A Little Vermont Snow Today In Advance Of The Next Powerful Storm

Trees and branches rest on the roof of a St. Albans,
Vermont house Wednesday after the severe wind
storm blew through. 

 It appears crews are out today, trying to get as much power restored to homes and businesses in Vermont before the next storm Friday night and early Saturday undoes all their work.  

As of 8 a.m. today, about 7,500 customers, mostly in Addison, Chittenden and Franklin counties, still had no power. 

That's down from a peak of nearly 30,000 yesterday morning. There's a lot of people out trying to fix things. I just saw a couple Green Mountain Power trucks head up the hill by my house, probably headed toward power outages near Fairfield or Bakersfield.

Damage reports continue to come in. Three planes flipped over in the wind at Middlebury State Airport, and there was some damage at the airport in Rutland, too. Given the extent of the damage, I'm very pleasantly surprised that I haven't heard of any serious injuries.

The highest wind gust I've heard of so far in the storm early Wednesday was 83 mph near Hinesburg.  Given the widespread damage I saw here in St. Albans, I'd say top gusts here reached to 70 mph or perhaps a little more. 

Video of significant storm damage in St. Albans is at the bottom of this post. 

Today will be a slightly snowy calm before the next storm.  Light snow and snow showers should fill in this afternoon and evening for most of us.  Accumulations look like they'll barely make it to an inch in most spots, except two or three inches in the central and northern Green Mountains.

Then trouble starts:

BIG STORM, PART 2

Green Mountain Power crews repair lines in St.
Albans, Vermont Wednesday next to a large
spruce tree felled by the severe wind storm. 

I'm impressed by what a twin to the first storm the upcoming one is turning out to be.  A burst of snow, then the high winds, ending in a period of rain and lighter winds. 

 Even the timing starting Friday is the same as the last one, with snow starting in the late afternoon, picking up in the evening. Then a late night blast of wind, diminishing by dawn or so. 

Big Storm #2 thankfully looks a little weaker than Big Storm #1, but it'll still cause some real trouble. 

Already, a high wind watch is in effect from Friday evening to Saturday morning with gusts up to 60 mph. The high wind watch for now is limited to the immediate western slopes of the Green Mountains and doesn't cover an area as big as the last storm did.  

However, I imagine high wind watches or warnings or wind advisories will go out to other parts of Vermont as well. Most of us will have quite a windy Friday night - but not as bad as early Wednesday was.

I expect additional problems with trees and power lines, but not as much as we saw yesterday. There should be less structural damage to homes, businesses and barns, too. At least let's hope so.

At this point, snowfall Friday and overnight should be roughly the same as the storm we just had, or maybe a little less. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington is taking an initial shot, telling us there might be a couple inches in the Champlain Valley and three to seven further east.

Just like in this past storm, this one will create a bit of a net gain in snow depth in mid and high elevations of the Green Mountain State 

It still looks like it'll go over to rain in most of Vermont overnight. But it won't be a terrible amount. Despite how soggy things got yesterday with a drenching morning rain, we're not primed for any real flooding with this. That's despite the fact Vermont rivers are running sort of high now. We simply won't get enough rain to trigger trouble. 

WINTER FINALLY ARRIVES

Big Storm #2 is going to trigger quite a weather pattern change. The weather in Vermont has been like November since, well, November.  We really haven't had any hard core winter weather.

This will change, as it will turn seasonably cold after the storm, then probably even colder. We haven't had more than two or three days in a row that stay below freezing this season, as of yet. That will change starting Sunday, when we should have at least a week - and probably more - of such weather. 

We haven't had any truly cold nights yet, either. The coldest it's been all winter in Burlington is 13 degrees, which is insane for this late in the season. I'm expecting by the middle or end of next week, we'll at least get into the single digits at night, and maybe below zero.

That's not odd for January, but it's a real switch from what we've had. 

There's a possible storm about Wednesday, but don't hang your hat on that just yet. The computer models are all over the place with that one, and many take the possible system out to sea to far south to affect Vermont much. 

We'll just get through Friday night's storm and work from there. 

Video: 

It started as a gusty snowstorm, Tuesday evening, but got intense overnight. On Wednesday, I toured around St. Albans, Vermont looking at the damage. It kept getting worse and worse the more I looked.

Click on this link to view, or, if you see image below, click on that. 

More Scattered Vermont Flooding Friday; Beautiful Sky Heralds End To Rain Nightmare

After flash flooding caused damage in Enosburgh Falls,
Vermont Friday, this peaceful scene greeted 
residents as the storms departed. 

 As expected, locally torrential rains triggered renewed flooding in a few spots in Vermont Friday, but that's pretty much over, and I think we can start breathing a sigh of relief.  

Most of Friday's trouble was in northwestern Vermont, which had been mostly spared all the flood grief we've been through for the past two weeks. 

Flooding was concentrated in and around Enosburgh Falls and Richford. Two sections of Route 105 were temporarily closed. One was in the Richford and East Richford area. The other was near the Dairy Center just north of Enosburgh Falls. 

Route 108 just above the dam in Enosburgh Falls was also closed for a time The basement of the Enosburgh Falls Village Offices was flooded and being pumped out Friday evening. 

Other flash flood warnings went up in parts of Addison and Rutland counties, and I'm sure there were a few washouts here and there win that neck of the woods.  So far though, no reports of super serious damage. 

Perhaps as a sign from the heavens that the two week old flood siege in Vermont might be ending, the sky over the Enosburgh area turned spectacular after the flood. As black clouds rumbled with thunder to the northeast, brilliant sun cutting in from the west lit up the trees and farm fields in bright electric green.

Brilliant rainbows lit up near the mountains. 

Indeed, for a welcome change, there are very few signs of trouble in the Vermont weather forecast. 

WHAT'S AHEAD

Today will be delightfully cool, with many of us not even making it out of the 70s.  There will be some sunshine, but also the risk of showers

For once, there's no need to freak out over those chances of rain. For most of us, any showers will be light and brief. The "hardest hit" towns today might see a quick downpour that could drop almost a quarter inch of rain - far too little to set off any new flood worries. So we're good. 

Patches of fog glow in the sun on hillsides near Enosburgh
Falls, Vermont Friday after a flooding thunderstorm
departed the area. 

Tonight will be probably be the coldest night for many of us since the third week in June. Almost everybody will get below 60 degrees. It will be a wonderful sleeping night. 

No complaints about Sunday. Expect sunshine and temperatures in the low 80s with manageable humidity. Perfect! 

The only trouble spot I see on the weather horizon is Tuesday. But I'm not too worried. We have a pretty typical mid-summer weak cold front coming in, which will probably set off a few showers and storms. 

I suppose there might be an isolated wind or water problem with Tuesday's weather, but it shouldn't be nearly as worrisome as all the recent storms we had.

It'll be on the warm side all week, with temperatures possibly reaching the upper 80s for the second half of the week.  

Long range forecasts are hinting at - but not guaranteeing - some actual cooler than normal temperatures as we open the month of August. If that happens, we'll be an exception. Most of the rest of the United States will continue baking in hot - sometimes dangerous hot weather 

April Heat Wave Finally Ending; We Might See Highs Like That Again Until Summer

It was hot again in northwest Vermont for one last day on 
Sunday. Also a bit more humid than on previous days,
so we saw a few of those billowy cumulus clouds
that are common in mid-summer, but less so now 

 It felt like a balmy summer morning in Vermont this Monday as the lingering effects of our record April heat wave remained. 

If you missed the warm weather this morning, you're (mostly) out of luck for probably the next several weeks. 

The heat over-performed in northwestern Vermont again on Sunday. Temperatures reached 83 degrees in Burlington. 

That wasn't quite a record high, but still a full 27 degrees above normal. Sunday's high and low temperature, combined with somewhat higher humidity than previous days, made it a perfectly average day - for mid-July. 

There were even those puffy, sort of towering cumulus clouds that are most common in mid-summer. I saw a couple isolate small air mass thunderstorms tower up in the Adirondacks, too.  You can get thunderstorms in April every once in awhile, but these partly heat generated ones are something for this early in the season. 

The cooling will start today as rain moves in.  High temperatures for the day will be this morning, with mostly of us getting into the 60s.  Which won't be hard to do since many of us were already there at dawn.

Temperatures will probably drift downward into the 50s this afternoon.   A cold front this evening will ensure we  go down further. 

By tomorrow and Wednesday, highs will only be in the 45 to 50 degree range. That's somewhat colder than normal for this time of year. It will feel like yet another shock to the system. Northwest winds will make it feel even colder.

Mountain tops will even get a little snow. That's not at all odd for mid-April, but it's definitely a change in the weather, 

We need rain after that weird hot spell, but I'm not impressed with the amounts forecast. Northwestern Vermont looks like they might get between a half inch and two thirds of an inch. The rest of the state seems destined to see a half inch or less.

The rain will dampen the tree pollen, which has been sky high in recent days, as anyone with allergies knows. Everything started bursting forth with flowers and buds and leaves all at once. The allergen onslaught was impressive. 

The hottest temperature - at least in Burlington - during this bizarre heat wave was 88 degrees. We might not see temperature that warm until June or July.  

The weather patter has shifted to one that will mostly keep us chilly for the next couple of weeks at least. We might one last brief, quick squirt of warm air Friday, but that might be it for awhile.  

The Last Warm Autumn Sunset

Trees glow in golden light from a low angle sun Saturday
afternoon in St. Albans, Vermont. The dark clouds above
signal the end of a remarkable warm spell, and the start
of winter, or at least Winter Lite 

 Late Saturday, afternoon,  I said goodbye to a beautiful Vermont autumn and said hello to winter. 

Yes, it's still autumn, but winter, at least Winter Lite, almost always hits the Green Mountain State in sometime in November. 

It's hitting right on schedule, really. 

The opening week and a half of this November felt like never-ending summer, what with bouts of record high temperatures and periods of strangely high humidity. 

As forecast, that all started crashing down with the setting sun Saturday. The rest of the weekend, and probably the rest of November, would be quite different.

 Unlike the first 12 days of the month, Sunday was completely in character with November: Dark, overcast, drizzly, cold, with snow flurries eventually mixing into the picture. It was a little brighter on Monday, but the air had a definite cold season chill to it. 

Amid still warm temperatures late Saturday afternoon, I knew this change was coming. As if to announce it Ma Nature gave us what I would call the last warm sunset of the autumn.

It wasn't the sky that was so interesting, but the landscape was. A shaft of golden sun broke through the clouds before sinking behind the Adirondacks.  It lit up the bare trees, still wet from the out of season, early morning tropical downpours. 

The sun on the trees gave a warm, golden glow, as if to say, this is your last chance to enjoy a balmy atmosphere for awhile. Above this golden glow, dark, cold clouds competed with warmer looking sunlit ones. The battle to turn cold had started, and the cold was the inevitable winner.

For a hint of what I saw, click on this link to see it on video. Or, if you see the link to the YouTube video below, click on that. (Not all devices let you see that image)

Pattern Change To Unleash More Severe Weather In South ; Vermont To Stay (Mostly) Even Keeled

It looked stormy, but really wasn't amid balmy conditions
Tuesday in Bethany Beach, Delaware.  A change in 
the weather pattern will rout the springlike conditions
from most of the U.S over the New Year's weekend.
This could trigger severe weather in the South.

 The summer in winter that has engulfed the southeastern third of the nation for over a week now will finally come to an end as we ring in the new year, but not before yet another severe weather outbreak or two threatens the South.  

For those in my home base in Vermont, the upcoming pattern change is set to be much less dramatic, as we're not that off the rails to begin with.  

We'll go from weather that's a little warmer than normal to conditions that are a little cooler than normal. But nothing we haven't seen before. More on that further down in this post. 

Record highs condition to fall across the South, and will continue to do so through New Year's Eve. (On the edge of the southern heat, it was a very balmy 60 degrees or so at my temporary perch in Bethany Beach, Delaware).

The northwestern United States will remain cold for the next several days.

The change is coming as the big dip in the jet stream responsible for the cold and winter storms in the West shifts east, pushes east across the United States through New Year's Day.  That will put winter back into the picture coast to coast, though of course it won't be so bad in the South.

Severe storms, including tornadoes, seem likely in the 
south today, especially in areas shaded in yellow 
and orange. 

What will be bad in the South is what will occur during the change.  Incredible warmth and humidity for this time of year  has pooled in the Southeast.  When the cold air arrives to rout the summer air, severe storms and tornadoes are a good bet.

An initial disturbance - sort of a sentinel of the impending weather pattern change - will cross the middle of the nation today.  Swaths of the South, especially northern Alabama and Mississippi and southern Tennessee, are under the gun later today for severe storms and probably a few tornadoes.

That will cap off a December with a record number of tornadoes.  

Once the main push of cold air starts to make its move, another outbreak of severe storms and tornadoes seems a good bet in the Southeast New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

VERMONT IMPACTS

Vermont will continue to muddle through mostly cloudy weather and temperatures on the warm side for this time of year. Nothing anywhere near record breaking, but still on the mild side.

As the National Weather Service office in South Burlington notes, the pattern change will carry a storm system that will probably pass over or very near Vermont over the weekend.

Depending upon whether it goes a little north or a little south, we will either see mostly mixed precipitation or mostly rain, unfortunately. Forecasters will need to get a better handle on the storm's expected path in the next couple of days before we can get a more solid forecast.

What's clear is true winter air will rush in starting Sunday and continuing into the first half of the first week of the New Year.  This won't be extreme by any stretch of the imagination, but I can see some areas staying in the teens for highs early next week, with some below zero temperatures popping up at night. 

Pattern Change: Looks Like Finally A (Mostly) Dry Week In Vermont For A Change

My shed got a new roof last week to replace the leaky,

old damaged shingle roof. An inch of rain yesterday

and last night came down, but for the first time in

ages, no puddle inside this shed after a rain! 

 Flash flood warnings in southern Vermont from  last night have mercifully expired, and the threat of high water there is waning fast.   

In northern Vermont, which has been drier, moisture wrapping around the departing storm system dumped around an inch of rain yesterday and especially overnight. 

That's great news since far northern areas are still in drought, even if southern Vermont has been drowning. 

Now, a pattern change.  For the first time since probably June, Vermont is in for a largely sunny, dry week.  

For southern Vermont, this is great news, as they've had enough flooding for awhile. Vermont officials say that damage costs from the recent floods there easily top $1 million, and they want FEMA to come up and take a look-see.

This is a preliminary step toward another federal disaster declaration from Vermont.  Seems almost every year we do get such a disaster. 

On the bright side, although there was probably some damage from water in the flash flood warning zones of the southern Green Mountains last night, it appears as if it wasn't nearly as bad as Thursday night. 

Of course, if it does rain later this week, it's most likely in southern Vermont. Still, unless something dramatically changes, there will be no blockbuster rains down in that area for awhile

Today will also be the last day for awhile that is much cooler than normal for the season. 

A general southward dip in the jet stream has kept cloudy, wet skies over most of the East for weeks, leading to those relatively cool, cloudy conditions we've dealt with. 

More of a ridge is forming in the East now, aided by a resurgent Bermuda High.  A stalled front, held in position by that burgeoning Bermuda High, will probably drape the central and southern East Coast all week, but it won't affect us too much. 

Starting tomorrow, temperatures will be back to normal for this time of year, up near 80 in a lot of spots. By late week and the weekend, it'll even be slightly warmer than normal (lot to mid 80s by day) and it will feel more humid, too.

As advertised, summer is not quite over yet, even after our bout with "pre-autumn"

Big Storm Will (Eventually) Plunge Us Into Winter

Forecast map for next Tuesday shows a large storm
over the eastern United States. This will mark a pattern
shift that will truly introduce winter to our 
neck of the woods.

We here in Vermont lately have been getting quick tastes of winter, followed quickly by the usual damp, cool, but not wintry November weather. 

That state of affairs will continue for a few more days, but real winter is coming for sure. Very likely next week.

A pattern change, especially this time of year when we expect a transition to winter, is usually heralded by a big storm that whips the pieces of the puzzle into shape. 

Lo and behold, a big storm is about to form.  It'll start to take shape in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday, and then blow up into a really strong storm that ride northward along the western slopes of the Appalachians.

While details are still to be worked out, it looks like a lot of rain and wind is in store for the Great Lakes and eastern United States. There could be a decent amount of snow to the west. 

For us, the path of the storm will initially make things quite mild for us to start the week.  And probably wet. And windy.  At this point the heaviest rain looks like it will go up through the eastern half of New England, but we'll get our share. 

This storm will snap the weather pattern into a new configuration, one with a pretty deep dip in the jet stream over the eastern half of the United States.

With the storm to our west, colder air will oddly start to work in from the south, not the north mid week. That's because the icy air will need to head south from Canada to the west of the storm, then wrap around the bottom of the storm then come back up from the southwest, starting Tuesday night.

It won't be particularly cold at first, but the chill will deepen as we head toward the end of next week.  The orientation of the dip in the jet stream suggests it's possible - certain not definite but possible - that it could make create decent snow-making nor'easter for us. 

Unlike the quick cold spells we've had this month that only last a day or two, the wintry weather will last longer. It will be December, after all.  Also, any cold weather we get toward the end of next week doesn't look earth-shattering. It'll be just pretty much the kind of conditions we expect in December.

We of course don't know whether this will turn into hard core winter for the rest of the season, or we will have mild spells worked in as well.  

Real winter usually settles into Vermont in early December. This year, it looks to be right on schedule. 

 

Weather Pattern Change: Horrible News For West, Not Bad News For Vermonters

As it tends to do, the weather pattern can get a little more variable in the autumn, and things are going to shake up a little bit over the next few days.  Unfortunately, that pattern will then get somewhat stuck for awhile, which has some dangerous implications for the western United States. 

A dim sun, obscured by lots of western wildfire
smoke overhead, sets behind power lines
Tuesday evening in St. Albans, Vermont.

All of us are aware that the west continues to burn.  Plumes of smoke are still crossing the nation.  That's why it was so hazy overhead yesterday here in Vermont. Another big huge puff of smoke blew our way.

The west will see another big, hot ridge of high pressure bloom overhead. The process will be gradual over the next few days, but by the very end of September and the first week or more of October, that heat ridge will be well established. 

Rainfall in recent days has helped somewhat in the western half of Washington and northwestern Oregon, but everybody else on the West Coast has been pretty dry. California doesn't normally see much in the rainfall until much later in the autumn anyway.  

This upcoming pattern will bring the heat to the west, and also east winds blowing toward the Pacific Ocean.  You don't want that. Firefighters need cool, damp breezes from the Pacific Ocean. That doesn't look like that's in the cards for the upcoming couple of weeks. 

Cold fronts and storms forming much east of the Rockies will help send pushes of very strong, dry east winds into parts of California and maybe Oregon and western Washington at times .

This is a recipe for more mega-fires, as if the West hasn't seen enough already. We know California has already had a record fire year, and they are now just entering what is normally peak fire season.  This won't be good. 

There will be a corresponding big southward dip in the jet stream with this set up. That will keep the Midwest, and eventually probably the Northeast cooler than normal. 

It also gives us Vermonters a shot of getting some needed rain. Up until now, Burlington, Vermont is on pace for having the driest September on record. The driest September on record has only 0.68 inches of rain, in 1927.

Not-fun fact: September of 1927 was super dry, but most of us know what happened a couple months later. The Great Flood of 1927 hit on November 3-4, 1927.  I'm not at all saying history will repeat itself, but still, shudder. 

Anyway, this shifting weather pattern gives us some shots at possibly decent rains to close out the month. I, for one, am happy we're probably losing a chance to break another weather record. I want rain! 

So does practically everyone else in Vermont. The state's vast forests are usually kind of hard to burn, That's especially true if you're talking about deep, serious burns that don't just race across the surface.

The organic material in Vermont forests usually stays wet enough so that nothing beyond leaf litter burns during occasion dry spells.  Our tree filled landscape has more than once been called the "asbestos forest."

It's so dry now that we're starting to get the rare fires that burn deep under logs and roots. There's such a fire burning now near Killington, though fortunately it was discovered early so it didn't spread much beyond a half acre.  In a worst case scenario, this type of fire can blow up to become a real nasty one. 

The upcoming weather pattern makes it more likely, but not definite, that we will have more rainfalls in the first half of October. We shall see.

Long range forecasts, as I always note, are dicey. So there will be shifts in the forecast heading into October. 

I sure hope that heat ridge in the west is being overdone by computer forecasting models. By the same token, I sure hope we enter a rainy pattern heading into the autumn to replenish ground water reserves here in Vermont. 

If there's another bright side, there are hints that California could receive some rain in mid-October. We shall see.