowing up hurricanes out of existence. Even a weak tropical storms would be harder to murder than a supercell thunderstorm with a tornado.

In 2019, during his presidential administration, Donald Trump, while being briefed by a meteorological expert,  ridiculously said he wanted to blow up hurricanes to end them. 

According to Axios, the person giving the brief. politely said something to the effect of, "Sir, we'll look into that. Which is the exact equivalent of my husband telling me "Yes, dear." when I say something completely off the rails, which I tend to do.

The bottom line is, we have enough trouble waging war against our geopolitical enemies. Weather can be even a more formidable opponent.

Next: Video of the tornado and explosion:

In the video below, taken from a traffic cam,  you see power flashes for the first 11 or so seconds of the tornado footage. Those are power lines and transformers being destroyed by the twister. Then you see the big explosion.  After the explosion ends, you can see the tornado continuing to move on, smoke from the explosion entrained in its circulation. 

Judging by the power flashes of more power lines and transformers being destroyed the tornado after the explosion, you can tell it really lost none of its power.

To watch the video, click on this link, or if you see the image below, click on that.