"Gorilla Hail" Has Been Pounding The U.S. This Year, And It's Likely More Common Than Previously Thought

Giant hail in Wisconsin this past April.

It's been another rough year for hail storms in the United States. There's been lots of them and a few of them have been real standouts. 

Probably the most newsworthy and perhaps most extreme was the one that hit Springfield, Missouri and nearby areas on April 28. 

Baseball to softball sized hail laid wasted to probably thousands of cars. Sadly, an emu died from the hail at Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield. Zoo workers tried their damndest to get all the zoo animals under cover. 

An emu's natural instinct is to lie down and take cover, and this emu, a 21 year old female named Adam, couldn't be coaxed indoors and died when a huge hailstone landed on his head. 

Back on March 10, a supercell that produced a destructive tornado in Kankakee, Illinois also produced immense hail that might have broken the record for the largest hailstone in Illinois history. It measured 6.616 inches in diameter and weighed 1.22 pounds. In other words, it was a little larger than a grapefruit. 

Officials are verifying those measurements before declaring it a record holder. In any event huge hailstones damaged homes in Kankakee that were never touched by the tornado.

The tornado, with maximum winds of 150 people killed three people. 

Even here in Vermont, we managed to see some rare or us golf ball sized hail on April 16 when a supercell thunderstorm crossed west to east across central Vermont. The supercell is the one that ultimately produced a brief tornado in Williamstown. 

GORILLA HAIL

Reed Timmer, one of the more popular and prolific storm chasers out there, coined the term "gorilla hail" to describe especially ferocious hailstorms with especially huge hailstones. 

Gorilla hail is generally defined as hailstones with a diameter of at least two inches, which is about the size of a lime.

Big hailstones are expensive. Replacing a hail-damaged roof can cost $15,000 or more, though homeowners;' insurance usually covers that. (On that note, a spoiler:  Look for an upcoming piece on how State Farm is allegedly doing everything they can to not pay for hail damaged roofs).

Fixing a hail-damaged vehicle can cost several thousand dollars, but if the damage is severe enough, insurers will just total the car.  

Hail costs an estimated $15 billion in damage to homes, buildings, vehicles and crops each year in the U.S. 

Hail-prone cities and their surrounding suburbs continue to expand, providing more targets for potential gorilla hail. That's helping to cause hail costs to spiral upward. 

NOT SO RARE?

It seemed fortunate that "gorilla hail," with stones the size of baseballs, softballs, grapefruit or even worse, was considered relatively rare. But maybe not. 

New research in recent years suggest "gorilla hail" has always been more common than we thought. And super giant hail might be becoming more frequent. 

It was thought that hail stones six inches in diameter or greater were exceedingly rare. But new research suggests maybe those gargantuan icy meteors aren't quite as rare as we thought.  

Per Washington Post:

"'I think six inches plus is happening on a yearly basis,' said Victor Gensini, a professor at Northern Illinois University, in a recent interview. "I think it's a matter of who's finding it, who's looking for it. When you're actually out there looking for it, four-plus-inch hail is maybe not that rare."

Most of these giant hailstones are happening in fairly remote areas, where people aren't around to observe them before they melt. Or, since such large hail is so dangerous, and maybe accompanied by ferocious, damaging winds or even tornadoes, people who would otherwise find them are wisely hunkering down in basements and storm shelters.

Besides, most big hail stones shatter upon impact. To find these hail stones, you need a road that happens to lead where the biggest hail stones landed, Gensini said. Most hail falls over open fields. Good luck finding the biggest stones before they start to melt. 

Thunderstorms that produce gargantuan hail can't actually have too much water in therm. Storms with incredible amounts of rain tend not to produce the biggest hail. Bigger hail also seems to fall when a small storm merges with a large supercell that is already producing hail.

The bad news from all this research is that future storms might produce bigger hail, thanks, once again, to climate change. 

The Washington Post tells us:

"Gensini published a paper in 2024 that suggests less hail will occur overall, ut there will be more instances of giant hail. Why? Warming temperatures in the lower atmosphere will melt some of the small hailstones. Yet big stones fall fast enough through the warmer lower atmosphere that they have little time to melt. And with more thunderstorm fuel overall thanks to a warming world, there could be more of them."

We will probably get more and more new reports of giant hail simply from better technology. At least 90 percent of hailstones shatter or break on impact, and the rest start to melt immediately.  

Researchers are starting to use photogrammetry, a technique that uses trigonometry to estimate the sizeof objects caught on camera. (And you thought there was no use for trigonometry when you were back in high school!)

A hail specialist at Penn State used the technique to estimate the size of a gorilla hailstone that fell on an Argentinian with in 2018.  He found the hailstone to be 7.4 to 9.3 inches in diameter. A woman found a 7.1 inch diameter hailstone just after the storm ended, collaborating the photogrammetry. The woman's hailstone was a bit smaller as it had already started to melt.

Gorilla hail is terrifying and incredibly destructive. You don't want to get caught in any of these storm. Here's hoping you don't experience one of those storms! 

  

 

 

 

 

How Shady Social Media Influencers Uses Scary, False Weather Forecasts For Profit

A computer forecast issued on January 23 indicated New
England would be blasted by a historic nor'easter
tonight and tomorrow, February 2/3. Obviously this
will not happen and we will have calm weather instead.
But social media weather "influencers" are using
these scary but false long range forecasts to
scare and mislead the public for fun and profit. 

 That stupid groundhog in Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil, supposedly saw his shadow this morning, and that allegedly means six more weeks of winter. 

The whole thing is silly of course. First of all, up here in Vermont, we're going to have six more weeks of winter no matter what any rodent has to say. And we know a groundhog can't forecast the weather. 

Punxsutawney Phil is a fun little tradition, but that's about it. 

Speaking of long range forecasts, the computer models that forecast two weeks or more in advance have become a problem. 

There's nothing really wrong with the computer models. It's actually how social media weather "influencers" use them to frighten the public to enhance clicks and revenue. 

On social media, I've seen so many dark warnings of storms or cold waves of the century  this year already that if I had a penny for each one, I'd be lounging in my expensive tropical island retreat by now. 

Sadly, if you want to make money online, you scare people. Let's lay the whole scam out:

THE COMPUTER MODELS 

This morning's run of the same model has no storm at 
all in New England. Perhaps the January 23 forecast
was sort of picking up on that storm you see in this 
forecast east of Labrador. On line weather
"influencers" use scary, inaccurate long range
forecasters to scare people for clicks and revenue

If you look at these models, like the American or European that meteorologists refer to, you'll see a string of forecast maps that show storms and fronts and whatnot crisscrossing the U.S., or whatever map location you're looking at. These computer forecasts typically forecast for up to two weeks out. 

The forecast maps in these models for the next couple of days are pretty good, but then they get less and less accurate as you get further and further into the future.

The maps for a week or more into the future should be taken with a big grain of salt.  The specifics are always wrong. The long range forecasts can give you a general idea of the trend in the weather,  but the can't handle things like the placement and strength of storms.  

For example, I've been saying lately in this here blog thingy that we'll have generally cold weather until mid-February, then some sort of change might be in the works. I'm being purposefully vague. 

The computer models have been consistently saying the first half of February will be generally chilly. But future nor'easters and cold fronts a week or more beyond the date the forecast is issued appear and disappearlike puffs of snow in a chilly February breeze. 

A classic example:  On January 23, I could have frightened the pants off of you with an American model forecast that showed what practically looked like the worst, biggest nor'easter EVER in New England that would hit tonight and tomorrow (February 2-3)

The next run of the American model a few hours later on January 23 didn't have much of anything in New England. Since then, the computer models have not been forecasting anything particularly scary around here. 

Sure enough, instead of the Storm of the Century tonight, we're going to have basic normal, boring early February weather.  It'll get down to near 0 degrees tonight with light winds. Tomorrow will be generally sunny and seasonable (highs in the 20s) with light winds. 

So much for most destructive nor'easter in memory. 

 It looks like the computer models on January 23 did manage to sniff out a storm two weeks in advance. But at such a long range, it was way off on location, strength and orientation of the system.  It was probably the nor'easter that hit North Carolina over the weekend. Which is now the nor'easter that tonight will be somewhere east of Labrador, not over New England. 

The long range models sometimes spit out scenarios a week or two down the road that are virtually meteorologically impossible. It's a case of garbage in, garbage out.  They'll predict a storm in the Bahamas that ends up in New York a week later. Or a hurricane that impossibly strengthens over Pennsylvania. The computer models don't have a lot of information to work with in their predictions for something like 10 days from now. So you get off the charts forecasts.

THE HARM

Those boffo, bizarre long range forecasts would just be a source of weird harmless entertainment for strange weather geeks like me. Except now, some of us are putting these horrifying forecasts online for the public to be, well  horrified by. 

Here's an example. North Carolina, and many other areas of the South have had a rough winter so far. North Carolina had a bunch of freezing rain on January 25-26, stopping road travel in parts of the state and cutting power to many. Then, this past weekend, a nor'easter dumped up to 17 inches of snow in eastern parts of the state. That's an area where it's kind of shocking to receive two inches. 

North Carolinians can be forgiven if they desperately want February to turn out to be sunny, warm and pleasant. 

Well, along comes a Facebook account which I won't name that gives us a forecast for insane amounts of snow during the first half of February in North Carolina and elsewhere.  

This forecast has central North Carolina receiving about four and a half feet of snow over the next couple of weeks. Under this scenario, Atlanta, Georgia would receive three feet or so, and snow would once again dust the ground in places like northern Florida and New Orleans. 

The person who posted this wild forecast wrote, "Definitely not my forecast but when fantasy snow keeps showing up there is probably a reason why."

Yeah, the reason was a bad computer run.  This dude needs to just shut up. 

By the way, I've looked up the seven day National Weather Service forecast for Raleigh, North Carolina. Other than a little bit of light rain and perhaps a thin scrim of snow Wednesday and Wednesday night, no stormy weather is in the forecast for at least the next seven days. 

I'm picking on this one particular social media post with the epic North Carolina snow, but there are zillions of them out there. On YouTube, the headline will be "MAJOR STORMS COMING" with AI images of destroyed cities. Then when you click into the video, the narrator finds ways to hype routine weather. 

Not only do these weird, extreme forecasts scare people, it makes the public lose confidence in meteorologists and weather forecasting in general. Maybe this type of scaremongering is feeding the conspiracy theories that somebody is trying to "control the weather" somehow. 

It also encourages the "cry wolf" syndrome. People see so many forecasts of impending doom that turn out to be fabricated. Then, when a bonafide major weather threats finally arrive, people just say, 'Meh, another false alarm.' These false alarms can endanger lives.  

My rants on this aren't going to stop the fear forecasts on line. There's too much money, and too few morals involved.  

But the next time you see a forecast that says your community will be destroyed by the Storm Of The Century in two weeks, relax. Take a deep breath. Find a reliable weather source like the National Weather Service or your local television meteorologist, and just take their word for what's going to happen. 

 

Long Cold Spell Settles Into Vermont After Our Icy Storm

In this map, the dotted red lines over Greenland
and northern Canada represent comparatively 
warm air squashing colder air southward
into souther Canada and the northern United
States. The solid lines show the general 
air flow that is roughly northwest to
southeast towards us. This map is a prediction
for early January. Click on the map to 
make it bigger and easier to see.

 We're done with our ice storm here in Vermont. we're back to our regularly scheduled cold winter weather. 

The gusty overnight winds materialized, which caused new spikes in power outages overnight, but as of this morning, things are back under control. A little over 100 homes and businesses were still without power in eastern Vermont as of 8:30 a.m.

Now, it's going to just stay cold and rather dry for a long time. The cause of this upcoming frigid, bland weather pattern takes us to Greenland. And northern Canada. 

Yes, Greenland again. Or at least the air flow over the top of this huge, frigid pile of ice in the Arctic.  

It's called the Greenland block or negative Arctic oscillation. Basically. a huge, balmy northward bulge in the jet stream, or high pressure oozes over Greenland, and often continues into northern Canada. That's what's happening now. 

The high pressure up in the Arctic means they'll have oddly warm weather. At least toasty by their winter standards. The bitter cold of the Arctic under a negative Arctic oscillation gets squashed southward into southern Canada and the northern United States. 

Sometimes. this negative Arctic oscillation is accompanied by a separate northward bulge in the jet stream over Alaska. This creates a jet stream that originates in Siberia, then races southward through central Canada into the United States. That would delivery horribly unwanted packages of extreme, perhaps record cold to our neck of the woods.   

The incredible, record cold in Vermont we saw in January, 1970 and December, 1989 was brought to us by this nasty, Siberian pattern. 

However, we're in luck this time. Instead of the northern bulge in the jet stream over Alaska, there's a bit of a southward dip up there. We'll still be cold, because, remember, the cold Canadian air that usually hangs out in the high Arctic has been squashed southward to where we live. But the developing weather pattern won't give us access to that awful, gelid air from Siberia.

The end result will be a steady diet of colder than normal weather for us in Vermont. It means we'll frequently have days with highs in the teens to low 20s. Overnights on some nights will be near zero. But at least we should at least mostly avoid those old fashioned, terrible nights when we suffer in temperatures down in the 20s and 30s below. 

Thank gawd for small wins. 

There might be some brief squirts of slightly milder air ahead of some of the relentless parade of cold fronts. But those mild moments only mean seasonably chilly air. The bottom line is we should prepare ourselves for a nippy era of boring weather for the opening days of the New Year. 

These negative Arctic oscillation episodes tend to get "stuck," meaning that they don't go away easily. So we could be trapped in this cold weather for perhaps two weeks. Maybe more. Sometimes these patterns can last a month or more. 

Sometimes, this weather pattern can also mean a lot of snow for us. But that usually happens when there's a northward bulge in the jet stream in Alaska. The jet stream plunges south toward the Gulf of Mexico, picks up moisture, then goes up the East Coast as nor'easters. 

But we don't have that northward bulge in the jet stream in Alaska. So, we'll have a roughly northwest to southeast weather pattern. A  series of weak weather systems that would come through every couple of days, throwing bursts of light snow and flurries at us. 

Usually, this setup does give the mountains unspectacular but decent snowfalls to the ski areas so that's a good thing. There's always a chance one of these disturbances could do something weird and give us a nice big dump of snow. But for now, I don't see it.  

This winter has so far been more rough than we've gotten used to in this age of climate change. That trend will probably continue into January. 

"Norlun Trough" Gives Part Of Maine A SUPER White Christmas

A Norlun trough, the dotted orange line on this map
from the storm off New England to southern Maine and 
beyond, caused heavy snow in parts of coastal Maine
Image from YouTube, Tim Kelley

 Northern New England is enjoying a white Christmas thanks to a mid-sized storm that passed through the region Tuesday and part of Wednesday.  

A section of Maine is really buried in the snow thanks to an unusual and hard to forecast phenomenon known as a Norlun Trough. 

We're geeking out a little, but here's what happened. 

As WMTW in Portland, Maine tells us, this trough is named after Steve Nogueira and Weir Lunstedt, two meteorologists who coined the term in a 1993 paper describing the phenomenon.  

They were researching a storm that dumped one to two feet of snow in parts of Maine in March, 1992. 

A Norlun trough is an elongated trough of low pressure extending outward on the northwest side of a storm sitting offshore.

The air over the ocean is cold, except for a thin layer near the surface which is heated by the relatively warm water. 

The trough is essentially a weakness in that fortress of cold air keeping that warm ocean air near the water surface. The warm ocean air shoots upward into that weakness/trough. It hits cold air above, and the moisture condenses into snow and blasts down on a small area along the Norlun trough.

More warm ocean air gets sucked into the vacuum created by that initial sharp updraft to keep the snow going. Heavy snow will fall in one spot until the Norlun trough moves away or breaks up. 

Norlun troughs are very hard to forecast, since they drop their heavy snow in a very small area. The National Weather Service office in Gray, Maine did manage to anticipate the Norlun trough Monday evening. Their forecast discussion at that time forecasted two to six inches so snow in most places. 

The forecast discussion also noted, "A Norlun trough setup may bring isolated amounts of up to a lot somewhere on the central Maine coast."

They underestimated it a little, but forecasters almost always do. But kudos to NWS/Gray for catching in advance. That doesn't always happen. 

Wednesday's Maine Norland trough meant business. Brunswick, Maine was buried beneath 16.8 inches of snow. Durham and Litchfield, Maine reported 15.5 inches. Freeport has about 16 inches. But just 20 miles away, around Portland, there was just five or six inches of new snow.  

Norlun troughs can extend inland all the way here into Vermont but their effects are often diminished this far inland.  I notices the trough Wednesday morning extended into the Northeast Kingdom, and snowfall was slightly higher there than in other parts of the state. 

Mount Washington Helps Create Spectacular "Mothership" Cloud

Colby Morris took this photo of a spectacular lenticular
cloud over Mount Washington, New Hampshire Tuesday.

There's a photo floating around social media these days of what looks like a mothership about to grab New Hampshire's Mount Washington and take it to, I don't know, it's home planet light years away. 

For once, the photo is not AI. It's the real deal, showing a spectacular lenticular cloud over New England's highest peak.  You can see the photo in this post. 

Feel free to click on it to make it bigger and easier to see. 

The photo was taken by Colby Morris, a Mesonet and Information Systems Technician, who spotted the cloud at around 8 a.m. Tuesday while he was on his way to Crawford Notch. The observatory posted the photo on their Facebook page. 

Many people who saw the photo on Facebook had the same reaction I did. Here are some of the comments:

"Show us on the doll where the aliens touched you."

"That's clearly a cloud obstructing an alien landing on the summit. We saw the exact same thing in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'

"Beam me up, Scotty."

"Is this the portal back to reality? You know the dimension where humans actually act like human beings? Pretty please??!"

Unfortunately, the cloud is not that portal back to reality. We're stuck in our Earthly madness. 

Mount Washington Observatory photographed the 
same cloud a bit earlier than Morris did, at sunrise
yesterday The bottom of that lenticular cloud is
on the left with the sun illuminating a ring at 
the bottom of the cloud. 

What hovered over Mount Washington is a lenticular cloud, which are actually kind of common near mountains. This one was just  much larger, uniquely shaped and more spectacular than most.  

 As the Mount Washington Observatory explains:

"They usually form when a relatively strong flow of stable air flows into a barrier, most commonly a mountain range, and is forced upward. As the air ascents, it expands and cools. If the air has sufficient moisture, this cooling may be enough to cause condensation to occur, and therefore generate clouds. 

Because the air is stable, however, it will resist this vertical motion and seek to descent to its former level. As it descends, it will contract and warm, causing the newly formed cloud to evaporate. What is unique about these clouds is that they are very dynamic, and while each individual air parcel is undergoing the cycle of cooling and condensing and warming and evaporating, visually, the cloud appears to be standing still."

The edges of the clouds look smooth because the strong winds associated with them sculpt the cloud. That smooth appearance is why the clouds have that "lenticular" name. 

This type of cloud appears here in Vermont and elsewhere in northern New England a few times a year. They can form any time there is some sort of mountain range in the vicinity and the atmospheric conditions are right. 

The atmosphere around Mount Washington Tuesday was conducive to a particularly wild standing wave cloud.  

Lenticular clouds are not dangerous to those of us on the ground. We're not going to be sucked up into an alien spaceship. But they are dangerous to aircraft. They're a sign of severe, risky turbulence. When pilots seen these clouds, they try to avoid the area.  

Hurricane Melissa Had World Record Wind Speed, Could Be Part Of Terrifying Trend

A dramatic view from inside the eye of Hurricane 
Melissa near Jamaica. Photo was taken for a hurricane
hunter plane. One of those planes dropped an 
instrument that detected a 252 mph wind gust
within the storm. That gust was just verified
as the strongest on record detected in a hurricane.

 It looks like Hurricane Melissa achieved at least one world record for hurricanes. 

A weather measuring instrument called a dropsonde was tossed into the hurricane from a NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane shortly before storm made landfall in Jamaica back on October 28. 

The dropsonde recorded a wind gust of 252 mph on its way down through the storm. 

The 252 mph gust was measured about 820 feet above the ocean. 

This beats the old record for highest wind recorded by a dropsonde in a tropical system. 

That previous world record for the highest gust was 248 mph from a dropsonde that descended through Typhoon Mega in the western Pacific Ocean back in 2010. 

CONFIRMING THE DATA

A dropsonde, is a device NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane personnel drop into the maw of hurricanes. Dropsondes have a small parachute attached and they take  somewhere between two and four readings per second before splashing into the ocean. They usually throw a bunch of dropsondes into a hurricane pretty much all at once to get a holistic look under the hood of the storm. , 

While on its way down, dropsondes grab information on air pressure, temperatures, and wind, and relay that back to the hurricane hunter plane.

The hurricane hunters knew right away that the dropsonde recorded that 252 mph gusts. But NOAA and other scientists, as they always do, wanted to double check the data to make sure there wasn't something wrong with the dropsonde. 

According to a press release from U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) it took until this week to verify the information because NCAR scientists needed to verify the data to make sure there was no glitch with the dropsonde. 

As CBS reported, researchers went through the numbers using quality control software. They also confirmed the 252 mph gust was physically possible, given Hurricane Melissa's strength and structure.

The careful review was necessary because errors can happen with dropsonde data.  A dropsonde that fell through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A dropsonde measurement in that storm when it was in the Gulf of Mexico recorded a gust higher than that seen in Melissa.

However, researchers found a lot of problems with that Katrina measurement so it was discarded. 

RECORD BIG MELISSA

At the time the 252 mph gust was measured while Hurricane Melissa was officially a storm with sustained winds of 185 mph.  It made landfall in Jamaica at that strength. Damage in Jamaica where winds were strongest looked like they were caused by an EF-4 tornado. 

The gusts might indicate that Hurricane Melissa might have been even a little stronger than that 185 mph at landfall. 

After each hurricane, meteorologists examine the data from the storms and publish a full, detailed analysis. Those analyses often update the strength of hurricanes that differ from original reports.  

Before this 252 mph gusts was verified, Hurricane Melissa was already a record breaker. When Melissa made landfall those 185 mph (as it stands now, anyway) sustained winds ties the record for strongest winds for an Atlantic Ocean hurricane making landfall.

Only two storms the Labor Day Hurricane in Florida back in 1935 and Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas in 2019. 

The central air pressure in Hurricane Melissa reached 892 millibars. That's another way of measuring the strength of a hurricane. With that pressure, Melissa tied the record for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane since that 1935 hurricane in Florida. 

 As the Washington Post tells us, Hurricane Melissa also set an informal record for the most eyewall lightning observed by satellites. Before landfall, the satellites detected 700 flashes per minute, or 11 per second. 

Most hurricanes don't generate much lightning. When there is lightning in a hurricane, it's a sign of an extremely intense hurricane, or one that is strengthening.  

SCARY STORM, SCARY TREND

Josh Morgerman, very likely the most prolific and expert hurricane chaser in the world, has been in the middle of 84 hurricanes and typhoons so far. He was in Jamaica for Melissa. 

He wrote: "Melissa's winds were absolutely ferocious - the most intense I've witnessed in 84 hurricanes. And the resultant damage was spectacular. This was a truly rare specimen."

Morgerman continued in his technical report on the hurricane, where he monitored the storm in a struck hotel building:

"At the height of the storm, the whiteout was 100% and the screaming sound was so hard that others in the hotel kitchen were putting their hands over their ears. This aside the explosive gustiness of the winds blasted the building, caused one's ear drums to pull painfully, so that the author was often holding or rubbing his own ears"

Morgerman said many trees that were somehow left standing were completely defoliated. In some cases the bark was ripped off.  Wood frame homes were completely flattened, concrete buildings partly collapsed and paint was blasted off some buildings and cars.

Gawd, that had to be absolutely terrifying. 

Just a reminder, though the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean doesn't seem to be increasing, the number of super powerful ones are increasing. And those top end storms seem to be getting stronger than ever. 

There's even talk of creating a Category 6 for hurricanes. Right now, the strength chart for hurricanes go from Category 1 to 5.

Climate change might well be making horrible experiences like what Jamaica went through ever more likely.  And inevitably, some of these will crash into the United States.

The records being set by Hurricane Melissa are for sure a cautionary tale.  

Not Just Vermont: Arctic Blast Spreads Snow, Deep Chill Across Eastern Half of Nation

A heavy blanket of snow this morning in St. Albans,
Vermont. It was part of a huge cold and snowy
spell over the eastern U.S. Northern areas had zones
of heavy snow, while the Southeastern U.S.
reported record lows. 

I'm looking out the window today at nearly nine inches of snow outside, which is really something for November 11 in Vermont's Champlain Valley. 

And it's still snowing a little. 

I guess I can take comfort in the fact I have company. A remarkable blast of Arctic air - with snow in many places - has overtaken most of the eastern United States. 

Lake effect snows were the big story in the Midwest Monday. Chicago managed to avoid the worst of the lake effect snow bands that threatened the Windy City with up to a foot of snow. 

The worst of the lake effect snows hit north, south and east of Chicago. The city itself managed only about two or three inches of snow, while 3.5 inches of snow. Some places, like Momence and Cedar Lake, Illinois, got a foot of snow. 

Where it did snow it seemed to come all at once.  Video by Live Storms Media showed whiteout conditions in and around Gary, Indiana. 

Thing were so wild on Lake Michigan that there were waterspouts, or maybe more accurately, snowspouts spinning away out there in the turbulent, cold air over the water. 

The lake effect snows spread eastward during the day Monday. 

Meanwhile, a lake effect snow warning was issued for areas south of Buffalo through tomorrow morning. Some areas could get nearly a foot of snow. Parts of northwest Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio were also getting lake effect snows. 

Snow fell pretty far south, too. Stone Mountain, Georgia and Nashville, Tennessee were among the many southern locations that saw snow flurries. 

SOUTHERN FREEZE

Freeze warnings this week encompassed a huge swath from eastern Texas to southeast Virginia.  

The freeze warnings extended as far south as Brooksville, Florida, which is about 50 miles north of Tampa. 

It was a record 28 degrees in Jacksonville, Florida this morning, the earliest in the season its' been this cold since at least 1976. Charleston, South Carolina was also the coldest since 1976 with a low of 29 degrees. Savannah, Georgia reached 28 degrees. 

Other record lows in Florida this morning included 31 in Pensacola, 36 in Orlando, 35 in St. Augustine, 38 in Melbourne, 45 in Naples, 42 in Fort Myers and 40 in Sarasota.  

Overall, more than 80 record lows were tied or broken this morning, mostly in the southeastern United States. 

Freeze warnings are up again tonight in Florida and southern Georgia.

Ironically, the cold spell may in some weird way be related to climate change. In large swaths of the Arctic, temperatures in recent days have been as much as 30 degrees above normal. It's being cause by something called a Greenland Block. 

The Greenland Block is a large are of high pressure that sometimes sets up over the Arctic. It's a warm air mass, by their standards, anyway. The Block forces the cold air that's usually way up in Canada southward, into the United States. 

The block itself isn't related to climate change, but they're probably boosted by a warmer Earth. We also don't know if climate change makes the Greenland Block happen more frequently than it once did, or is this just some natural thing that happens from time to time with or without climate change. 

In any event, the Greenland Block is re-orienting itself by pressing a little more westward into Canada; This will help shut off a lot of the cold air coming from central Canada, though New England will stay on the cool side for quite awhile yet. 

But for the rest of the East and Southeast, this was just a foretaste of winter. Not the actual start of the season. 

 

 

Today Is 50th Anniversary Of Storied Edmund Fitzgerald Shipwreck: The Event And Song That Made It Famous

The Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in one of the worst
"gales of November" on record, 50 years ago today. 

It seems like yesterday to me, but it's already the 50th anniversary of the day the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a brutal, unmerciful storm blasting through Lake Superior. 

Thanks perhaps in large part to the song by Gordon Lightfoot, the Edmund Fitzgerald is easily among the most famous shipwrecks in U.S. history, right up there with the Titanic and the sinking of the fishing boat Andrea Gail during the 1991 "Perfect Storm."

At age 13 at the time, I was already a hopeless weather geek and to this day I clearly remember that storm, and the brief, scattered news reports at the time when the Edmond Fitzgerald sank. 

Gordon Lighftoot turned the wreck into modern folklore with his iconic song about the disaster.

Every time the wind comes up this time of year - which is frequently - my mind goes to the vicious "gales of November" on the Great Lakes.

THE EDMUND/EDMOND FITZGERALD

The 1975 sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was the second time a ship by that name sank in the Great Lakes. 

Back in 1870 a two-masted schooner, the Edmond Fitzgerald - Edmond spelled with an "o" instead of the "u" we had in the 1975 shipwreck - was built to carry grain and wood in the Great Lakes.

In 1883, the original Edmond Fitzgerald sank in yet another November storm in the Great Lakes. On November 14 that year, the two-mastered schooner was trying to get across Lake Erie with one last cargo of wheat before shipping closed on the lake that season. 

The schooner got caught in a snowstorm with high winds. The crew got disoriented, and the Edmond Fitzgerald ran aground on a shoal near Long Point, Ontario. The schooner broke apart, and the crew of seven all died. 

It's no accident that both ships of the same name were lost in November. The month is the scariest of them all on the Great Lakes.

The water in the lakes isn't exactly warm in November. But those lakes absorbed the sun's warmth all summer, so the water is now much tepid than the frigid air that starts to blow in from Canada this time of year. 

The contrast between the increasingly frigid air and remaining mild autumn air to the south often makes storms in the middle of the nation pretty strong to begin with. 

Once these storms enter the Great Lakes, the relatively mild water gives the storms an added boost of energy.  The storms intensify, the wind howls harder than ever. Torrential rains and thunder peal in the warm air on the east side of these storms. Blinding snow and freezing rain rage on the west and north side of these powerful November Great Lakes gales.   

Even as the storms begin to depart, strong, cold winds blow over the comparatively warm water, causing blinding lake effect snows.

For centuries, hundreds of long ships plied all five Great Lakes carrying lumber, limestone, copper, cars, crops and iron. 

The modern day Edmund Fitzgerald was launched from Detroit in 1958. This was a big deal. As NPR reports:

"It was in fact the greatest ship on the Great Lakes," John U. Bacon said in his new bestseller The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald."  "Fifteen thousand people came out to see the launching. When it went through the Soo Locks or Detroit or Duluth, people would sit half a day to see this ship come through. It was a rock star."

Late on November 8, 1975 the storm formed in the Oklahoma panhandle. By the morning of November 9,   the fast-strengthening storm was over Kansas, on a path that would take it over Lake Superior  on November 10. 

While the storm was developing in the Plains, the Edmund Fitzgerald left port with its 26,000 tons of taconite in 21 watertight cargo hatches. 

Weather map on November 10, 1975 shows an
intense storm right over Lake Superior. 

A  gale warning was issued for Lake Superior and the captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald acknowledged receiving the warning. Earlier forecasts had indicated that the storm would not be as intense as it turned out to be. 

Subsequent forecasts increased the expected winds with the storm, but by then, literally, that ship had sailed. The Edmund Fitzgerald ended up in the teeth of the storm. 

By mid-afternoon of November 10, the Fitzgerald had "a bad list" according to a radio transmission by the ship's captain. 

Heavy seas were crashing over the deck in one of the worst seas the crew had ever seen on Lake Superior.  Some weather observations on and near Lake Superior were reporting wind gusts of near hurricane force. 

The last radio transmission from the Edmund Fitzgerald came at 7:10 p.m., when the captain radioed that they were "holding their own." 

But very soon after that, the Edmund Fitzgerald was gone. 

The best guess is that the ship suddenly sank shortly thereafter. There were no distress signals. The Edmund Fitzgerald sat 17 miles from the relative calm of Whitefish Bay. The ship was later found, broken in two, in 530 feet of water. 

THE SONG

Gordon Lightfoot wrote and performed "The Wreck
of the Edmund Fitzgerald," a stunning story song
that beautifully illustrates the tragedy
of that shipwreck 50 years ago today. 

"The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" was easily among the best songs of the 1970s, created by one of the most gifted songwriters of the era. 

It was an unlikely hit. It ran for six minutes, much longer than most pop songs.  It really didn't have much of a chorus, or a hook. It was wordy. 

But the melody, the arrangement and the meticulous storyline Lightfoot crafted made "The Wreck Of the Edmund Fitzgerald irresistible. 

It hit its peak on the Billboard charts just about a year after the actual sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  The highest it reached was #2 on the charts during the weeks of November 20 and 27, blocked from the top spot both weeks by "Tonight's The Night," by Rod Stewart.

To give you a sense of how awful the music charts could sometimes be in the mid 1970s, I'll give you this nugget:  At the same time "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" was in the Billboard Top 10, so was "Disco Duck" and "Muskrat Love." 

Go figure. 

But at least Gordon Lightfoot graced us with this exquisite folk ballad that year. 

The song is recognizable from the very first chord, and immediately evokes what the 29 doomed men on the Edmund Fitzgerald must have seen and felt on November 10, 1975. 

When I hear "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald," my mind immediately goes to a storm-wracked shoreline, all colors of the landscape reduced to a monochromatic dark gray amid the gales. I picture enormous waves crashing onto the rocks, screaming winds battering storm-weary evergreens on land, sheets of rain blasting sideways.

There were about 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes between 1875 and 1975. Lightfoot turned the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy into a story for the ages. 

According to Rolling Stone, one night in his home in Toronto, Lightfoot was playing around with the melody of an old Irish dirge that was stuck in his head. Around 10 p.m. he decided to take a break. He noticed how stormy it was outside.

"The wind was howling even in Toronto,"  he said, "and I went back up to the attic thinking, 'I wonder what it's like up on Lake Superior. It must've been awful."

That windy night when Lightfoot was playing with the dirge melody was November 10, 1975, the night the Edmund Fitzgerald sank. He unknowingly started writing the song at just about the same time the ship disappears beneath Lake Superior's punishing waves. 

Shortly after Lightfoot learned about the shipwreck,  the lyrics came quickly. 

 According to Complex.com, Lightfoot wrote the following on an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit back in 2014: 

"The Edmund Fitzgerald really seems to go unnoticed at the time, anything I'd seen in the newspapers or magazines were very short, brief articles, and I felt I would like to expand upon the story of the sinking of the ship itself."

Lightfoot continued: 

"And it was quite an undertaking to do that. I went and bought all of the old newspapers, got everything in chronological order and went ahead and dit it because I already had a melody in my mind ."  

 Lightfoot was obsessive as he crafted the song

 As NPR reported:

"'He feared being inaccurate, corny or worse, appearing to exploit a tragedy for profit, ' writes John U. Bacon in his new bestseller, "The Gales of November, the Untold Story of the Edmond Fitzgerald. 'But more than that, as a fellow sailor and a child of the Great Lake...this song - whatever it was - was deeply personal.'"

Lightfoot only took a few liberties with the lyrics.  The Edmund Fitzgerald was headed for Detroit, not Cleveland. 

The lyric  "When suppertime the old cook came on deck/sayin it's too rough to feed ya/At 7 pm., a main hatchway caved in/He said, Fellas, it's been good to know ya."

Of course it's impossible to know who said what during the last hours and minutes before the ship sank, but the lyric is a gut punch nonetheless.

After Lightfoot wrote and released the song, an investigation revealed that crew members were blameless in the sinking. So in live concerts, he changed the words regarding the hatchway to "At 7 p.m. it grew dark...."

Toward the end of the song, Lightfoot sings: "In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed/In the maritime sailors' cathedral."

The "musty old hall" was really the Mariner's Church of Detroit. A parishioner once insisted to Lightfoot the church is not "musty." So, in live concerts, he sang about the "rustic old hall."

Loved ones of the men who died on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and other people associated with Great Lakes shipping obviously embraced the song.

As the Great Lakes Museum tells us:

"After Lightfoot's death in 2023, the Mariner's Church rang its bell 29 times for the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald and an additional 30th time for Lightfoot himself."

                                                                    ---30----

Click on this link or if you see the image below, click on that for Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald"  

Texas Flood Tragedy News Keeps Getting Worse, Dozens Dead, Many Missing; And How It Happened

Aftermath of the Texas flood. At last report at least
27 people had been confirmed dead, and that toll
was expected to rise

 I don't even know where to begin to start with the immense flood tragedy in the Hill Country of Texas, northwest of San Antonio. 

As I wrote this early Saturday afternoon, CBS was reporting 27 deaths so far - 18 adults and nine children. 

A lot of people are still missing -- officials haven't yet told us how many. We know about a dozen people, mostly children are missing from a Camp Mystic, a childrens' camp along the Guadalupe River.

If you try really hard you get glean some good news out of the tragedy. As of Saturday morning, around 850 people had been rescued. There have been 160 air rescues, and as of this writing, swarms of aircraft, drones and boats were looking for more people. 

There have been some amazing tales of survival. KENS in San Antonio reported one woman had been swept 20 miles downstream and over four dams before being rescued from a cypress tree today. The woman reportedly had just minor injuries. 

While I'm sure there will be other tales of survival, I'm dreading what the final death toll might look like. Not to mention the extreme damage to homes and businesses through a big part of central Texas. 

HOW IT HAPPENED

The Texas tragedy had its roots in Tropical Storm Barry, a completely forgettable, weak tropical storm that splashed ashore in northeastern Mexico last Sunday. 

Barry drew extremely humid air into Texas - extraordinarily steamy even by Texas standards. A small drifting low pressure system over central Texas drew in and consolidated that moisture.  This is Texas Hill country, so the winds were forced to rise upward as ti traveled from the Gulf of Mexico to the   rising elevations west of San Antonio, helping to unleash the floods.

This upslope flow has happened there frequently and has often caused floods,  Enough to this area of Texas is sometimes known as flash flood alley. 

The upslope flow, the remnants of Barry, the subtle low pressure system, the extreme humidity all converged over the Guadalupe River drainage basin and its surroundings. And just sat there. The result was extreme rainfall. 

The fact that a crucial ingredient to this tragedy was a former tropical storm shows that people are not necessarily safe after a tropical storm or hurricane makes landfall.  These things can produce floods far from the where the system came ashore. 

Even here in Vermont. The remnants of Hurricane Beryl were a key ingredient of the extreme floods last  July 10-11 in the Green Mountain State.  

Back in 1995, another fairly lame tropical storm named Dean came ashore in Texas, much like Beryl did. Even though Dean was weak, its remnants interacted with a stalled weather front to produce severe flooding across northern and central Vermont - nearly 2,000 miles from where it made landfall. 

We also have to remind ourselves that climate change has made downpours and storms often more intense than they otherwise would have been decades ago. I do not know to what extent climate change influenced this flood, but I suspect it was at least a small factor. 

THE FLOOD FORECAST AND NOAA CUTBACKS

Some officials in Texas are blaming cutbacks at NOAA and the National Weather Service because of the Trump administration and is DOGE federal worker slash and burn program earlier this year.  Their claim is the forecast underplayed the amount of rain that ultimately fell. 

Those DOGE cutbacks might well cause forecasting errors and in fact might have already done so in other circumstances.  

As Texas meteorologist Matt Lanza explains in his blog The Eyewall, the flash flood was well forecasted, even if the amount of rain that actually fell was unimaginable. 

National Weather Service Forecasts on Thursday gave the region a slight risk of flash flooding, which might have created a false sense of security. Lanza said some high resolution forecast models predicted the huge amounts of rain that in fact materialized.  In hindsight (my opinion here) those models should have perhaps been taken more seriously. But hindsight is of course 20/20.

In any event, the National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings shortly before midnight Thursday as the rains began to fall in earnest. In the early morning hours, the NWS declared issued flash flood emergencies, which triggers automatic warnings on everybody's cell phones.

Lanza said the NOAA budget cutbacks did not appear to play a role in this tragedy. Much has been made of cutbacks in weather balloon launches, which offer critical information on impeding storms. The National Weather Service office in Del Rio, Texas, and data from those launches helped prompt the NWS issue those dire "hair on fire" flash flood warnings. 

Then the question was, how were those flash flood warnings received? Or were they?

A blame game has already started. 

Per the Associated Press: 

'AccuWeather, a private weather forecasting business said it also issued flash flood warnings and blamed camp directors for the tragedy. "These warmings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety,' "

As noted, this part of Texas is particularly prone to flash flooding. Lanza asks a great question: "Do we need to start thinking of every risk of flooding as a potential high-end event we should pre-evacuate the highest risk people (like children and elderly in floodways) for? Is that even practical?"

Some variation of that question is a great one to ask anywhere in the U.S., including here in Vermont. Climate change is helping make downpours more intense, and more likely to cause floods, or make floods worse than they otherwise would be.  

FLASH FLOODS DANGEROUS

We do know that flash floods are extremely dangerous, and the United State has a long history of flash flood tragedies.  

Perhaps the most famous and deadly flash flood in U.S. history was the Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1889, which killed more than 2,200 people. Johnstown was hit again in 1977 in a flash flood that killed 84 people. 

Other examples of horrible flash floods include one that hit Rapid City, South Dakota and adjacent areas of the Black Hills in 1972, resulting in 238 lives lost. A flash flood in Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado in 1976 claimed 144 lives. 

Flash flooding in Kentucky killed 45 people in 2022.  Another flash flood in San Antonio on June 12 killed 13 people. 

Additional flash flooding has hit parts of central Texas today. As of early this afternoon a new flash flood emergency was in effect for Burnet County, Texas and parts of Williamson and Travis County. Six to 14 inches of rain fell there last night and this morning. 

This includes parts of the Austin metropolitan area,   The latest update is two people are dead and 10 are missing from this new round of flooding. 

It goes on and on. 

 

BREAKING: Likely Brief Tornado North Of Plattsburgh, NY This Afternoon In Otherwise Benign Line Of Storms

WCAX-TV meteorologist Jess Langlois shared this
radar image of today's storm in Beekmantown, 
New York. The bright shades of green and red
centered around Beekmantown shows strong winds
blowing in opposite directions in close proximity.
That is a sign of a tornado. 

A line of showers and thunderstorms - as expected - moved out of New York state into the Champlain Valley of Vermont  mid and late afternoon today. 

None of the storms appeared to be all that strong, and there were no warnings of severe thunderstorms.

Except:

It appears one of the storms along the line briefly got strong and started spinning.  It also appears to have touched off a brief tornado around Beekmantown, New York, about six miles north of Plattsburgh.  

According to WPTZ-TV meteorologist Tyler Jankowski,  noticeable rotation popped up around 3:38 pm along Route 22 near O'Neil Road and Duquette Road in Beekmantown.  Radar showed what is known as a couplet, which is winds blowing in opposite directions of each other in close proximity to each other. 

Meteorologist Jess Langlois of WCAX-TV also showed radar images, clearly showing a "couplet" on radar at that time 

That's a sign of a possible tornado. Radar also briefly indicate debris in the air. WPTZ also showed a video taken by Suzanne Drollette of what appears to be a weak tornado spinning behind some trees in Beekmantown, 

Video from WPTZ showed large sections of a roof blown off of what appears to be a house. Several trees and branches were blown down. 

The circulation seen on radar quickly dissipated and the storm continued on across Lake Champlain into Franklin County, Vermont. Once past Beekmantown, the storm looked like nothing special on radar. No obvious need for any severe storm warnings or alerts. 

That storm from Beekmantown eventually passed directly over my house in St. Albans, Vermont at around 4:45 p.m.. All I had was a couple flashes of lightning, some rumbles of thunder, a relatively brief downpour and a top wind gust at maybe 25 mph.  I didn't see any unusual looking clouds. Just a garden variety thundershower. 

The line of showers and thunderstorms continued into central Vermont by 6 p.m. No severe weather was associated with it, and it doesn't look like there will be any.

National Weather Service meteorologists from South Burlington were in Beekmantown as of 5:30 p.m. today to determine whether the damage they find there was indeed caused by a tornado.   Those meteorologist plan to release the results of their survey later tonight or tomorrow morning, 

By the way, this is not one of those cases in which a lack of staffing because of NOAA cutbacks caused National Weather Service meteorologists to miss it as it developed. It spun up so fast, and dissipated just as fast. If you blinked, you missed it. 

Also, the atmosphere did not appear to be primed to produce a tornado.  At worst, it seemed we were at risk of an isolated case or two of gusty straight line winds. 

Aspiring Meteorologist Seeks Good Trouble/Revenge As I Would Put It, Against 2013 Oklahoma Tornado Calamity

An injured Aria Vargyas, then age 8, right side of photo,
being carried out of the tornado-destroyed Briarwood
Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma on May 20,
2013. The tragedy killed her two sisters, and 
powered her fascination with meteorology so she
can work to prevent deaths in similar storms.
She's now 20 years old and a meteorology student 
at Texas A&M. Photo by AP 

 On May 20, 2013, a powerful EF-5 tornado swept across Moore, Oklahoma. It was one of the worst tornado disasters in recent American history, 

It killed 24 people, injured 212, destroyed 1,150 homes and caused $2 billion in damage. 

Among those injured was Aria Vargyas, then eight, when Briarwood Elementary School, where she was a student, was hit by the twister and collapsed around her.  

Her sisters, Karrina, 4, and Sydnee, 7 months died in their house near the school as the tornado blew the home apart and scattered it to the winds. 

There's even an iconic photo out there of a rescue worker carrying an injured Vargyras out of collapsed remains of the school 

As Texas A&M University of Arts and Sciences and CBS reports, Aria Vargyras, now 20, is in a way seeking revenge against the tornado. 

She is now a meteorology major at Texas A&M, wishing to build a career studying tornadoes and how to predict, understand and ultimately find ways to dissipate storms that produce these deadly tornadoes.

If you insist on a Hollywood connection, her story echoes the plot of the two famous "Twister" movies.

In the first one, the protagonist is a woman who as a child lost her father in a tornado. The character is now a researcher and tornado chaser who is trying to figure out the mechanisms of tornadoes to better understand them and mitigate them.

In the second Twister movie, the protagonist is a woman who, earlier in life lost friends in a tornado chase that went awry and is now studying ways to dissipate and stop tornadoes in their tracks. 

Hollywood isn't reality, of course, but Vargyas has an incredibly compelling story.

A locket around Aria's neck holds a photo of the three sisters. She still has the letters she wrote to them after the storm as she tried to cope with the pain. '"I hate that you're never coming back....And I hate that I have to realize that," she wrote, 

 As Texas A&M explains.

"In dealing with the loss of her sisters as she grew up Vargyas found herself increasingly obsessed with meteorology and the mechanisms behind storm formation. She eventually made it her goal to pursue an education that would enable her to become a meteorologist and work toward preventing weather disaster and their devastating impact on other families and communities.

'My passion for meteorology fully stems from my sisters,' Vargyas said. 'I am doing this for them. I want to do research to help find a way to dissipate storms, but it was because of my sisters that I wanted to do that. I wanted to make sure no one went through what I went through at such a young age.'"

Vargyas just completed her freshman year at Texas A&M. "It's fascinating to delve deeper into the dynamics of weather systems....Understanding the intricacies of atmospheric processes is crucial to my quest to improve prediction and response. Ultimately, I do want to storm chase, looking at the radar, taking pictures and mapping."

Her passion for meteorology and writing, has helped with the grief of losing her two sisters, Texas A&M reports. 

"I started writing, journaling and trying to write my feelings down, and that's what gets me through the rough patches.... Somewhere along the road, it got easier. I didn't cry as much when I talked about them...When I would think of them, it would be a good memory instead of a sad one." 

Right now, we live in a time when a significant portion of the population denigrates science and scientists. We have people in positions of power who do that. The discoveries and truths scientists learn about and tell us don't always match the world view that some politicians want. Or more accurate, a world view that would make them more money than the truth. 

Most scientists don't have as dramatic a story like Vargyas has. But they also don't go into their respective fields to somehow screw over would-be billionaires. Or foist a "climate change hoax" on the population to control them.  Or something. 

Sure, there are bad apple scientists out there, just like there is in every profession. A small minority of scientists cheat, or find ways to make lots of money instead of, you know, actual science.

But honestly, those fools are few and far between. 

As I wrote some of this past Friday afternoon, meteorologists were watching storms in southern Vermont like hawks. The storms risked bringing  life-threatening flash floods, and those scientists were ready to warn the public and save lives  as soon as the first sign of trouble loomed.

It's just what they do.  

We clearly need scientists like Vargyas and so many of the others out there. Too bad not enough people recognize this. Until it's too late.  

Vermont's Season Of Thunderstorms Has Arrived, Nothing Intense In The Offing, Though

A supercell thunderstorm near Sheldon, Vermont on 
May 4, 2018.  Severe thunderstorms are rare this
early in the spring across Vermont, but we've entered
the season where we'll see garden variety storms'
more and more often. Some thunder is possible
in northern Vermont tonight. 

 Last evening, tornadoes and gorilla hail menaced large sections of eastern Nebraska and Iowa as yet another spring weather system rolled through. 

That same weather system is coming our way, but you can relax. We in Vermont will be seeing no tornadoes, and no bombardments of hail..

In northern Vermont, at least, this system could send some rumbling thunderstorms through in the middle of the night, waking us up toward midnight tonight or a little after. 

As we hear the word "snow" less and less in the weather forecasts, we're hear the word "thunder" more and more often as we head through the spring. 

We already had our first round of thunderstorms of the season back on April 3.  But as the atmosphere warms with the season, it'll be more and more primed for thunder and lightning if any weather disturbance  happens to be coming through. 

Thunderstorms need warm, moist air to survive and thrive. Of course, that kind of air is sorely lacking around here during the winter.  But that type of humid air gains strength starting about now. 

The warmer and more humid the air, in general, the more likely you are to have a thunderstorm.  If the air above is cool, the warm, wet air can billow upward, forming the towering clouds that produce thunder and lighting.

In tonight's case, a warm front will push a batch of relatively balmy, humid-ish air in, causing that wave of showers and possible thunderstorms. Because of the trajectory of the weather system coming in, the storms are most likely near and north of the Canadian border. 

On Saturday, we'll be in that warm air so many of us will see temperatures reaching at least 70 degrees. A weak weather front might touch off a few widely scattered showers or storms during the day, but if they form, they will be very few and far between. 

More thunder is possible toward Monday or Tuesday, but we are not sure on that yet.

SEVERE STORMS COME LATER

While thunderstorms are getting more common in Vermont starting about now, severe storms are pretty rare until you get into late spring and especially summer.  Storms packing damaging winds, large hail and flash floods are most likely in Vermont from around Memorial Day to late August. 

Of course, under the right conditions, severe storms can happen earlier in the spring, too. One notable incident was on March 26, 2021 when an EF-1 tornado in Middlebury packing winds of up to 110 mph severely damaged one home, caused lighter damage to a few others and injured two people. 

It was the earliest in the season tornado on record.

Another storm system on May 4, 2018,  prompted tornado watches and some supercell thunderstorms that caused areas of serious wind damage in parts of the Green Mountain State. Hundreds of trees blew down in and around Shelburne in one of those storms. 

A rotating supercell over far northern Vermont that day prompted worries about a tornado, but the Green Mountains disrupted the circulation enough to prevent anything from touching down. 

Strong Spring Sunshine Takes The Chill Off, Despite Midweek Snow For More Springlike Times Ahead (We Think!)

So close. Will today's expected warm sunshine turn these
daffodil buds into actual flowers? We're getting there
with spring, despite a snowy forecast. 

 It's amazing what sunshine can do this time of year. 

The sun is high up in the sky this time of year, and if it comes out, it really makes a difference. 

In northwestern Vermont Sunday, most of the day wasn't very nice. It was overcast and cool, and the north wind really had a chilly bite to it. 

Late in the afternoon, skies pretty abruptly cleared up. 

In Burlington, the temperature with the late day sun didn't go up to much, zipping upward seven degrees in a short time span from 49 to 56.

But the entire feel of the day changed. With the late day sun, it felt mild, truly springlike. Meanwhile, where it stayed cloudy in Vermont, mostly in central and eastern parts of the state, it felt raw.

Sunshine will be our friend today, too. Clear skies overnight had us mostly below freezing by dawn, but that sun will heat the atmosphere very nicely to make today easily the pick of the week.  We should get up to 60 degrees in most valleys.  That'll get things greening up a little. 

TUESDAY

The weather fronts coming through tonight and tomorrow aren't that strong or wet, but the spring sun is going to influence things in a way we will see more and more of as we head into the summer. 

The sun will heat the ground tomorrow as cold air comes in aloft, This will create some towering clouds that will yield scattered showers or even an isolated thunderstorm or two.  Typical of this scenario, any showers or weak thunderstorms will be hit or miss. 

Unlike on some occasions in the summer, if we do see any thundershowers in Vermont Tuesday, they would be garden variety - not strong or severe.

MIDWEEK SNOW

And of course we have another preliminary snow prediction map
for this week in Vermont. This shows expected snow from 
Tuesday night to Thursday morning. Most places to
get nothing or little, but note the yellow and orange
patches in the northern Green Mountains. That depicts
six or more inches of expected snow in those spots. 

Yes, it's still going to snow in a good portion of Vermont Wednesday into Thursday. 

Deep moisture wrapping around what will be a nearly stalled storm in southeastern Quebec will make the wet air rise up the slopes the Green Mountains and dump what will be in high elevations a lot of snow. 

It'll be cold enough, and the snow will be persistent enough in the central and northern Green Mountains that accumulations could range from 6 to 12 inches in spots, especially above 2,000 feet or so. Sort of impressive for mid-April.

Mount Mansfield still had 91 inches of snow on the ground near the summit Sunday. 

A little of that will probably melt today and tomorrow. But chances are what melts away up there might be more than replenished by the midweek snow. On average, there's about 68 inches of snow up there around April 13.

Lower elevations will be spared deep snow for two reasons. One, the precipitation won't be coming down quite as heavily away from the Green Mountains. More importantly, the spring sunshine will help partially save the day again. 

Snow might accumulate in much of northern Vermont later Tuesday night and Wednesday night. But during the peak of the snow shower activity during Wednesday, the sun's heat will filter through the clouds, limiting accumulations 

You might get something like we saw on April 8 in northern Vermont. Snow squalls come through and dump a quick inch or two of snow. Then it tapers off and the sun sort of melts some of it. Then more snow comes in and the cycle repeats. The snow on the ground never gets that deep.

In the broader, lower valleys, it might well get warm enough Wednesday afternoon for rain showers instead of snow showers. And far southeastern Vermont will pretty much get nothing at all. 

Here's one possible drawback to the sun during Wednesday's wintery weather.  Much like on Tuesday with its possible thunderstorms,  the sun might energize the snow shower clouds on  Wednesday. That would make some of the snow showers heavier than they otherwise would be.

LATE WEEK

The snow showers will taper off Thursday, and a lot of the snow that might accumulate below elevations of 1,500 feet or so will melt. What doesn't go Thursday will disappear Friday as it turns warmer again. 

The weather pattern seems like it wants to change a little starting toward the weekend, too. Although we'll continue to alternate between mild and chilly days, it's beginning to appear the mild days might outnumber the cold ones as we close out the month.