Videos Of The Recent Record Vermont Heat, And the Oddly Vigorous Storms They Produced

People enjoy record November warmth on Burlington, Vermont's
waterfront on November 5, 2022.

 As I noted in a previous post, the record November heat wave we just had, and the storms that ended it, were some of the most bizarre weather I've ever seen in Vermont. So I had to do videos.  

The videos aren't all that professional, I confess, but I like to have and share a visual record of what kind of unique weather situations we've been through. Plus some not so unique ones. 

This time, we did have a one of a kind weekend in Vermont, that's for sure. 

The first video is just the pretty clouds the warm weather brought, and people in Burlington, Vermont enjoying their last chance at shorts and t-shirt weather until next spring.

To view the nice weather video, click on this link, or if it's visible on your device, click on the image below to watch on YouTube:

I think the second video is more interesting. It shows the developing storms we had over northwestern Vermont this past Sunday. They were fueled by the record warm temperatures. And, they were fueled, importantly, by moisture and high dew points that have to be some sort of record for November. 

The storms weren't necessarily severe, but they were strong. Most of the visuals in this video were taken in Richmond and South Burlington. However, further north, in Franklin County where I live, several waves of downpours swept through.  A few places, like my place in St. Albans, and in Milton, received a little over two inches of rain. 

The most interesting part of this video is about 1:42 minutes in, where what appears to be a funnel cloud briefly forms over Lake Champlain. I'm not 100 percent sure it was a funnel, but it might have been.

Ethan Moriarty, (@EMoriartyWX on Twitter) who among many other things, is a storm chaser based in western Massachusetts helped me out with this. He suspects what I saw might be a cold air funnel 

Cold air funnels form under showers or relatively weak thunderstorms where the air aloft is especially cold.  These funnels don't usually touch down and tend not to be dangerous. On rare occasions, they do hit the ground and cause some damage.  

 

 I don't think the air at higher levels of the atmosphere over western Vermont was especially cold for November when the possible funnel formed. But the upper air was certainly colder than it would be in the middle of summer. Meanwhile, surface temperatures were summer-like, so the contrast might have been enough to generate a cold air funnel.  

Yes, I know I've been obsessed with this cloud formation during
storms amid record heat over Lake Champlain, Vermont.
That might be a "cold air funnel"

Additionally,,  strong winds blowing from the south up the Champlain Valley might have briefly interacted with winds from another direction beneath or near the heavy shower, causing just enough spin to produce a funnel.. 

Again, from my vantage point, it wasn't clear this thing was spinning or not. It was distant, and rain was partially obscuring the cloud formation. 

In any event, the rest of the weird clouds you see in the storms are either scud which is just scraps of fog being pulled into the storms, or shelf clouds, which mark the front of cool air outflow from showers and storms. 

It looks like some more semi-exciting weather is coming to Vermont in the form of Tropical Storm Nicole remnants Friday night, but that probably won't be as photogenic as Sunday's storms.

Click on this link for the video, if your device doesn't show the image of the video below. Otherwise, click on the image if it's there for you: 

 

California Fire Tornado and Vermont Funnel Cloud Is So 2020

This year is as twisted a time in history as possible, so of course it makes sense that on a single day we had at least one fire tornado in California and a rare funnel cloud in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. 

We'll get into the California tornado first, then the Vermont funnel.  

Rare fire tornado in California
on Saturday

And things kept going this morning, with a rare lightning barrage in San Francisco. We're using that word "rare" in this post a LOT! It's 2020 after all.  

FIRE TORNADO 

The western United States is enduring a record heat wave and a drought. The inevitable result of that is wildfires.  It's so dry and winds are so erratic that we're getting extreme fire behavior out there

Large wildfires sometimes create something called pyrocumulonimbus clouds.   (Say that five times fast!) The heat generated by the wildfires create strong updrafts which create tall, sometimes violent smoky thunderstorms. 

Such was the case in northeastern California on Saturday. 

As Washington Post Meteorologist Matthew Cappucci engagingly explains, that strong pyrocumulonimbus cloud was in an area of wind shear - the wind was changing direction with height. That created a spin. Plus, the atmosphere was primed for updrafts even without the fire.

The updrafts and the changing wind direction with height helped the pyrocumulonimbus cloud to rotate. At times, parts of the rotation tightened and you had tornadoes.

This was a true tornado, not a fire whirl in which the flames get caught in a tight rotation just near the ground. This tornado lowered from the smoky cloud.  It touched down in a fairly remote area, so the actual tornado didn't cause a lot of damage. The wildfire did, of course. 

Fire tornadoes have  happened before, but they are not observed often at all.  If you want a notable example other than yesterday's an area near Redding, California had a massive fire tornado in 2018.

Yesterday's fire tornado in northeastern California is the first known in the United States to prompt a National Weather Service office to issue a tornado warning. 

VERMONT FUNNEL

While all this was going on, Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had it's own twisty excitement.  In this case, it wasn't particularly dangerous, but not something you see in Green Mountain State,  that's for sure.

Like in the fire tornado above, wind shear played a large role in creating the Northeast Kingdom funnel cloud.  Winds were coming from the east at elevations below 10,000 feet, and from the west at elevations above 10,000 feet or so. 

The air flow also tended to converge in the area where the funnel formed, which encouraged its development.

Funnel cloud near Newport, Vermont Saturday. Photo
by Bob Minnie 

There was enough instability in the air to create some showers and thunderstorms, as a pocket of cold air aloft helped clouds billow upward into storms. 

 That chilly air aloft and the spin created what is known as a "cold air funnel" that caused that stir around Newport and Lake Willoughby Saturday evening. 

There were no tornado or severe storm warnings as the parent storm that spawned the funnel wasn't severe. Plus, cold air funnels don't usually make it all the way to the ground.  On some occasions they do and can cause damage, but in this case, the funnel stayed aloft. 

SAN FRANCISCO'S TURN

Cool, stable air created by the chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean tend to help squelch thunderstorms around the San Francisco Bay Area, so they don't see many summer lightning storms. 

But the extreme heat in California, and I think warmer than normal Pacific Ocean water temperatures, helped create a lightning barrage early this morning in the Bay Area.  

Here's that word again: Rare.  

Storms that created funnel clouds over 
Vermont's Northeast Kingdom weakened
as they moved westward, causing this 
fiery sunset in St. Albans, Vermont

Rare severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for much of the central coast of California this morning because of gusty winds associated with the storms.  

The storms didn't contain much rain, so the lightning was particularly dangerous because it could set off more wildfires. The strong, gusty winds associated with the storms didn't help. 

This was just happening as I wrote this, so I'm unsure yet if these storms sparked any wildfires.

Like I said, if you wanted a bizarre year, 2020 is it, for sure!