Actually It's Going To Be TWO Rainy, Chilly Spells In Vermont. The First One Tonight Is The Snowy One

The blooming irises and budding peonies in low elevation
St. Albans, Vermont certainly don't have to worry about
snow tonight, but Vermont's mountain summits could
well be white by Saturday morning. 

We're still on for our weird, cold storm tonight, but different parts of Vermont will have very different weather conditions. 

Here's the latest updates:

SNOW

Forecasters have actually lowered the elevations at which they expect snow to fall tonight. They now expect snow as low as 3,000 feet above sea level, taking the flakes pretty far below summits. 

This won't be a big summit snowstorm by any means, but places near 3,000 feet or a little higher could get a slushy coating to a half inch of snow. Summits might see 1 to 2 inches, maybe more if there are any cold surprises. 

In eastern Vermont especially, the National Weather Service says a few flakes could fall at elevations as low as 2,000 or 2,500 feet, though no snow will accumulate at such a low elevation. 

Keep all this in mind if you have a big Saturday morning hike planned. Either postpone it or dress for a winter hike, your choice. 

RAIN

The cold, small but intense bowling ball of a storm that has blasted down from the Arctic Circle and was making its way southward through Quebec toward New England this morning. The direction of the storm is odd enough, most of them come from the west or south, not from the Great White North. 

When storms do come from the north or northwest, they tend to be pretty dry affairs, with light precipitation. There's no warm ocean up that way to add a lot of moisture to the atmosphere. But this storm is so dynamic that it's able to squeeze every bit of moisture it can out of the air. 

The Northeast Kingdom, along with northern New Hampshire and western Maine, can expect more than an inch of rain between this afternoon and noon Saturday. The area around New Hampshire's White Mountains could receive two inches of rain. That will probably translate to a LOT of snow atop Mount Washington, which is New England's highest peak.

Rainfall amounts will fall sharply as you move away from the Northeast Kingdom. Places a little north and east of Interstate 89 can expect up to three quarters of an inch.  The Champlain Valley would get a half inch north up near St. Albans and Alburgh, tapering to a quarter inch south of Burlington. 

Southern Vermont only gets a tenth of an inch out of this. 

TIMING

Light showers were already scattered around northern New York and Vermont as of 9 a.m. The showers will start to increase in intensity and number north later this morning or early afternoon and spread south and east. There could be a rumble of thunder because the storm is so dynamic. Once the rain arrives, temperatures will fall rapidly from the 60s through the 50s. Tonight's lows will be between 38 and 45, except low 30s above 3,000 feet.

SATURDAY

The rain should taper off pretty early in the day.  The morning should feel pretty chilly and blustery, but the sun should come out in most areas during the afternoon. That'll boost temperatures into the 55 to 65 degree range, depending on whether you are fairly high up in elevation north or a low elevation south. That's pretty cool for this time of year, but it's actually pretty nice for outdoor activities. 

SUNDAY

Part of the day will be nice. By early afternoon, most of us should see temperatures within a few degrees either side of 70. But the next cool storm from the north will start to arrive in the afternoon with its batch of showers. 

This cool batch of rain isn't as cold or as intense as the one we're getting tonight. So it shouldn't snow in the mountains and rain in the Northeast Kingdom will be lighter than tonight's go around. 

BEYOND SUNDAY

We'll have trouble getting rid of this weather pattern, so it will be relatively cool and showery at least through Tuesday. But it could last until the end of the week, depending on which weather model you believe. Stay tuned! 

"Rusting Rivers" in Arctic An Ominous Sign Of Climate Change

Rusty water in a waterway in the Arctic. The permafrost
is melting, which releases metals that were once frozen
into place, onto the surface. 

High up in the Arctic, rivers and streams are turning red-orange, as if billions of nails were rusting away and flowing into what should be pristine brooks way up there. 

As NPR reports, these rusty rivers are now widely documented in the Brooks Range in northern Alaska. 

"Hundreds of Arctic rivers and streams are turning bright red-orange, not from chemical pollution, but from naturally occurring iron spilling from long-frozen ground as temperatures warm. 

The "rusting rivers" phenomenon, which has been documented across the Brooks Range in northern Alaska, offer a vivid example of the effects of climate change in a region that is warming faster than the global average."

Other metals, like aluminum and copper are also being release from the thawing permafrost, NPR says. Those metals can do a number on fish and other animals in the food chain. People are also wondering if the metals might contaminate rural drinking supplies, but so far, there's been no evidence of that. 

This information comes from an annual  "Arctic Report Card" that was recently released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They've been doing this for 20 years because the Arctic is the fastest warming place on Earth. And what goes on in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. 

This annual report is threatened because - big eye roll - the Trump administration does not want any government reports to even hint at climate change. He's terribly allergic to the term, constantly referring to idea of a warming world as a "hoax"

Scientist hope to keep the report card going, maybe by working around the United States.  

As NPR reports:

"An independent network of global scientists writes and compiles the research in the annual report, offering it some shelter from political winds. Some sections of this year's edition openly discuss the effects of climate change, and at least one study notes its major cause - burning fossil fuels."

Let's hope Trump doesn't find out about that line.

It's depressing to realize that basic scientific facts are now much like Soviet-era samizdat, publications that take great risks at offending the Fascist In Chief. We can't be sure if there will be another valuable Arctic Report Card next year 

Other information in the 2025 Arctic Report Card:

-- The Greenland Ice Sheet lost 129 billion tons of ice in 2025, continuing its long term trend. 

-- Alaskan glaciers have lost an average of 125 vertical feet since the 1950s. 

-- Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level on record this fall and early winter. 

-- The period from October 2024 to September, 2025 was the Arctic's warmest and wettest on record. 

-- Because of the increased precipitation in the Arctic, snow cover was above average during the heart of winter.  But the snow cover was well below normal by June, because of the unusual Arctic warmth. 

-- The relative lack of ice and snow allows the sun to heat the ground and water in the Arctic more than it would otherwise. That makes existing left over snow and ice melt even faster. It's called a feedback loop.    

As I've said before, what goes on in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. As much as climate change is messing up the top of the world, its effects will bleed down to the mid-latitudes through higher sea levels on the coasts, and bigger, more destructive storms. 

Rare, Strong Tornado Kills 6 In Southern Brazil

Aerial view of a town in southern Brazil destroyed
by a tornado in the past week. 

A powerful tornado this week virtually leveled a community in southern Brazil, killing at least six people and injuring around 750. 

Per CNN:

"Winds may have topped 250 km/hr (155 mph) in the ravaged town of Rio Bonito do Iguana, according to Simper, the state's meteorological service. The tornado affected approximately 90 percent of the residences and commercial buildings in the municipality, according to the state government."

A tornado with 155 mph winds is a rather high end EF-3 tornado, so it's a major one. 

The tornado and the city affected was in the southern Brazilian state of Paraña. The state's governor, Ratinho Jünior said the tornado was an "unprecedented catastrophe in the history" of the state.

This was among the worst tornadoes in Brazilian history, but twisters are fairly common there. Especially in the southern areas of the nation where this one hit. 

Estimates on the number of Brazilian tornadoes varies, but the best guess is they have 50 to 60 per year. Most of the twisters are relatively weak, but that's true in places that have frequent tornadoes, like the United States. 

Video:

Very good news report on the Brazil tornado from Al Jazeera. Click on this link to view or if you see the image below, click on that. 

 

Completely Backwards: Vermont Lilacs Blooming In October!

Lilacs bloom on the tree outside my house in 
St. Albans, Vermont this week. Stress from a
wet spring, a blight and drought have caused
this out of season display. 

You might have seen the following in your travels lately and said, what the hell?!?!?

Lilacs are blooming in Vermont. In October. 

Lilacs are of course a highly welcomed sight in May. What's not to love about them? When they bloom, they signal that you're in the heart of spring.

 They smell absolutely divine. And they're gorgeous. And traditional. I don't think I've ever seen an old farm house in Vermont without a lilac bush that's almost as old as the house. 

These lilac bushes usually cede beauty to the sugar maples in the autumn. While our hillsides glow orange and red and yellow, lilac bushes normally just drop their green leaves late in the autumn, and you're done until spring. Ho-hum.

This year, our lilac bushes were stressed by topsy turvy weather much more so than usual. Yes, we can blame climate change for another round of weather extremes in 2025.  

This year, we had an unusually wet, sopping spring. That encouraged a leaf blight to take hold in lilac leaves. That's a huge part of the reason why you saw so many lilac bushes with curled up, browning leaves that fell off prematurely. The blight - as you can imagine - stressed the lilac bushes. 

Then, the rain shut off in July, and we sank into our big flash drought. That stressed the lilac trees even more. 

"Stressful conditions put the plant in a dormant-like state and when the cooler temperatures and shorter days of fall arrive, some of the flower buds are triggered to bloom," Iowa State University Extension explains. 

We also finally got some rain in late September, which also might have helped trigger the odd new blooms.  

The good news is the blight, the drought and the weird October blooming won't kill or really harm your lilac bushes. These are really, really tough plants. Ever try to kill a lilac? It's almost impossible. Besides, why would anyone want to kill a lilac?

Next May, your suffering lilac will bloom beautifully, and on schedule. It might have fewer blooms than usual, because the tree put on some of its blooming effort this month. 

The strange doings with lilacs are a sign that weather extremes brought on by climate change are having an effect on everything.  In the springs of 2021 and 2023, for the first time in my life, I noticed freeze damage to lilac blooms.

In both those years, oddly warm early spring weather got trees leafing out and blooming way too early. Then snow and frost and deep freezes hit, turning some of those gorgeous lavender lilac blooms a disappointing brown. Or they didn't bloom at all in some cases.

Hopefully, normal amounts of precipitation will return soon. The drought here in Vermont and the rest of northern New England is still in full force. The latest weekly U.S. Drought reports comes out later this morning. I'll put up a post about that update here in this blog thingy later today. 

Maybe we'll get lucky and the weather during the spring and summer of 2026 will be pretty moderate to give all our garden plants a break. 

But give the climate change that everyone is experiencing, I'm sure something bizarro will happen next growing season, too.  

More Tornadoes, Storms In Weird Locations, But Still No Signs Of Rain Or Anything Here In Vermont

Screenshot from a video showing a large tornado in
North Dakota Sunday. The state was hit by as many
as 19 twisters yesterday. 

While we in Vermont can't even get a sprinkle of rain, weird storms have been hitting areas that are usually not particular stormy, especially this time of year. 

We had the tornadoes in Utah Saturday, which I've already mentioned in this here blog thingy.  I've got an update on that below, but first, more odd tornadoes, this time in North Dakota. 

During Sunday afternoon, a total of 22 reports of tornadoes came in, all but three of them mostly along a narrow north-south line in central parts of the state. The actual number of tornadoes will be determined by the National Weather Service.

Observers said this was probably the biggest September North Dakota tornado outbreak on record. 

The tornadoes hit sparsely populated areas, though there was damage in the tiny central North Dakota communities of Denhoff and Cannon Ball.   

The situation kept meteorologists exceptionally busy, as tornado warnings blared across central North Dakota most of the afternoon and evening.  At one point, storm chaser Brian Copic had two tornadoes in his sights: A large, wedged shaped twister and a skinnier one nearby. 

North Dakota does get tornadoes, averaging about 29 of them per year.  But we're generally past the season for twisters there. But Sunday was an exception. 

The direction of Sunday's storms was a little off, too. They headed north to northwest, not in an east or northeast that most tornadic storms travel. 

North Dakota is also not known for its heavy rain especially in the autumn.  It's in the middle of North America. Humid Gulf of Mexico or Pacific Ocean air has a lot of trouble making it that far north by September, so rainfall is usually fairly sparse. 

However,  Bismarck, North Dakota got more rain in an hour Sunday than they normally do in the entire month of September.  Just under two inches came within that hour, compared to the 1.72 inches that usually falls all month. The storm total in Bismarck Sunday was 2.44 inches.  

Not surprisingly, the city and points south were hit by widespread flash flooding. 

It's been a rough year for severe weather in North Dakota, even by their standards. Four tornadoes and 100 mph straight line winds hit areas near Grand Forks about a month ago. North Dakota also just approved for disaster assistance from damage caused by tornadoes, high winds and flooding back on June 20-21.

In Utah, two homes, two houses trailers, a hay barn and fifth-wheel trailer were destroyed in the tornado. Nobody was hurt, but several pets are missing. Two additional houses were damaged and power lines have come down. 

With Sunday's outbreak, it looks like North Dakota will have had about 60 tornadoes this year, the most there in a single year. 

VERMONT LEFT OUT

Here in Vermont, we often get the remnants of any big storms to our west. Usually in the form of some autumn rain. We could really use it, but, again, not this time. The drought stays strong. 

The Plains storm is lifting directly north into Canada and dissipating. It won't give us any rain at all. Instead, the forecast is the same as it was yesterday: It will be warm and dry through Thursday. Then, a rainless cold front will hit Friday and it will turn cool and dry. Then it will probably warm up again. 

Our next chance of rain isn't until September 25 or 26, but even that is highly uncertain. That storm might go by to our south, missing us again.  

We don't want tornadoes here, but it would be nice if one of those tornadic systems spun off a little rain our way. 

Weird Out Of Season Atmospheric River Hits Pacific Northwest, Does More Good Than Harm

Satellite view of atmospheric river hitting the 
Pacific Northwest Friday. Those are 
exceptionally rare in the summer. 

The Pacific Northwest has a cloudy, wet reputation, but in the summer, the water shuts off over there, and this area is usually pretty dry in August. 

Not at the moment, though. 

An atmospheric river has hit Washington and Oregon, dumping near record amounts of rain for this time of year.  

Seattle averages about an inch of rain each August. That much fell just in the past two days.  It was the most rain at once in August in at least a decade.  

Atmospheric rivers are fairly common along the U.S. West Coast in the winter but are super rare in the summer. 

These weather systems are narrow bands of atmospheric moisture that can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean and then come ashore, unleashing torrential rains.  Atmospheric 

The atmospheric river is doing far more good than harm since almost all of Washington and much of Oregon is in a drought.  

This atmospheric river won't entirely solve the problem, but at least it will help. Maybe. 

The drought made it difficult to forecast the impacts of the atmospheric river. The National Weather Service in Seattle had this to say in a hydrologic outlook ahead of the storm,

"Very dry antecedent conditions has left the area soils dry and hard. This amount of rainfall in one storm will not have much tie to soak into the very dry soil, which will result in heavy surface runoff. Impacts are uncertain due to how much moisture will be able to be absorbed by the soil."

Most rivers won't flood, since they're starting out so low. But outdoor enthusiast might be taken by surprise by unusually high water for this time of year. For instance, people who might be used to setting up camp in or near a dry river bed during the summer might fall victim to fast flowing water.

The atmospheric river also hit parts of British Columbia, Canada. It was actually beneficial there, too. Wildfires were spreading in western British Columbia so this is a big help, since it was a real soaker. Vancouver picked up 1.69 inches of rain Friday, its fifth wettest August day on record. 

 The rainy weather was starting to clear up in the Pacific Northwest today. Clouds, cool weather and light showers will continue the rest of the weekend. But the Seattle, Portland and other cities in the region will revert to their usual dry, sunny August weather during the upcoming week. 

Inland parts of eastern Oregon are still under a flood watch today as the remnants of the atmospheric rive remove inland to trigger shower and storms. Some downpours over wildfire burn scars could cause some debris flows. 

"Death Valley" Weather Hit Vermont Today. I've Never Seen Anything Like It

I left this thermometer in the sun against the west side
of my St. Albans, Vermont house and it ended up at 120 
degrees. The actual temperature (in the shade)
was still a record 97 degrees. 

Today will go down in history as one of the strangest and really, one of the more worrying weather days I've ever seen in Vermont. 

The high temperature in Burlington today was 98 according to preliminary data. That broke the old record high for the date of 93, set in 2002.

Yes, it's been that hot in Vermont before, but not that often. But the combination of heat and dryness is absolutely unprecedented as far as I can tell. 

At 3 p.m. in Burlington, it was 97 degrees. The dew point was a bone dry 46 degrees yielding a relative humidity of 17 percent. 

 That kind of heat/low humidity combination is something you see in places like Phoenix or Death Valley. 

For comparison, at noon local time Tuesday, it was 113 degrees, dew point 44 with a relative humidity of 10 percent at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, so you can sort of see the similarities.   The relative humidity in Phoenix was 22 percent, so it was "muggier" there than in Burlington. 

As you can imagine, crops in Vermont are stressed. The forest fire danger is sky high. Burn bans are in effect statewide. There was already a relatively small grass fire in Georgia, Vermont Monday. A fallen power line in Shrewsbury sparked another fire Tuesday, but that one was quickly contained, too. Another one-acre wildfire in Au Sable Forks, New York today was at last report mostly contained.  

Those were small fires, but showed the potential of what could happen. 

What we're going through now in Vermont is a classic example of weather whiplash - when conditions go from one extreme to another. When summer began, it was really, really wet in the Green Mountain State. As recently as July 10, damaging flash floods hit parts of the Northeast Kingdom.

Now, suddenly it's super dry.  These one extreme to another events are getting more frequent in the age of climate change. Get used to it. 

For all I know, we'll be talking about floods again in another month or two. Watch this space.

HOT DAYS ACCUMULATING

Today was also the 16th day this year it's gotten into the 90s in Burlington. This is only the tenth year of the past 140 or so in Burlington that has had that many days reaching 90 degrees or  more. 

Tomorrow, ahead of our desperately anticipated cold front, it will get much more humid. The increase in clouds will keep actual temperatures a little lower than they were today, but the higher humidity will make it feel worse than it was this afternoon. 

So, the heat advisory in the Champlain Valley has been extended to Wednesday evening. It might or might not reach 90 degrees in Burlington. It depends on how fast the clouds and showers arrive. 

That cold front still looks like it will set off some badly needed showers and thunderstorms. But typical of summer, they will be hit and miss. A few towns will receive nice downpours, other places will get a little rain. A few of us will get nothing at all.

Even those neighborhoods that have a brief torrential blast of rain won't be out of the woods. It will dry out quickly again amid low humidity Thursday into Saturday. Especially in northern Vermont. Southern areas might at least stay somewhat more humid, with a low risk of showers. 

Another cold front Sunday still looks like it might spark off more showers, but no heavy rain.  But it is looking like a bonafide spell of cooler than average August weather will come in early next week. Good news for those of you thought upper 90s temperatures were a little much for Vermont. 

A Story To Cool You Off: Rare Australian Snow

A kangaroo bounces through the recent unusual
snow in Australia. 

 Its winter Down Under, which usually isn't the kind of cold, snowy hell or heaven (depending on your perspective) we go through here in New England.

But the relative warmth of an Australian winter was shattered earlier this week by a bunch of snow. Some areas received the biggest accumulations in decades. 

As The Independent tells us:

"A cold air front dropped as much as (16 inches) of snow on parts of northern New South Wales on Saturday the most since the mid-1980s, said Miriam Bradbury, a meteorologist at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology."

Bradbury said the storm was also odd because it covered an unusually large area.

It wasn't all fun and games.   At least 100 vehicles were stranded by snow, some buildings were damaged and power outages hit tens of thousands of homes. At lower elevations, heavy rain led to flooding, which killed at least one person.

Videos:

News video shows what it looked like. Kind of a typical December day here in New England, but for Australia, a new winter wonderland. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.

  

Lightning Strike Extended Over 500 Miles, There Might Be Even Bigger Ones. Also Lightning Contiinues To Kill

Schematic shows the extent of what is now regarded
as the biggest lighting flash on record, coming from
a complex of storms in the southern Plains
on October 22, 2017

We have a new world record for a strange, and rather old event. 

Back on October, 22 2017, a lighting bolt flashed over the southern Plains. That fact isn't the least bit unusual, considering how often thunderstorms happen there. 

This one, though, was recently certified as the longest lighting strike on record, It was a whopping 515 miles long, spanning from near Dallas to just east of Kansas City, Missouri.  

 It wasn't just a narrow line between the two points either. Branches of this bolt lit up the sky over much of southeast Oklahoma, northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri. 

The old record was for actually  more recent  477.2 mile long bolt across the southern Plains on April 29, 2020. 

As the Washington Post tells us:

Relatively new technology allows data from GOES 16, 17, 18 and 19 satellites hovering 22,236 miles about the ground to map the origins of each flash. These satellites can sense lightning discharges from above, even if they don't strike the ground. 

Although most of this mega-strike and all other almost-as-big strikes stay aloft, some parts of them strike the ground. The data from the satellites is then merged to ground based lighting strike data from something called the Earth Networks Total Lightning Network.  This particular record setter from October, 2017 produced 64 bolts (branches, really) that struck the ground. 

So yeah, these mega-strikes can be dangerous.

The technology to analyze these giant lightning strikes has only existed for about a decade. Given that short time frame, researchers are sure they will find even bigger bolts than the one from October 2017. 

FASCINATING LIGHTNING

Mega-flashes are fascinating, not only because they are so big. 

They also last much longer than you see in standard-issue lightning bolts you see in "normal" summertime storms. 

The record breaking mega-flash lasted seven seconds. Another mega-strike over Uruguay and northern Argentina on June 18, 2020 lasted 17.1 seconds. 

As CNN tells us, oddly, mega-bolts tend to form in the weaker, outer parts of storms systems, and not the intense core where we'd think lighting would originate.

Fewer than 1 percent of all lightning bolts can be considered mega-flashes. 

The World Meteorological Organization said this particular flash was not spotted in an original analysis of the storm, but scientist re-examined the storm and measured this 2017 mega-flash. 

The WMO in its announcement brought two other lightning records to our attention. They are both, unfortunately, horrific. As the Washington Post reports:

"The WMO also referenced two other lightning records - both for fatality counts from single strikes. In 1975, 21 people in Zimbabwe were killed by a bolt as they huddled inside a hut for safety. And in 1994, 469 people were killed in Dronka, Egypt when lightning struck a set of oil tanks, sparking a fire and causing burning oil to flood the town."

Meanwhile, in the United States, lightning continues to take a toll. So far, 13 Americans have died from lightning strikes, the same number as in all of last year.  

If there's a bright side, we're not on pace to be the worst lightning year in recent memory. Back in 2016, the nation saw 40 lightning deaths. 

 

Florida Tornado Lifts Home Sideways For 20 Seconds With Woman Inside. Dramatic Video

As the Largo, Florida enters the neighborhood Wednesday,
roofing begins to fly off neighboring buildings. Then......

 A rare for June struck Largo, Florida Wednesday, damaging a mobile home park and yielding a dramatic video of what the twister did to one mobile home.  

You can watch the video at the bottom of this post. 

An older woman was inside, but miraculously, she got out with minor injuries.

The Ring security camera clip, from Fox 13 Tampa   which you can view at the bottom of this post, shows the tornado lifting here home so the bottom of it was vertical. The twister held the home in that position for nearly 20 seconds. Then the home slammed back down onto the ground, about where it had been in the first place. 

The woman, Deborah Mettler, 76, told WFTS-TV in Tampa Bay, Florida that it was like a Wizard of Oz experience.

You don't say.

The home next to the Ring camera is lifted off its 
foundation, and hangs perpendicular in the air for
nearly 20 seconds before crashing back to the ground. 

"I didn't realize I was actually up in the air......I was too busy doing somersaults and getting thrashed from one side of the room, through the wall, to the other side.

"I ended up back here in the bedroom. I had been in what was the family room and stepped out, which was good, because it's no longer there at all.  So if I had stayed in that room, I don't know what would have happened to me."  

The tornado damaged about 65 homes, but few were completely destroyed like Mettler's was. The EF-1 tornado had top winds of 90 mph and traveled about 2.1 miles through the city of Largo. 

VIDEO:

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

Penguin Poop Might, Maybe Helping Slightly In Fight Climate Change

This tasteless penguin photograph illustrates how
"buttloads of penguin guano" as the Washington 
Post put it, could be affecting climate change a little. 

 You read the headline correctly. Scientists are studying whether penguin poop is having at least a tiny effect on climate change.  

Sounds like something Republicans would use as example of ridiculous government spending, but hear me out. (And it looks like very little, if any American taxpayer money is being used to study this).

The story, of course, takes us to Antarctica, where, of course, you will find penguins. Lots of penguins. Who really know how to take a crap, apparently. 

Per the Washington Post:

"As millions of penguins eat and breed in Antarctica, they leave behind buttloads of guano. Given that they mainly feast on fish and krill, their excrement contains large amounts of nitrogen waste that breaks down into ammonia. 

Scientist found that incredible amounts of ammonia left behind combine with sulfur compounds from the ocean and grow clouds within hours."

By the way, I love the phrase "buttloads of guano."  It should be the name of a punk rock band.

Anyway, preliminary work involving computer models suggest that clouds that the penguins help produce have a cooling effect on parts of Antarctica. But that conclusion is, well, inconclusive and complicated.

More often than not, clouds reflect the sun's heat back to space, so they have a cooling effect on the Earth. In fact, an overall decline in low clouds over the Earth in recent years partly explain why 2023 and 2024 were the two hottest years on record for the globe.

Ice reflect more sunlight than clouds do.  So in the penguin cloud poop from over the oceans surrounding Antarctica, that would help blunt climate change. If they form over Antarctic ice fields, then it might just worsen climate change a tiny bit. 

Past studies suggest that the penguin crap producing clouds have an overall benefit in the fight against climate change. 

Per Washington Post again:

"...computer models from previous studies hint that the net effect would likely cool the surface. A study in 2016 looked at clouds over the Arctic from seabird guano and showed a cooling effect over the region - exceeding 1 watt per meter square near the large seabird colonies. The study's computer models showed the clouds consisted of more droplets, but smaller ones, which reflected more sunlight back to space."

Of course, pooping penguins won't be our savior from climate change. Their effect on it is minuscule, at least in the large scheme of things. 

But it's still important to consider.  WaPo one more time as they quoted Ken Carslaw, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Leeds who was not involved in the research.

"It's vital to understand these natural environments are the baseline from which we quantify and understand human effects on climate,' (Ken) Carslaw said. 'These observations are another piece of the puzzle that will help to improve how clouds are represented in climate models'"

 

Even Normally Damp UK Is Burning This Spring

Wildfire burning this past week near Cumbernauld, Scotland

 There's been more of our share of spring wildfires around the world in the winter and so far this spring. 

The latest place to burn: Damp Old England, Ireland and Scotland. Hundreds of brush and wildfires have been burning, and are still burning in the UK. 

Yep, you read that right. 

They've had a stretch of unusually dry weather, and wildfires are burning through vast areas of the UK.  The worst was expected to peak this weekend.

Per a Washington Post report from Friday: 

"Firefighters in Northern Ireland reported nearly 300 wildfires in the week ending Thursday. Many were significant and started intentionally, but then ran rampant under conditions conducive to fire.

One large blaze was ongoing near Glasgow, in southwestern Scotland. It started Thursday and glowed ominously in the hills near the city overnight. Conflagrations were also burning or being tamped out near Galloway in Scotland and Cornwall in England, among other spots."

Extreme wildfire warnings were up in Scotland through Saturday. 

A BBC map showing the many locations of wildfires
this past week in, of all places Scotland. 

A change in the weather is forecast for Great Britain, which might finally bring some rain next week. But ahead of that rain, winds are expected to increase, so the fire danger will get even worse. 

The reason it's been so oddly warm and dry in the British Isles is a blocked weather pattern that has kept warm high pressure sitting over or near the region. 

This has blocked the usual parade of storms and cold fronts from moving eastward off the Atlantic Ocean to spread the usual April showers into England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland

This has led to a spring drought, exacerbated by unusually high temperatures for this time of year. It's been in the 70s on some recent days in Northern Ireland and Scotland.  Usually, high temperatures in that region are in the low to mid 50s during April. 

Climate change might have also had a hand in all this. Spring is the most rapidly warming season in the UK as the world keeps heating up. 

The UK has followed in the footsteps of other areas have exceptionally bad spring wildfire seasons. 

Late March wildfires in South Korea killed at least 24 people and destroyed hundreds of buildings, some of them historic. 

In the United States, damaging forest and wildfires swept through parts of several eastern states, especially in the Carolinas back in March.

Earlier in March, wildfires destroyed hundreds of homes in Texas, Kansas and especially Oklahoma. 

It's spring fire season here in Vermont, too, but we've been lucky so far. True, it hasn't been a nice spring lately, but frequent rain and snowfalls have so far tamped things down. Through April 8, Vermont has only see 13 small brush and wildfires that have burned a total of 8.5 acres. 

Still, we're not out of the woods. Until it green up out there, a few days of dry, windy weather could set things ablaze. In the short term. rain and even a little snow are in the forecast Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. 

 

Sunday Morning Storm Update: Death Toll Up To At Least 34, Tornadoes To Wind Down; Vermont Still Expecting Flooding

Tornado destruction his weekend in
Diaz, Arkansas, Photo via Facebook
by Ronnie Burgess 

The death toll from the storms that rolled through the United States rose to 34 as of early this morning.

Twelve of the deaths were caused by tornadoes in Missouri. In Mississippi, six people are dead, three are missing and 29 are injured. 

In Kansas, eight people lost their lives, not in tornadoes, but because they got caught in blinding dust storms on highways, causing numerous crashes. 

The bottom line is this was the most U.S. deadly disaster so far this year. The January wildfires in California caused 29 deaths. 

More tornadoes swept through the South Saturday, causing more destruction.  Today, more tornadoes could strike in a stripe from western Pennsylvania to Florida. A tornado warning was already effect early this  morning a little north of Augusta, Georgia. 

So far there have been at least 58 reports of tornadoes from the Midwest to Southeast Friday and Saturday. 

After today and tonight, the storm should finally depart the United States after leaving that trail of wildfire destruction, dust storm debris, tornadoes and flooding. 

New storms will cross the nation in the coming weeks with more packets of severe storms, tornadoes and wind, but these next storms so far do not look as intense as the one the U.S. has just endured.

VERMONT WARMTH/FLOODING

The "Woof River" what I call the tiny stream running
by my St. Albans, Vermont home, was running high
and muddy yesterday amid rapid snowmelt and
temperatures in the upper 60s. If you look closely
at the black soil on the left, you can see daffodil
shoots starting to come up. The area in this
photo was buried in snow and ice just three days ago. 

After a very warm Saturday and overnight last night, water levels in rivers are starting to rise.  Those water levels were still well below flood level this morning, but will continue to come up today as the snow continues to melt away.

High temperatures Saturday reached 67 degrees in Burlington, and 69 degrees in Bennington, and all the way to 70 degrees in Rutland.  As of 7 a.m. this morning, the temperature had not gotten below 50 degrees in Burlington. That's warmer than I've seen on some July early mornings. 

The expected rainfall has been postponed just a bit until the end of today.  That will allow temperatures to hit 70 degrees in the warmer towns today. That's a good 30 degrees above normal for this time of year, so it's pretty incredible. 

The bottom line to all this is remaining snow will continue melting very fast and contribute to the risk offloading. 

So far, flood forecasts call for a few rivers to reach at least minor flooding.  The Mad River is expected to get to 10.5 feet tonight, which is just a little under moderate flood stage.  The Otter Creek in Center Rutland, and the Missisquoi River in North Troy are also forecast to reach flood stage.

Other rivers - so far - are forecast to not quite reach flood stage.  However, water levels this morning were generally a little higher than predicted. Which means it's possible that flood levels could get a little higher than this morning's flood crest predictions. 

We'll also have to keep an eye on smaller streams and creeks.  Rapid snow melt can turn a small stream into a torrent pretty quickly.  We could see local washouts and culvert damage. Especially since things are still unstable from last summer's flood. That could make things a little more susceptible to damage. 

One bit of good news is predicted rainfall tonight in Vermont is a little less than previous forecast. Still, it will be briefly heavy, with a chance of a rumble of thunder.  Expect a third of an inch to an inch of rain in most place in the Green Mountain State between now and midday Monday. 

As of this morning, there's still ice on some of the river.  We still might see some ice jams, which can cause some rapid local flooding.  I think the most likely river to see any ice jams is the Missisquoi.

Needless to say, a flood watch remains in effect for all of Vermont through Monday evening. 

It's actually going to stay on the warm side this coming week.  Not as warm as this weekend, but still balmy for March. It looks like we might get a little more rain, too.  However, by then, so much snow will have melted that I'm not too worried about renewed flooding.

By the way, the water level of Lake Champlain is starting to rise, and will continue to do so.  But the chances of ever reaching flood stage are iffy.  It depends on how much snow and rain falls the rest of this spring, and how intensely it falls.

Flood stage is 100 feet. As of yesterday, the lake level was at 95.44 feet, up about half a foot in the sag week. That pace of lake water rise will accelerate the next few days, but will stop short of flood stage.

Lake Champlain probably won't flood significant this year unless the rest of the spring is particularly rainy and snowy.  

"Dirty Rain" In Midwest, East Blamed On Texas Duststorm

A car in Truxton, Missouri this weekend after light rain
showers mixed with dust from Texas hoisted aloft by
strong winds caused mud showers across large
areas of the Midwest and East the past few days. 

When my late father was a teenager in the 1930s, he woke up one March morning at his home in West Rutland, Vermont to find it had snowed overnight. 

Hardly an unusual occurrence in the Green Mountain State this time of year. 

But the snow wasn't white. It was brown. 

Those were the Dust Bowl days, when an unprecedented drought and poor farming practices joined forces to create immense dust storms in the Great Plains. 

These dust storms were so big that the dust carried high aloft, merged with storms further east. Those storms deposited rain and snow, mixed with the dirt in the sky carried from places like Kansas and Nebraska.

I thought of dad's story this week when I saw news reports of "dirty rain" falling this past week in places like St. Louis, Cincinnati, Charleston, West Virginia, Columbus, Ohio, Raleigh, North Carolina  and numerous other cities in the Midwest and East.

Turned out it was a similar situation to the Dust Bowl era.

The huge windbag of a storm that struck the middle of the nation last week swept New Mexico and Texas with winds gusting to more than 60 mph. Parts of western Texas and New Mexico are in extreme drought, so things out there are even dustier than usual. 

Those winds stirred up huge clouds of dust that darkened the skies and cut visibility to a mile or two in cities like El Paso, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas.  

False color satellite photo from last Friday morning. A 
powerful storm had sent clouds of dust from New Mexico
and Texas aloft. Here, the dust was concentrated high
over Oklahoma. Winds moved that dust 
eastward into areas of showers in the Midwest and
East, where it mixed with raindrops to create 
weird mud showers 

The winds were so powerful the dust was carried aloft - much like in the 1930s. That dust blew through the air over Illinois, Missouri and other states. That grime ran into lingering rain showers over the Midwest and East.  

The result was light showers of mud. 

These mudowers, I'd guess you'd call this dirty rain showers, had people wondering what the heck was going on. Residents of central Virginia, awakening Saturday morning to find their cars speckled in dirt, wondered if some nefarious agent was spraying some dangerous substance. 

Residents of Raleigh, North Carolina also found cars speckled in dirt after overnight showers. 

St. Louis, Missouri had their mud showers Friday, leaving cars and windows covered in dirt. The storm was probably a huge bonus to window washing businesses and car washes. 

There was some snow up here in Vermont during this episode. But the dust aloft did not make it this far to the north and east.  The dust aloft moved eastward through the Ohio Valley and eventually off the Mid-Atlantic coast. So the snow that fell Friday and Saturday here in Vermont was your traditional white, not brown. 

Some more snow is likely in Vermont today and tonight, but since the air flow is from frozen southern Canada,  not dusty west Texas, the snow should stay white, unless something completely  unexpected happens. 

These dirty rain storms parts of the nation have seen in recent days might not be over. Another powerful storm - perhaps even stronger than last week's is forecast to develop in the Great Plains toward next weekend. 

That storm could pull more dust from the drought zones of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and drop more mud showers, who knows?

 

Rare Cyclone Menaces Brisbane, Australia, With Damage Already Mounting

Screen grab from Sky News video shows damage
around Brisbane, Australia from Cyclone Alfred.

 A rare cyclone has blasted Brisbane, Australia's third largest city and surrounding cities Friday and Saturday, and it has already caused widespread power outages, flooding, wind damage and storm surges.

A cyclone is exactly the same as a hurricane. It's just what they call hurricanes in Australia.  

Cyclone Alfred has been menacing and damaging parts of eastern Australia for days now.  It has dumped up to 16 inches of rain on some towns. 

Brisbane was last hit by a cyclone in 1974, though there were close misses with such storms in 1990 and 2019.  Technically, Alfred didn't hit Brisbane because its strength fell just below official cyclone intensity before splashing ashore early Saturday local time. 

Video footage showed howling winds swirling past Brisbane high rises, fallen trees and flooded streets. At least 350,000 homes and businesses were without power, and it could take a week or more to get all the electricity back. Numerous houses and cars were damaged by falling trees. 

The storm moved only slowly westward into Brisbane early Saturday local time.   The winds weren't the real problem. The rain was. 

Its slow forward motion raised fears of intense flooding. Up to 16 inches of rain have fallen in parts of New South Wales already. One person is already reporting missing in the floods. Nearly 40 others had been rescued from high water at last report. 

Forecasters warn areas near Brisbane could see an additional 15 inches of rain, which could give some areas a storm total of nearly 30 inches of rain. That's a recipe for major flooding that will remain a threat for days yet.t.

Even though Alfred had moved inland and was weakening, winds in the region gusted to as high as 65 mph Saturday night near Brisbane. 

WEIRD STORM

Cyclone Alfred was weird from the beginning. 

Alfred was one of three cyclones that formed almost simultaneously in the South Pacific in late February.  Usually, you don't have three storms forming from the same large area of disturbed weather, but this was an exception.

The other two cyclones headed off in different directions, but Alfred targeted Australia.  Usually, when a cyclone targets Australia, it makes a beeline for the nation's northern or northeastern coast.

Instead, Alfred meandered slowly southward toward Brisbane. Its slow pace ensured that its battering waves caused extra serious amounts of beach erosion, since storm waves hit the beaches day after day. 

It also ensure heavy rains in eastern Australia for days, causing the extensive flooding. 

It's hard to say whether climate change influenced Cyclone Alfred. It's not the only weird cyclone to ever hit Australia. Odd things just sometimes happen. 

It's possible cyclones might be able to get further south along Australia's coast than they once did.  

Ocean temperatures off of southeastern Australia are usually too chilly to support tropical storms. But climate change is heating up the oceans, which expands the area in which tropical system can survive.

Also, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture than a cooler one. So it's possible Alfred's rains were a little heavier than they would have been without climate change. 

One more weird thing about Cyclone Alfred. It was supposed to actually be named Cyclone Anthony. 

However, the Prime Minister of Australia is named Anthony Albanese. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology thought it best not to name the storm the same as the prime minister, hence the switcharoo to Alfred. 

Video:

A tour around Brisbane as the worse of Cyclone Alfred hit the city. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

 

United States Remained Frigid This Winter While Much Of The Rest Of The World Stays Balmy

Schematic from climate.gov of how cold waves work
Left image is when the jet stream keeps the polar vortex
way up north, preventing much cold air in the winter
from coming south. The right image which has
happened frequently this winter is when the jet
stream gets wonky and wavy, allowing parts of the
polar vortex to get closer, supplying frigid Arctic air.

The world's cold spot this winter, perhaps figuratively, and also literally, it turns out, is the United States. 

No, we weren't colder than the North Pole. But relative to average, the coldest temperatures on Earth seemed to often centered on the Grand Ole US of A. 

January featured a cold continental United States with a warm rest of the world. 

While others around the globe were basking in warmth, Gulf Coast cities like Lafayette, New Orleans, Mobile and Pensacola were experiencing an unprecedented snowstorm and all-time record cold 

February has continued the trend. 

Warm spells continue to grace much of the world, with record heat in places like Brazil, Mozambique, southeast Asia, even Lapland and the Arctic north of Scandinavia. 

Meanwhile, places like North Dakota and Montana were in the 30s below zero.  Dangerous wind chills extended down to the Gulf Coast. 

Along the North Carolina and Virginia coasts last week deep snow blanketed the region. Virginia Beach had as much as a foot of snow. Norfolk, Virginia had 10 inches of snow. 

As the Washington Post reports, a remote area about 50 miles northwest of Pierre, South Dakota was, as of a few days ago was the world's coldest place relative to average. Sure, other places were colder, but none were as much as 11 degrees below average.

We in Vermont have at partly shared in this chill, but at least it hasn't been as bad as other parts of nation. 

Much of the U.S. - including Vermont have seen in the past few days temperatures moderate for now. North Dakota is seeing some above freezing temperatures and it has gotten as high as the 50s in South Dakota. Vermont is expecting temperatures near 40 this week. 

But it doesn't look like we're quite done. The weather pattern in early March will revert at least briefly to that cold one again for the United States. And that winter chill could last at least into mid-March. 

REASONS

The particular chilly weather in the United States especially compared to what's going on in the rest of the world, has revived the discussion and debate over whether climate change is paradoxically sending us these cold blasts. 

We know there's always been bitter Arctic cold waves in the United States, and the basic weather pattern that causes them is usually the same. A big northward bulge in the jet stream forms over western North America. 

That helps create a corresponding sharp southward dip in the jet stream down into the central and eastern United States.  Meanwhile there's the polar vortex, that big upper air swirl of frigid air that usually spins somewhere in the far northern hemisphere in the winter. 

This weather pattern I described displaces the polar vortex southward, closer to the United States. Or the pattern stretches the polar vortex into the shape of a peanut, with one end of the "peanut" close to the U.S. and causing a big chill. 

Bottom line: this polar vortex/jet stream set up  funnels the frigid air direct from near the North Pole to the eastern half to two thirds of the United States. 

As the Washington Post describes it, this winter is probably the most intense siege of polar vortex type weather in the United States since 2014. Though the cold in 2014 was more consistent and much worse than what we have experienced this winter. 

Of course, a bit of a factor why this winter has been a little milder than 2014 is that the whole world has continued to warm since then.  So it's a bit harder for it to get as cold as it once did - though there's always exceptions. 

CLIMATE CHANGE?

A hot topic that's been going on for years now is Arctic warming. The Arctic is getting toastier much faster than the mid-latitudes. Is this causing the jet stream and the polar vortex to get weird, taking more excursions south toward the United States or Europe more often than it used to?

The question is still not settled.  

There are also picky details regarding those unsettled questions that are still being hashed out. We know that winters in general have been getting warmer almost everywhere. But some studies suggest some areas - the northeastern U.S. among them - seem to be having much more variable winters.  Some are super warm, a few are pretty intense. 

Even there, it gets muddied. Researchers know the winters are getting milder. They've also found that the absolute coldest temperature in each winter is warming at an even faster clip. 

VERMONT EFFECTS

Our winter is not over, but like much of the rest of the nation, the vigorous winter of 2025 seems like a mild April breeze compared to 2014.  The polar vortex was a frequent visitor to the Northeast in the winter of 2015, which locally was more harsh than the year before. 

So 2015 is the most recent winter that was extremely cold. February that year had an average temperature of 7.6 degrees the third coldest on record behind 1934 and 1979. 

Depending on what this week's anticipated warm spell will do, February, 2025 might turn out to be the coldest since 2015, but will be far, far, milder than that year. 

February, 2025 will be snowier than than 2015, when 22.7 inches fell. We're already about nine inches ahead of 2015 this month.  

However, in 2015, the storm track was just to our east. Late January and February was the historic "snowmageddon" in Boston, when 95 inches of snow fell within a month. 

The bottom line for Vermont is this winter will end up as a more "traditional" one than we've seen in recent years, but it will be far, far from the coldest. And not nearly the snowiest, either, unless we have an enormous surprise in March and April. 

 

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.  

Baked Alaska: How That Frigid Northern State Not So Frigid This Winter, Compared To The Lower 48.

Not something you see very often: Water on top of ice
during a January thaw in normally frigid interior 
Alaska. Photo taken last week near Fairbanks. Photo
from National Weather Service office, Fairbanks. 

The Washington Post just had an interesting piece comparing the kind of January Alaska has had compared to the rest of us in the tropical Lower 48. 

Compared to Alaska, the Lower 48 ain't so tropical.  There's quite a role reversal going on. 

Anchorage, Alaska is having one of its warmest Januaries on record. With just a few days left in the month, the average temperature for January is 29.3 degrees, or a whopping 13 or so degrees warmer than normal.

Anchorage in January has been warmer than such cities as Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Louisville. 

We also had that famous snowstorm along the Gulf Coast earlier this month, which means New Orleans and Pensacola, Florida have had more snow this January than Anchorage. 

It's not just Anchorage. Fairbanks, in interior Alaska, is normally known as a forbidding icebox, where low temperatures often get into the 40s below zero and sometimes in the 50s to near 60 below. 

For only the second time on record, Fairbanks had a low temperature on a January day that was above freezing. (33 on January 25). On seven days this month,  the temperature in Fairbanks rose above 32 degrees. 

The normal high during January is 3 above zero and the normal low is about 15 below.  

Meanwhile, most of the Lower 48 has been unusually cold this January. That's especially true in the southeastern half of the United States. Though that region is having a mild spell in the closing days of this month, it will still be among the colder Januaries on record in much of the South.

The only regions of the Lower 48 that have been warmer than average are Maine, and large sections of Nevada, California, Oregon and Utah. 

REASONS AND OUTLOOK

The Alaska warmth is probably a mix between a fluke and climate change. A persistent northward bulge in the jet stream has kept Alaska on the mild side. A corresponding dip in the jet stream has pushed frigid air that's normally up in Alaska and northern Canada down into the United States. 

A marine heat wave, which is a zone of much warmer than normal ocean temperatures, has been ongoing in the Pacific from near Japan to the Gulf of Alaska. The marine heat wave is likely at least partly due to climate change and has probably been bolstering the Alaska balminess.

Plus, cold waves are in general less cold than they once were and hot spells are hotter in this age of climate change. That's likely a factor that has caused record heat in Alaska.  

The cold temperatures in the Lower 48 have broken few record lows, except near the Gulf Coast, where a previously unheard of snow cover combined with clear nighttime skies caused all time record lows as cold as 1 below zero not far from the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana. 

(Editor's note: Yes, the Trump administration has renamed it Gulf of America, but international regulators, as well as the Associated Press style book still call it the Gulf of Mexico, so that's what we'll do here). 

The Alaska winter warmth is expected to mostly continue for awhile yet. The latest National Weather Service extended forecast out to two weeks calls for continued above normal temperatures in most of Alaska at least until a tad before Valentine's Day.  

For the Lower 48, the outlook is mixed, with variable conditions over the next two weeks. The northwestern United States is most likely to stay on the chilly side. 

Theses kinds of things do have a tendency to even out, usually. Although everything is skewed by climate change, I'm sure the Lower 48 will have its torrid hot spells in 2025 while Alaska will at least at times, revert back to its usual chilly vibe