Vermont weather geek's hodgepodge of weather and climate news and opinion. Often Vermont focused, but taking a national and global approach, with sometimes an appropriate dash of fun, outrage, cynicism and compassion.
Homes burn in San Juan Capistrano during southern California wildfires that broke out on Friday
Some of you might be surprised to hear of wildfires in southern California. Didn't it just rain there?
Well yes, it did, sort of. But the heaviest rain was well south of Los Angeles. The city itself received just 0.06 on October 12. Most places north of L.A. didn't receive any rain at all..
So when the hot, dry Santa Any winds started blasting through the mountains and canyons of southern California Friday, so did the fires.
"Firefighters are battling blazes in San Clemente, Malibu and Azusa. While forward progress has stopped with the Peak Fire in Azusa, the Norte Fire in Orange County and the Bryson Fire in Malibu have forced evacuations."
The Norte fire destroyed six homes in San Juan Capistrano and forced evacuations there and in nearby San Clemente. Two firefighters were injured.
The area was ripe for fires. The thick underbrush around the area hadn't burned since 1950.
Though hot, dry, windy weather continued on Saturday, this will thankfully be a relatively short-lived bout with those kinds of conditions.
The weather will be calmer and somewhat more humid starting today. Showers are forecast in central and southern California Wednesday and Thursday, including in areas that received no rainfall last week.
Let's hope that's the start of an El Nino rainy season, one that could prematurely and thankfully squelche southern California's autumn fire season.
"Skybox," a house on the shore in Rondanthe, North Carolina that has been teetering for days, finally collapsed into the waves Friday evening. Photo via Facebook Wes Snyder Photography.
On Thursday, I told you seven houses fell into the Atlantic Oceanat Buxton, North Carolina, thanks to big swells created by now-former hurricanes Humberto and Imelda.
Later on Thursday, an eighth house fell in. Like many of the other homes, this one was widely caught on video.
One video, by Brett Barley I found to be quite striking. It really brings home the sense of loss and sadness in the Outer Banks as climate change teams up with a naturally unstable barrier island to create a slow motion disaster.
Skybox had been teetering for days, and local residents were impressed by it resilience, despite being battered by hurricane swells for days.
Several other houses look ready to go in the inevitable next hurricane or nor'easter
The collapses over the past five years are often taking place under clear, balmy skies. Gorgeous weather, except for the falling houses. It's often been distant storms hurling powerful swells into the Outer Banks that have caused the destruction.
In Barley's video, you can see a large crowd had gathered just behind a big debris field left by the other homes that fell to the waves. It was a somber crowd, without the kinds of hoots and hollers you get the people watch other dramatic moments.
"The majority of these homes were built buy locales, they are maintained by locals, the visitors who come and stay in them support the local economy. They are more than 'just someone's rental property.' They are a part of this community regardless of who owns it.
They have helped put food on the table for may families here over and and over again. They have made memories for those who came and stay.... weddings, birthdays, honeymoons, family vacations, etc. They are part of the memories of those who live here and work/play amongst the beach and neighborhoods they make up."
Much like the case of Skybox, people root for other clearly doomed houses. Part of us always want to deny the inevitable.
When the house in Barley's video first collapses, it bumps in a large green house next door, which is also being battered by the swells from the two distant hurricanes. You can see the green house is in rough shape, and could go at any time. The porches are askew, and you can detect a slight lean toward the ocean. One of the main pilings is badly cracked.
Comparison photo showing homes in Buxton, North Carolina a decade ago and this week. The erosion has been incredible. Photo via Facebook, Edward Sneed.
Meanwhile the house that collapsed in the video slowly breaks apart. The first floor was partially crushed in the immediate crash, and the waves take apart the rest of the lower walls. The second floor briefly stays intact, which is what we've seen in previous collapse videos from the Outer Banks.
The video lingers on how pieces of somebody's life come apart with each wave. A striped couch and matching chairs suddenly bob in the waves. Then a refrigerator floats out of the house
As the house is slowly disintegrates, it starts out to the left of the green house, and the waves take it front of that green house, and finally leave the wreckage to the right of the green house. The collapsed house never really hits the green house after the initial bump.
But sure enough, we'll one day, probably soon, see video of the green house collapsing, or the wreckage of it floating in the surf.
The collapsed houses are an enormous mess, of course. The debris - wood, broken glass, nails, potentially toxic insulation and other materials, spread along for miles of beach.
Crews were moving in fast to remove the wreckage, but the waves are faster. All the Outer Banks collapse videos this week show debris spreading far and wide.
I've seen a lot of talk about people being dumb to build houses right on the water. But the houses that just collapsed in North Carolina actually used to be at least a block or two inland from the beach.
One person who commented on Barley's videosaid they rented the house that collapsed a year ago. They said at the time, the house seemed quite stable, despite a strong storm they experiences while staying there.
Rising sea levels inevitably change the shape of the seacoast, and this is what you get.
In North Carolina, a2024 report stated that 750 of nearly 8,800 oceanfront structures are at riskfrom erosion. Dealing with this is expensive. Reinforcing the shore with dredged sand or rock is expensive. So is using state or federal funds to buy out the threatened homes and demolish them before the waves do.
We're going to see more and more of this, not just in North Carolina, but up and down the East Coast as those sea levels rise and storms get more intense with climate change. Meanwhile, people are still flocking to the seacoast.
This is going to be part of a very costly depressing future.
VIDEO
Video of a house collapsing into the water Thursday in Buxton, North Carolina and then gradually disintegrating . Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.
Unfortunately, as expected, destructive wildfires broke out in southern California Wednesday and they continued today.
The worst fears were realized in southern California Wednesday when an explosive wildfire blasted through Camarillo, California, destroying dozens of homes.
Wildfires had been predicted, as strong Santa Ana winds propelled 60 mph gusts through canyons and dropped humidity levels to rock bottom levels.
It was a scene of chaos in Camarillo, as the fire hopscotched through neighborhood after neighborhood. Embers flying in the gales would set some houses on fire, while others next door remained unscathed.
Given the chaotic evacuations from the rapidly advancing fire. The fire was moving so fast that crews had torush people into fire engines to get them away from the blaze. Fire victims said they had to flee so hastily that they didn't even have time to grab medication and important papers.
I'm surprised that so far, we have reports of only two injuries among residents. Both had smoke inhalation, and were taken to hospitals where they are expected to recover.
In all, 14,000 people have been evacuated because of the wildfire.
During a Thursday morning aerial survey, KABC reporter Scott Reiff said he counted 83 homes destroyed by the fire.He might have missed some, and others might have been destroyed after he took his inventory.
At last report, 24 hours after the fire started, it was still listed as zero percent contained.
Santa Ana winds are still gusty today, though not as intense as they were on Thursday. The humidity is still really low, too, so fires are spreading readily. The danger is expected to taper off some on Friday and weak, moist onshore winds are expectedin southern California over the weekend and early next week.
The light winds and higher humidity should help firefighters make some gains against the wildfires. However, more strong, dry Santa Ana winds are possible next Wednesday and Thursday.
EAST
Fires continued to burn in the eastern United States, too, but obviously not as severely as in California.
One of the worst fires is in Jackson Township, New Jersey. The fire forced the evacuation of 25 threatened homes, but firefighters managed to protect the houses and the residents were allowed to move back in Wednesday night.
Another wildfire broke out Thursday in a Philadelphia suburb and at last report it was threatening about 50 homes.
Another wildfire burned for a fourth day near Blue Mountain, Pennsylvania.
News update from the morning after today.Click on this linkto view, or if you see the image below, click on that.
Next video has mostly aerial views that give you a sense of how widespread the destruction is. Again, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that:
Homes damaged by flooding back in July in Cambridge, Vermont being flooded again on Tuesday. How many floods like this can people take before they give up?
Given the serious flooding we had this week, I have to wonder if some Vermonters will soon join the ranks of those climate refugees. Monday's flood was an agonizing setback.
As climate-related disasters swirled around the United States and the world, Vermont felt at least temporarily safe from all that.
We seemed to blissfully escape the scary, dangerous stuff as the decade of the 2020s opened.
Sure, we had our extremes. Record heat, some droughts, some wind storms hit in 2020, 2021 and for most of 2022. But it wasn't anything to get too worked up about. We felt safe.
But I had a feeling the other shoe would drop. And it definitely has in the past 12 months.
A storm onDecember 23, 2022 brought historic wind guststhat caused extensive damage through wide swaths of Vermont. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington recorded a wind gust of 70 mph, its second highest gust on record. Power was cut to more than 70,000 homes and businesses.
Flooding also closed roads and damaged property. Then a flash freeze and mini-blizzard halted travel on Vermont roads that evening.
On May 18 of this year, after what had been a remarkably warm spring that prematurely allowed crops and blossoms to sprout,a hard freeze hit. The one-night frost decimated much of Vermont's apple and strawberry crops, and caused extensive damage in the vineyards of the state's burgeoning wine industry.
Those two events weren't primarily flood disasters, but they were unsettling.
Then the summer floods hit. As we know, the worst of it hit on July 10 and 11with communities from Ludlow to Barre and Montpelier to Johnson suffering devastating blows.
This wasn't a one shot deal either, Repeated localized flash floods from the end of June into mid-Augusts expanded the destruction.
Each of these events resulted in disaster declarations for different parts of Vermont. I have a feeling this latest storm will also put the Green Mountain State under a disaster declaration.
SO NOW WHAT?
Although the storms have varied, flooding is the biggest risk here in Vermont. One has to wonder how much more people can take, Some homeowner and business owners have now suffered damage twice in five months.
Monday night's flood crest of 17.58 feet on the Lamoille River in Johnson meanshalf of the top 10 worst floodsthere have occurred just since 2011.
Who would want to deal with that?
We are already seeing signs that the repeated floods are eroding the sense of community as much as they eroded riverbanks and streets. After being inundated several times, owners of the grocery store in Johnson opted not to reopen the business, which had five or six feet of water inside it on July 10-11. (At last report, another brave business person might open a store in that location, we'll see).
WPTZ-TV last night aired an interview with two women whose house in Cambridge was trashed in the July flood. They were almost done fixing things when the latest flood damaged their home again. They looked tired. The two said they are staying in Cambridge. But will all their neighbors do the same?
I also wonder how residents and businesses owners in communities like Ludlow, Barre, Montpelier and Waterbury will keep sticking it out with the threat of more and more frequent, destructive floods.
If people abandon these communities, it would be part of a national, and probably worldwide trend, judging from that report about 3.2 million Americans moving to new locations due to climate disasters.
"Many of those areas are in parts of the country that also have seen a surge of migration during the past two decades, including Sun Belt states such as Florida and Texas. Such communities risk an economic downward spiral as population loss causes a decline in property values and local services, the group found."
Many of our nicest, most cohesive towns and small cities are in flood plains. Which makes the risk of people abandoning Vermont town centers even more fraught than in other areas. That downward economic spiral CBS mentioned could hit all of our wallets here in the Green Mountain State.
One of Vermont's signature images is its tight knit towns and relative lack of commercial sprawl. It's one of the main reasonlots of tourists are drawn to the state.
Unfortunately, many of these beautiful old towns and small cities were built in flood plains. When they were built, their location was one of necessity, as the rivers helped supply power and served as commercial routes.
These towns generally have stopped needing rivers for these purposes long ago. So is the repeated floods brought on by climate change worth the risk?
Likely channeling all of us, Gov. Phil Scott during his press conferences about the latest flood used words like "gut punch" and "heartbreaking." How many gut punches can people endure before they give up on their downtown/flood plain businesses and homes?
We're going to find out in the coming years and decades, and the end result might not be pretty. As these floods keep coming, Vermont will become a much less familiar place.
To me, anyway, as a lifelong Vermonter, that would be a tragedy.
