"Smoke Bomb" Might Have Saved Vermont/Northern New England From Widespread Severe Weather

My sister in Shrewsbury, Vermont sent
me several photos of storm damage
in that town. Here's one showing a 
large uprooted tree. However, the
storms weren't as widespread as 
forecasted, likely due to the 
thick wildfire smoke in the air

 We wake up this morning to find our big storms we were supposed to get last night didn't happen to the extent everyone was worried about. 

There were some strong storms in the Northeast Kingdom during the evening. And a collection of supercell thunderstorms  swept from northwest New York through south central Vermont early this morning.  Hail up to the size of baseballs hit St. Lawrence County, New York, and a roof was blown off a house there. 

In Vermont early this morning, tree damage was reported in place like Brandon, Pittsford, Orwell and Shoreham. where several large trees were snapped off. In Shrewsbury, numerous fallen trees blocked town roads and the power was out

 Trees blew down between Springfield and Weathersfield, blocking both northbound lanes of Interstate 91.  One southbound lane was also closed. Southern New Hampshire also had some storm damage. Parts of the region had a big lightning show. 

This wasn't the big scary storm outbreak we were expecting.  That's a good thing, Far fewer of us are picking up the pieces than we feared. 

However, that things didn't get as wild as forecast is frustrating for the public.  Judging from social media, people were genuinely scared at yesterday's forecast.  A small hint of fear is good. It gets people to take precautions. But people were worked up. Then, in many cases, nothing happened, which leaves people saying, "What the hell?"

 Of course, people were told that not everyone would be hit by severe storms, it would just be a minority of us. But that gets lost in the hype. 

But still, as noted, this outbreak of severe weather fell well short of forecasts. I'm not blame the meteorologists. This was about as tough of a weather scenario to forecast as you can get.  And I'd suggest the wildfire smoke really threw a wrench into the severe weather forecasting. 

SMOKE

The science of factoring smoke and climate change into day to day forecasts needs work.

The sky was a sick yellow over St. Albans, Vermont
yesterday morning because of wildfire smoke.
The smoke made severe weather forecasting even
more challenging, and probably reduced the
number of severe storms in the region. 

As soon as we got up yesterday, we knew something was awry. There was a lot of smoke out there.  Fires burning in northern Minnesota and Ontario really smogged us in. 

We're now having another smoky summer. Climate change has encouraged more fires due to hotter weather and in many places, drier conditions. 

Since the problem is newish, I don't think the computer models handle smoke forecasts well. Especially since the amounts of smoke the fires belch out changes often and unpredictably. So sometimes we're surprised by the haze and pollution. 

It gets worse. Meteorologists and other scientists don't have a great handle on how wildfire smoke affects thunderstorm development, especially when wildfire behavior changes abruptly.  We saw that yesterday as meteorologists struggled with whether the smoke would squelch storms or not. 

During a live Facebook event last evening, National Weather Service meteorologists in South Burlington said they doubted the smoke would interfere much with storm development. Meanwhile, at NOAA's Storm Prediction Center,  NWS meteorologists issued a statement saying that while there was a very good chance of severe storm development in northern New England, widespread wildfire smoke and clouds were teaming up to inhibit storms from firing up.

This morning, responding to a question from a person on Facebook, the National Weather Service in South Burlington had a great explanation:

"The thick smoke layer was a big wildcard yesterday. Turns out, the smoke reduced instability just enough that the severe storms weren't as widespread as anticipated. Given the recency of the wildfires in southwestern Ontario  - which was the primary source of the smoke - it wasn't incorporated into the model solution very well."

In the words, the fires blew up so quickly that the computer models couldn't easily feed that information into the forecast they were spitting out. So the forecast was off.

Wildfire smoke is bad, as Captain Obvious would tell us, but it might have helped us last night by limiting storms. 

More research is needed to help us understand how wildfire smoke and thunderstorms interact. Also, we need science on how smoke affects temperature forecasts. The thickness of the smoke yesterday was unexpected, and made us cooler that we thought it would be.  The forecast high in Burlington yesterday was 97 degrees. It only made it to 88.

Smoke wasn't the only thing that created fewer storms than feared. The cold front descending from Quebec was a bit of a slowpoke, coming at us later than forecast

LOOKING AHEAD

You can tell by looking out your window that smoke is still a problem here in Vermont and a lot of other places today. An air quality alert is in effect for New York State. I imagine Vermont officials are considering it. But the bulk of the smoke is aloft.   

Some of it is down here where we breathe, so the air isn't great. It's just not as awful as it can get. Air quality was moderate across Vermont this morning, though it was flirting with "unhealthy for sensitive groups."

Northern Vermont will tend to clear out later today, but southern areas are forecast to stay socked in. Smoke will make another run at us tomorrow. 

There is a low chance of showers and weak thunderstorms today, though the Storm Prediction Center has the Northeast Kingdom in a marginal risk for severe storms. This isn't a huge threat at all, but there could be an isolated strong storm today up there. Don't hold your breath on that, though. 

Today will be warm and breezy with highs up in the 80s. 

Tomorrow

A reinforcing cold front should come through tomorrow, with a new batch of scattered showers and thunderstorms. They will be hit and miss, and the thunderstorms should be pretty much garden variety. Rainfall will be generally light, which is too bad as many of us could use a nice soaking

Wildfire smoke should make another run at us. It'll reduce air quality again. It will also make it more difficult to forecast how widespread the expected showers and storms will be. 

Friday

A nice one, as it looks now. Sunny, dry, with highs in the 70s to around 80. That will make it our coldest day since late June. I don't exactly think we'll be shivering in those temperatures, though. We still have to keep an eye on wildfire smoke. It's a little too early to figure out if that will be a factor on Friday. 

Weekend.

Looking unsettles with rain chances both days. This could change, but Sunday looks like the better of the two days. Fingers crossed, the showers might move out of Vermont early in the day Sunday to reveal increasing sunshine. The storm causing the showers will have to move just a bit faster than forecast to accomplish this, however.

New Orleans Is Sinking And Scientists Say The City Is A Terminal Case

The Tragically Hip were right: New Orleans 
IS sinking, and some researchers say the
will no longer be viable in a century or 
less because of rising sea levels
and climate change 

 Back in 1989, the fantastic Canadian band Tragically Hip released one of their greatest songs, called "New Orleans Is Sinking."   

Turns out the band was pretty prescient. 

New Orleans has always been in, at best, a standoff with the Gulf of Mexico. The low lying city has always been prone to coastal flooding, especially in recent decades as the land itself sinks and climate change has begun to raise sea levels. 

Now, we're seeing new headlines, like the lede in this story from The Guardian: 

"The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately, as the city has reached 'a point of  no return' that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a start new study has concluded."

The fossil fuel industry that is an important part of Louisiana's economy is to blame. The coastline is subsiding, sinking downward in large part by the effects of the oil and gas industry. Along with man-made levees and diversions along the Mississippi River that means silt from the river doesn't replenish the land along the coastline. 

"The delta loses roughly a football field worth of land every half hour to an hour,"  according to PBS. 

The new research says southern Louisiana will deal with three to seven meters (roughly 10 to 23 feet) sea level rise which would drown land surrounding New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

"Ultimately the main message of the study is New Orleans is not forever and we have to plan for our future and we have to start planning now," aid Dr. Torbjorn Tomqvist, a geology professor at Tulane University and lead author of the study. 

The research harkens back to a time 125,000 years ago, when the Gulf of Mexico shoreline was north of Lake Pontchartrain, about 30 miles north of New Orleans. 

In those days, global temperatures were about 0.5 to 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels and seas were 10 to 20 feet higher than today, notes Fox8 News in New Orleans. 

Climate change through the use of fossil fuels have made the world at least as warm as it was 125,000 years ago. "Tornqvist said that because of the increasing rate of sea level rise, combined with subsidence or the rate of sinking land, the Gulf one day reach that ridge again, putting much of Southeast Louisiana underwater," Fox8 News continued.

Jesse Keenan, one the paper's five co-authors said New Orleans is going to go away, no matter what. As for how long New Orleans will last, Keenan said it is likely decades, not centuries. Though they stress it's not imminent. The city won't drown this year or this decade, but several decades from now. 

"Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orlean's days are still numbered....It will be surrounded by open water, and you can't keep an island situated below sea level afloat. There's no amount of money that can do that," Keenan said.

Keenan summed it up with this gloomy assessment. "New Orleans is in terminal condition, and we need to be clear with the patient that it is terminal.....There is an opportunity for palliative care, we can transition people and the economy. We can get ahead of this."

The researchers said city, state and federal leaders should start working now to help people move away from New Orleans and environs. They recommend a coordinated effort, starting with the most vulnerable committees. The top suggestion is Plaquemines Parish, where many people live outside the levee system. 

Land loss to the sea is already driving depopulation along Louisiana's coastal areas. That area has lost residents since 2000, especially after big hurricanes. That population loss has a good chance of accelerating as the land continues to disappear and hurricanes continue to battler the Gulf Coast.  

"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! 

  

 

 

 

 

Why Are There Still Southern Snowbanks? Latent Heat Takes Time

Old snow piles take forever to melt. 

Every spring, we in Vermont see dirty, sad monuments to the past winter. 

They're in the form of those dirty, ugly slowly fading piles of snow at the edges of supermarket parking lots and back behind strip malls. The piles are a remaining bit of late winter grossness while trees bud and flowers bounce happily in the spring breezes nearby. 

This spring, people in the the southern United States had the rare opportunity to experience these fading remembrances of winter and they were freaking out. 

Usually when it snows in the south, it's usually a wet, heavy slop that's so close to water anyway that it melts quickly. Or it's a quick shot of fluffy, usually a couple inches at most.

This winter, a huge swath of the South, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic States got basically snowy cement in January. It was a dense mess of snow, lots of sleet, all frozen together by a round of freezing rain. 

In February, southerners freaked out this mess wasn't melting, despite temperatures occasionally poking well above freezing. The conspiracy theories swirled. It wasn't melting, so it wasn't "real" snow. The government, the corporations, the oligarchs were doing.....something.

But there's reasons why that snow and ice didn't melt fast. We'll get to that in a minute. 

Then, the dirty icy "monuments" in the parking lots in the South remained well into March. That's normal for us in Vermont, but it's completely bizarre for people in Tennessee, or Virginia or even Maryland and New Jersey.   

The conspiracy theories started again. Snow always melts way before now! Something is wrong! say the worried conspiracists.  Even if people didn't believe the conspiracy theories, they still remarked about black piles of debris in Philadelphia in late March that were in fact leftover snow piles. 

Montclair, New Jersey residents are annoyed by lingering snow dumps in parks.  The snow was removed from streets in the winter, and left in the parks. As of earlier this week, much of the snow was still there, covered in grime and flecked liberally with trash. Big piles of "snowcrete" remained at the airport in Baltimore as April arrived. 

Now all these residents get to enjoy what we Vermonters do: On top of our mud season, the rotting piles of dirty snow  in parking lots and the grimy puddles surrounding them are as much a scene of spring as crocuses and budding trees.

Big old snow piles need a lot of what is known as latent heat of fusion to completely melt.  Latent heat of fusion is just the energy needed to turn ice from a solid into a water a liquid. That's not the same as temperature. It's not a matter of just heating up the ice. Energy has to go into the process of converting ice to water. 

According to the Boston Globe via Mental Floss: 

The piles are dense and heavy, especially since they formed in large part from sleet in addition to some snow. The piles were plopped there, become even more dense and heavy. The snow closer to the surface  starts acting as an insulator for the snow buried further down. The compact snow requires more energy to dissipate.

If you really want to get rid of an old ugly snow pile, you can spread it out with a shovel or backhoe. If more surface is exposed to the air, it will melt faster. If you don't have the energy to do that, pray for rain.

A well soaked snow pile melts faster than one that sits out there day after dry, sunny day .

And it could be worse. In the winter of 2015, Boston had epic amounts of snow, we're talking several feet in a few weeks. The city piled snow in back lots in a desperate attempt to get it off the streets. Not all of that 2015 snow melted until July.

Sea Level Rise Is Worse Than Thought, New Research Shows

Sea levels are actually higher than thought because of a 
mismatch in research assumptions. Predictions for the
effects of sea levels due to climate change 
will need to be adjusted. 

Sea level rise, one of the most expensive symptoms of climate change might well be worse than feared, new research shows. 

The problem is that sea levels are already higher than we thought because of mistaken research assumptions. 

According to USA Today:

"The new research, published March 4, in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature, found that more than 90% of the existing sea-level studies use a reference sea level that is lower than the actual sea level along the coast. That means already dire projections about sea level rise might be underestimating the risk." 

Those studies underestimated baseline coastal water heights by an average of about a foot. Researchers studied hundreds of scientific studies and hazard assessments to arrive at this conclusion. The cause, according to the Associated Press, is a mismatch between the way sea and land altitudes are measured. 

Study co-author Philip Minderhoud, a hydrogeology professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, said a "methodological blind spot" between the different ways those two things are measured. 

Many studies assume sea levels without waves or currents, when the reality at the water's edge is of oceans constantly roiled bye wind, tides, currents, changing temperatures and things like El Nino, Minderhoud said, as the AP reported. 

 The AP continues:

"Adjusting to a more accurate coastal height baseline means that if seas rise by a little more than 3 feet - as some studies suggest will happen by the end of the century - waters could inundate up to 37%k more land and threaten 77 million to 132 million more people, the study said."

As you can see, this means mitigation plans for future sea level increases are obsolete before they're even needed. 

Some scientists say the study might be exaggerating the problem, but even so, this is just yet another complication as worsening effects of climate change loom. 

Also, more recent sea level studies are taking into account the discrepancy, so chances are future warnings about sea level rise will be more accurate.  

Oligarchs' Horrible Plan To Turn Our Nights Into Never-Ending Days

Tech companies want to launch a bunch of satellites that
would reflect sunlight back to Earth at night over
specific locations. Taken together and adding in
proposals by SpaceX to put up perhaps a million
satellites would largely take away our ability
to enjoy the night sky

As dystopian as things seem now, the oligarchy class wants to take away our nights. 

 The Trump administration seems to be on a mission to make all of our lives more miserable, except for the billionaire oligarch class that is just loving life these days. 

I just found a new way the administration is set to make life even worse for humans, and everything else on Earth. And this one is especially horrible. 

Big companies, including Elon Musk's SpaceX, have plans that would fill our skies with a million or more little satellites, and also position a whole bunch of mirrors in orbit around the Earth to reflect sunlight down on us at night.

Sounds a little like depressing science fiction, but it's true. 

THE PROPOSALS

Per the Washington Post:

"Two little-noted applications under review by the Federal Communications Commission would, if fully implemented, fundamentally remake the night sky. But the FCC, the satellite regulator, appears to have fast tracked approval without much of a pass eo weigh the benefits of these proposals against the harms they could cause to life on the planet". 

The two proposals would essentially turn night into day, or something close to it. WaPo explains further:

"A start-up called Reflect Orbital proposes to use large, mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night, with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reach the intensity of daylight. 

At the same time, Elon Musk's SpaceX wants to launch as many as a million satellites to serve as orbiting data centers - 70 times the number now in orbit. We could have a million points of light streaking across our skies at night."

Space X only submitted its proposal on January 31. Per PC Mag:

"Usually, the FCC takes weeks or months to respond. In this case, it made a decision in days, even though SpaceX's proposal appears preliminary and even rushed, according to space experts, some of whom question the constellation's feasibility."

TEMU STARS

 The Washington Post concedes there is some benefit of moving data centers to space. It's better that consuming huge amounts to land water and energy on Earth.  Reflected sunlight could boost clean energy supplies and help with food production and even search and rescue.

But should we destroy night to accomplish these goals? Especially since we could solve all these problems right here on the ground. I'm rolling my eyes at the big building boom of AI data centers, that will use up huge amounts of energy and water. You'd think they'd be able to find a way to run AI that doesn't gobble up all the energy and water in the world. 

Aside from ruining the night sky, all this SpaceX satellites could end up colliding with other satellites and space debris. Some scientists worry this could lead to a chain reaction of colliding material.  Picture a high speed highway in a snow squall. 

One motorists swerves on the slick freeway to avoid debris on the road, crashes, and then all the other vehicles behind it pile up.t really is a war on nature waged by the oligarch class, egged on by the goons in the Trump administration. 

After all, to the billionaire class, nature is to be exploited for profit. Simply letting us serfs have calm, peaceful moments with the night sky is verboten. They should be working under grim, florescent lights for peanuts.  

Washington Post again: 

"...untimely light contributes to the loss of insect and bird populations. It disrupts migration, the seasonal patterns of plants and the circadian rhythms of animals ranging from sea turtles and mountain lions. Humans lose sleep because of artificial light, which potentially contributes to obesity and cancer. Light as faint as a full moon has been shown to alter our sleep patterns.

Reflect Orbital aspires to produce for its customers the high of up to 1,000 moons by 2028 and 360,000 moons by 2035. 

Then there's the philosophical questions: How will it feel if we can no longer gaze upward to see Orion, Ursa Major or the other constellations our ancestors have traced since Ptolemy? How will we perceive our place in the universe if we can no longer take in the twinkling starlight that began its voyage to us before the Pyramids rose in Egypt?"

Granted, Reflect Orbital does not propose lighting up the entire night sky at once. The reflected light from the mirrors would target specific areas. And under the lights, it would only have 20 percent or so of the sun's brightness. But the light pollution in areas surrounding the beam of night light would still be staggering. 

Especially combined with the zillions of SpaceX satellites up there that would essentially create a huge, ugly constellation of fake Temu stars 

The mirror satellites themselves would look like giant, artificial bright starts in the sky cluttering up and dimming the natural field of millions of stars so, so far away.  As you can imagine, astronomers are livid at this idea from Reflect Orbital.     

CAN WE STOP THIS?

 There's precious little standing between all of us who actually like it dark and night and the forces that would take that away from us. 

The FCC has pretty much exempted satellites from the National Environmental Policy act, which should require federal agencies to take into account environmental considerations. 

And, WaPo adds, the Trump FCC wants to strengthen the exemptions for satellite operations. And bipartisan legislation that recently got through the Senate Commerce Committee would further speed approval for satellites. 

I guess I'm one of the few left in the world who actually enjoys the night sky. I hope I'm wrong. An organization called DarkSky.org is of course opposed to this.

In addition to the harm the mirrored light would cause to birds, insects and our own circadian rhythms that regulate sleep, DarkSky.org catalogs other risks. People could be at risk of eye damage if they look at the light from the satellite mirror, like what would happen if people look directly at a partial solar eclipse. 

Moving beams of light from the mirrors could create sudden flashes, glare or weird illumination patters that could cause problems for airline pilots or even motorists, especially if these satellites and mirrors malfunction. 

"We also call on Reflect Orbital to demonstrate leadership by voluntarily commissioning a comprehensive, independent environmental impact assessment conducted by qualified experts - regardless of whether such review is required by the FCC," Darksky.org said in a statement.

In other words, even if nobody in charge wants to review dangers to the public, that review should be done anyway.

Public comment on SpaceX's proposal only lasts through Friday, March 6 . Click this link for information on how to do that.

I guess for now, we should find places away from cities to gaze up at the stars and the heavens. If the oligarchy class has its way, we might soon lose that simple pleasure. 

Michael Brown, an astronomy professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia put it this way: 

"I sort of ike the sky being sort of this shared wilderness. If you go somewhere where it's nice and dark and look at the night sky and have all these constant reminders of technology, I think that's a bit of a loss."

That's a huge understatement, but the man is absolutely correct. 

 

 

If Skies Stay Clear, A REALLY Cool Lunar Eclipse Early Tomorrow Morning

Get up early tomorrow morning to view the total lunar
eclipse. The moon will look red like in this photo.
It'll also be near the western horizon as the sun is 
coming up during totality. 

A lunar eclipse is going to be visible across the United States early tomorrow morning, but the eastern United States, including here in Vermont are in for a special treat. 

The lunar eclipse will happen right around sunrise. As the sun is coming up in the east, the moon will be a deep red color because of the eclipse just before it sinks below the western horizon. 

To time it out here in Vermont, the total eclipse of the moon will start at 6:04 a.m and end at 7:02 a.m. But you won't see the end of it because the moon will be below the horizon by then. 

Here's the fun part: The maximum of the eclipse is at 6:25 a.m, when the moon will be at its reddest color. Meanwhile, the sun will rise at 6:26 a.m. Burlington time. And depending on where you are in Vermont, the moon will set in the west sometime between 6:18 and 6:28 a.m 

During totality, the moon will look red like it does in most total lunar eclipses. However, the moon will be near the horizon, so you'll have that perspective. I imagine views from the Champlain Valley toward the Adirondacks while this is going on will be awesome. This is cooler than the "typical" lunar eclipse. 

The moon obviously doesn't have its own light. We see the moon shining brightly because the sun's light is blasting it. During a lunar eclipse, the Earth gets between the sun and moon, casting its shadow on the moon. 

The moon looks red during a total eclipse because the Earth's atmosphere bends sunlight and indirectly lights up the moon's surface. 

A total lunar eclipse will happen at any given location on average once every 2.5 years. 

After tomorrow, the next total lunar eclipse that will be visible from Vermont will be on June 25, 2029.

Of course, you can't see a lunar eclipse if it's cloudy. Too bad the eclipse wasn't this morning since it was crystal clear. Of course, temperatures were below zero, so you would have frozen your butt off watching it. 

As it looks now, some high clouds will be coming into Vermont at the time of the eclipse. That might not be such a bad thing. During the much more rare total eclipse of the sun in April, 2024, there were some high clouds overhead but those clouds actually enhanced the event, making it all the more fantastic.   

The high clouds might make the eclipse even more interesting than it otherwise would be. High, thin clouds tend to glow red, orange and pink at sunrise.  This could get really interesting.

The bottom line is depending on where you are in Vermont at dawn tomorrow, the eclipse might look at little milky behind the high clouds, and in other areas the high clouds will be so unsubstantial it won't interfere with the viewing at all. 

It will be cold again, however. Temperatures at that hour should be in the single numbers to low teens. Pretty chilly, but not as bad as this morning  

Yes, Big Blizzards Can Counterintuitively Be A Sign Of Climate Change

Satellite view of the immense nor'easter this week that
caused the record snows in New England

Climate change skeptics scoff, but sometimes, extreme winter weather is made worse because of a warming planet. 

That might well be the case with the big Blizzard of 2026.

Every big storm depends on a rich supply of ocean moisture to do its handiwork. In the northern hemisphere, that moisture usually comes from south of the actual storm.  

Our nor'easter pulled deep, warm tropical moisture off the Atlantic Ocean. That moisture smacked into relatively  cold air over the Northeast. The water in the air froze as countless snowflakes, which piled up to record levels in parts of New England. 

That this was a record snow event was telling.  A warmer world, a warmer ocean can pull more moisture into the atmosphere than our former cooler world would have been able to do.  This is a big reason why our storm this week over-performed. 

It wasn't a one-off either. 

While overall winter snowfall isn't really increasing in the Northeast, individual snowstorms are tending to get bigger..

Six of Boston's 10 biggest snowstorms have occurred since 2003. Seven of New York City's ten biggest snowstorms on record have also all occurred since 2003.

This isn't just a coastal thing. Inland, in Burlington Vermont, eleven of the top 20 biggest snowstorms have hit since 2001.

TEMPERATURE NUANCES

One other nuance helped turn the Blizzard of '26 into the monster it was.

Not all ocean water stays warm all the time in our hotter world. Regional weather patterns over a few weeks or even a whole season can make a big difference.

It's been cold in the Northeast this winter, as you might have noticed. That has made the ocean water right along the Mid-Atlantic and New England coasts chillier than usual. 

Storms like nor'easters prefer to form and more along a steep cold to warm ocean temperature gradient.  Essentially, storms want to "find" the warmer water.  This storm found climate changed hotter water a bit further offshore than it usually does, as the Washington Post reports.  

Many nor'easters like to find that temperature gradient near what is known as the "benchmark" which is 40 degrees latitude and 70 degrees longitude, which is off the southeast corner of New England

This time, that temperature gradient in the ocean water was a little more offshore than usual, this storm passed over about 68 degrees longitude or about 100 miles east of the benchmark. This slight eastward shift allowed the precipitation to stay all snow in Rhode Island and southeast Massachusetts. It also funneled the heaviest precipitation into that area. 

Had the storm gone right over the benchmark, Providence and southeast Massachusetts might have had a period of rain thrown into the storm. The heaviest snow would have fallen in somewhat less populated areas like central Massachusetts and northern Connecticut. 

 Of course, some nor'easters hug the coast or even go inland a bit, temperature gradients be damned. ,  In those cases, interior New England gets all the heavy snow. while areas closer to the coast mostly see heavy rain, high winds and storm surges.  

STRONGER STORMS

Studies are showing that not only are nor'easters getting wetter, they're getting stronger. 

Stronger storms tend to create heavier precipitation. The barometric pressure in thie center of this nor'easter was exceeding low. A deep storm like that creates big pressure differences over a short distance.  The pressure diffeences create strong winds which cause lift in the atmosphere. The vigorous lift  that turned the moisture the storm drew from the Atlantic Ocean into very heavy snow, as the Washington Post notes. 

That robust lift in the atmosphere also help create thunder snow in some areas hit hardest by the storm.

Record big snowstorms in the past like the Blizzard of '78, the hundred hour storm in February, 1969 and the Christmas Week storm in northwest New England in December, 1969 were so severe because the nor'easters involved slowed down dramatically or stalled, adding to the accumulation. 

Those stalling storms are rare, which is one reason why two to three foot deep New England blizzards were once so rare.

More recent record breakers, like this week's storm, moved forward at a decent pace with no stalls  They were able to dump enormous amounts of snow within 24 hours. 

Now, a brief visit by a nor'easter often does all the damage that was once only made possible by lingering storms. 

It makes me wonder if another Blizzard of '26 is not all that far off in our future.  

Despite Current Endless Winter in Vermont, Winters Are Getting Shorter Nationwide

A graphic from Climate Central shows how winters in
Burlington, Vermont have gotten shorter in recent
decades. This winter is an exception to the trend.

Here in Vermont, and the rest of New England, this winter has seemed endless. It feels like it's been going on forever, and it seems like we'll never be finished with it. 

But this long winter is an exception. Winters overall have been getting shorter, thanks to climate change. 

Climate Central waded through data from 245 American cities and found that in 195 of those cities, the coldest part of winter is on average nine days shorter than winters were between the years 1970 and 1997.

Here's how the study worked, according to Climate Central:

"This analysis defined winter as the coldest 90 consecutive days of the year during the past (1970-1997) and then compared the frequency of those winter-like temperatures during the most recent 28-year period (1998-2025)."

Juneau and Anchorage, Alaska have seen winters shrink the most, by 62 and 49 days respectively. That makes sense, since warming is much faster in northern latitudes and the Arctic. I would note that like here in Vermont, Juneau and Anchorage are bucking the trend this winter as it's been unusually cold and snowy this winter in Alaska. At least compared to recent winters. 

Climate Central's analysis included Burlington, Vermont, where winters are 17 days shorter than they once were.

In 1970-1997, the coldest 90 days pf winter on average started on December 9 and ended March 8.  Now, the period with those coldest temperatures only goes from December 20 to March 2. 

Not everyone is experiencing shorter winters. 

Reflecting the fact that in some cases, regular variability and other factors besides climate change can keep winters relatively long. A few cities in the Ohio Valley have winters as long now as the once were. So, too in parts of California, though the ocean's influence there limits large seasonal temperature swings.  

Even if you like these shorter winters, there are downsides to these milder seasons. 

As Climate Central notes, warmer, shorter winters can reduce mountain snowpacks, especially in the western U.S. That can lead to summer water shortages and an increased risk of wildfires. 

Sometimes, a lack of winter chill prevents fruit and nut trees and plants from getting enough of a cold cycle to adequately produce crops int the following growing season.  Warm winters can also prevent pests like ticks from dying off. A shorter winter could also mean the spring allergy season might last longer. 

Here in Vermont, as noted, we have had a long, cold winter, bucking the trend Climate Central has outlined. But the trend toward shorter, warmer winters will continue. A season like the winter of 2025-26 will keep getting increasingly rare.  

Desperate Idea to Rein In Melting "Doomsday Glacier"

Map of Antarctica. The Thwaites glacier is seen 
to the left. If it melts global sea levels
could rise dramatically. 

Climate scientists for quite awhile now have been watching with dread something they've dubbed the "Doomsday Glacier."  

Before you get too panicked,  the glacier won't end the world.  But at some point, it might cause enormous trouble that would be felt around the globe.  

The official name of this thing is Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. It's about the size of Great Britain, and it is melting.

The "Doomsday" label is because the glacier is so huge and is melting so fast, that its effects are already being noticed. The thawing glacier already accounts for four percent of the world's annual sea level rise. 

Were the glacier to entirely collapse, it would raise global sea levels by about 65 centimeters or roughly two feet. Hence the "Doomsday" label as that much of a sea level rise would be truly catastrophic for coastal cities and communities worldwide.  

Each centimeter of sea level rise would expose an estimated six million people worldwide to coastal flooding, so imagine what 65 centimeters would do. 

Oh, and if the Thwaites Glacier collapses, it could destabilize the much bigger ice sheet behind it. If that big ice sheet goes, that could add another 10 to 15 feet of sea level rise. This wouldn't happen tomorrow, but it's a big enough threat to start thinking about, even if the catastrophe is decades or even a century into the future.

At this point, there's no way to stop Thwaites Glacier from continuing to melt. But maybe people can slow the melt down.  And maybe slowing the melt rate would buy time while us humans struggle to stop the flow of fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere.  If fossil fuel emissions stop, so too, would climate, eventually at least.  

 ut we are nowhere near that moment yet.

One off the wall, expensive but still perhaps viable idea is to put a huge barrier around Thwaites glacier to stop warm water from getting at it. 

According to Interesting Engineering:

"The proposed structure would be just under 0.1 miles (152 meters) tall and stretch roughy 50 miles across key parts of the seabed in front of Thwaites Glacier. Anchored to the ocean floor, the curtain would act as a physical barrier, limiting the flow of warm seawater that melts the ice shelf from below,"

"The plan faces major technical challenges. The structure would need to survive extreme Antarctic conditions, deep water pressure, moving ice and long-term ocean exposure. Even supporters acknowledge it could take years before any full-scale deployment is possible."

It would also be incredibly expensive, to the tune of several billion dollars. It's unclear from where that money might come.  The logic behind spending that kind of money on a Thwaites Glacier barricade is that it would still be way less expensive than dealing with an eventual 10-foot sea level rise. 

At the very least, this whole thing is a potential research opportunity. 

Probably with this giant, expensive curtain in the back of their minds, scientists are drilling way down through the glacier and deploying instruments to see how warm water is interacting with the base of the glacier.

Data will be transmitted daily via satellite for at least a year. It'll be a way to figure out how deep ocean water in a warming climate affects glaciers it comes in contact with. 

"This is one of the most important and unstable glaciers on the planet and we are finally able to see what is happening where it matters most,'" said Pete Davis of the British Antarctic Survey. 

I have no idea whether this barricade will ever get built or whether the collapse of this "Doomsday Glacier is imminent. But it's just one trouble spot in a world of potential crisis points brought on by climate change.  

Hurricane Melissa Now Tied For Strongest Atlantic Hurricane On Record

Satellite view of Hurricane Melissa just before it hit
Jamaica in October. A National Hurricane Center 
review, issued today, indicates Melissa tied for 
the strongest hurricane on record in
the Atlantic basin. 

When we were reporting on Hurricane Melissa trashing Jamaica  back in October, we described it as one of the strongest Atlantic Ocean hurricanes on record. 

Since then, the National Hurricane Center has taken a deep dive into the mechanics and existence of that powerful hurricane. On Thursday, they announced their analysis shows Hurricane Melissa is actually tied with a 1980 hurricane as the strongest on record for the Atlantic.

Hurricane Melissa killed 95 people, including 45 Jamaicans and 43 Haitians.  

When the hurricane was raging, its highest winds were estimated at 185 mph, putting it in the top six list of strongest Atlantic hurricanes.

But a National Hurricane Center post-storm analysis, released Thursday, shows the hurricane actually had top sustained winds of 190 mph not long before landfall. Winds did "diminish" to 185 mph when it came ashore in Jamaica, but I'm sure nobody there noticed the difference the the screaming roar of the beastly storm. 

The only hurricane known to be as strong as Melissa in the Atlantic was Hurricane Allen in 1980. That storm reached its top strength in the the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Allen caused 220 deaths in Haiti due mostly to flooding.  The hurricane weakened rapidly as it made landfall near Brownsville, Texas. 

As it hit the coastline of Jamaica, Hurricane Melissa's sustained winds of 185 put it in a three way tie for strongest winds in a hurricane at landfall. The others were Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas in 2018 and a deadly hurricane in South Florida back in 1935.

Not surprisingly, the winds caused immense damage in the part of Jamaica hit by the strongest winds. According to the National Hurricane Center's report:

"Extreme winds destroyed virtually all wooden structures, stripped roofs from most building and even causes severe damage to concrete construction. Vegetation suffered extreme damage not only near the coast, but in mountainous areas across the entirety of western Jamaica as the eyewall passed over the island. Trees in that area were completely defoliated, and in several locations the force of the wind was sufficient to strip bark from trunks and scour paint from walls and buildings."

 Another measure of a hurricane's strength is how low the barometric pressure gets in the core of the storm. Melissa's air pressure in the eye got as low as 26.34 inches or 892 millibars. That ties with the 1935 hurricane as the lowest pressure in an Atlantic hurricane as it was making landfall. . 

The National Hurricane Center's final report also notes the incredible amount of lightning in Melissa's eyewall.  The eyes wall is the circle of intense winds and rain surrounding a hurricanes. The eye walls in most hurricanes usually have little or no lightning. Melissa had a ton of it, at one point showing 600 flashes per 30 minutes. 

Wind sensors in Jamaica were few and far between and most of those failed in Melissa's high winds. A school in Jamaica did record a gust to 131 mph. 

As is the case with most hurricanes, Melissa dumped incredible amounts of rain. Up to 35 inches fell in southern Haiti, 32 inches across the interior highlands of Jamaica and 27 inches in southwestern Dominican Republic. 

Melissa appears to be part of a disturbing trend in Atlanta Ocean hurricanes. The overall number of them doesn't seem to be increasing, but the number of Category 5 storms - the strongest of the bunch -seems to be increasing. 

In 2025, only five hurricanes formed in the Atlantic Ocean, but four of them were major, with sustained winds of at least 111 mph. Three of them were powerful Category 5 storms with sustained winds of at least 157 mph. 

Warm ocean water is jet fuel for hurricanes, and the water temperature where hurricanes usually develop has been getting hotter and hotter, thanks to climate change. If the conditions are right, these ultra-warm waters have an easier time developing extra strong hurricanes. 

One study found that climate change increased the strength of all 11 Atlantic hurricanes that formed in 2024.

It's really looking like a warming world will make hurricane season more terrifying that it has ever been before.  

"Frost Quakes" Another Aspect Of Harsh Winter Of '26 Not Seen In Ages

Frost quakes rarely cause damage, but in this recent case
it caused a bulge underneath a Michigan  convenience
store that damaged some of the flooring.   

It's a frigid winter night, and all of a sudden you hear a boom and the house shakes.

An earthquake, right? 

No, not in the traditional sense. People in several places in the eastern United States in recent weeks have experienced what are known as frost quakes. 

The Associated Press explains what these things are: 

"These noises are known as frost quake for cryoseisms, a cold-weather phenomenon that occurs when rain or melted snow in the ground quickly freezes, expanding as it solidifies, when temperatures rapidly fall below freezing. As the ice expands, pressure builds around the surrounding soil, causing it to crash  and make booming sounds and light shaking." 

Frost quakes can damage water mains due the shifting ground. However, most winter water main breaks come because frost shifts the ground without shaking it or making noise. Or water freezes in the water main itself, causing it to burst. 

More ominously, on extremely rare occasions, shifts in the ground can cause gas leaks.

However, frost quakes almost never cause appreciable structural damage, but there was recently such a case.  

 A frost quake in st. Claire Shores, Michigan  was strong enough to cause damage. At a 7-11 store on 11 Mile Road in St. Claire Shores, surveillance video shows a ridge suddenly rising across the floor in the middle of the shop.  An eight-foot long section of floor tile inside the store was destroyed. 

When the deep cold of this winter hit states around the Ohio River Valley, frost quakes were heard and felt across much of  Tennessee and Kentucky.  It usually doesn't get cold enough long enough there to get frost quakes, but this year was different. 

Frost quakes have also been reported in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and other states this winter.

With a somewhat warmer weather pattern settling in now, more frost quakes are gotten less and less likely, unless you're in the relatively chilly air up near the Canadian border. 

Is Climate Change Shifting Where Dangerous Ice Storms Set Up?

Lewis County, Tennessee after the late January ice storm
Research suggests that climate change might be making
ice storms more common in the South, but more research
is needed to confirm that. Photo from Tennessee 
Valley Weather/Facebook

Are ice storms moving to different and potentially more dangerous places? 

Some scientists are beginning to think so, and that could lead to more frozen disasters like the one that blasted Mississippi, Tennessee and other southern states in late January

 Drawing on long term records, computer modeling and new measurement, scientists in Texas concluded that a warming world isn't making freezing rain go away. It's just changing where it falls and when in the winter it occurs. "

Zong-Liang Yang, an earth systems scientist the University of Texas at Austin and postdoctoral researcher Chenxi Hu looked into this. According to science.org:

"To see how these changes might be playing out in the ground, Yang and Hu turned to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Storm Events Database, which compiles weather phenomena reported by individuals and vetted by the National Weather Service. 

When the researchers analyzed county-level  records from 1996 to 2025, they saw an emerging trend: More events along a band from eastern Texas to western Pennsylvania, as well as along the Appalachian Mountains, where low, cold air can get trapped. The timing of freezing ran events also shifted from December to February."

The locations Yang described here almost exactly match the zone affected by the disastrous late January ice storm,. 

Freezing rain is thankfully a bit hard to come by compared to other forms of precipitation. Snow needs to change to rain on the way down. Those raindrops must then encounter subfreezing air just before hitting the ground as liquid, which freezes into a glaze of ice upon impact.

If the cold layer near the ground is too thick, the rain will freeze into sleet, or little balls of ice on the way down. Sleet is a pain in the butt, of course, but at least it doesn't pull down trees and power lines. 

Also, freezing rain is often transitory. It'll hit briefly as an interlude between the time snow goes over to rain as temperatures warm. The warm/cold battle of air masses must more or less stay put to create a dangerous ice storm. 

Not everyone is buying the idea that climate change is shifting the places where ice storms are most likely - at least not yet

Esther Mullens, a climatologist at the University of Florida, told science.org that it still could be just natural variations that move ice storms around, or create trends in ice storms.

In 2025, Mullens looked at ice storms over the past 80 years and concluded that natural climate variations might explain the uptick in southern freezing rain storms. She concedes it could be that the jet stream is getting wavier than it used to be. 

A wavier jet stream is more likely to bring Arctic air blasts further south, which could increase the chances of freeing rain. But climatologists are still debating whether climate change is seriously messing with the jet stream like that. 

Still, there is a pretty compelling argument that the warming of the Arctic might be creating a wavier jet stream.  A wavier jet stream is more likely to create the right conditions for freezing rain than a flat west to east upper air flow.  

Another potential effect of climate change is it might affect how heavy the precipitation is. Even with a warmer world, it still very often gets below freezing in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere during the winter. 

A warmer world, though, is a wetter world.  A hotter atmosphere can hold more water that a cooler one. Storms like the one that hit in January draw moisture from warmer places like the southern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean.  That moisture slams into the cold air further north to fall as snow, sleet, freezing rain or a combination of all three.

Since the January storm was wetter than it would have been before climate change began in earnest, it was probably able to dump more ice and snow on the eastern U.S. that the same storm would have a generation or two ago.

The heavier the freezing rain, the more weight you get on trees and power lines. Snow in some storms might be deeper than it otherwise might be. We have anecdotal evidence of that right her in Vermont.Burlington's weather data goes all the way back to the late 1880s. Yet, 11 of the city's 20 biggest snowstorms all came in the past quarter century. 

You get the point. Winter storms can be counterintuitively worse in our era of climate change.  

Climate change can even make lake effect snowstorms worse. Lakes would be slower to freeze during warmer winters, so they'd have more opportunity to dump heavy snow downwind of the lakes on the days it does turn cold.

The data the Texas researchers used was based on reports by humans, who sometimes under-report or over-report the amount of ice during a freezing rain event. 

NOAA is working on a new tool that uses radar, rain gauges and an ice model to map freezing rain in real time, science.org says. 

The new tool would make an analysis like what Yang and Hu did more accurate, as we'd have more precise information on how much ice accumulated and where. 

All this shows that climate change isn't just about heat waves and warmer winters. Under the right conditions the warming world can make the rare wintry intrusions much worse. Worse, even, than what your grandparents remember when they walked through feet of snow to and from school, uphill both ways.   

Two Memphis City Councilors, And A Scary Number Of Other People Say Storm Dropped "Man-Made" Snow

The black stuff left on snow then
trying to melt it with a lighter is
just partly combusted material from the
lighter, not some nefarious plot
in the snow. Despite this fact, 
conspiracy theorists falsely
insist there is something "wrong"
with innocent snow and sleet. 

We've just gotten two big snow and ice storms in the southern United States in a little over a week. 

Which you'd think is bad enough. 

Now we have a bunch of people coming out of the woodwork, including two Memphis City Councilors, telling us all that snow and sleet and ice was fake. Man made for some damn reason none of these nutcases are clear about. 

Our city councilors from Memphis are Pearl Walker and Yolanda Cooper Sutton who took to social media to explain to us the storms weren't meteorology. They were apparently.... oh, who knows what.  

 As memphisflyer.com tells us :

"Cooper Sutton posted a video showing who she says is her husband attempting to melt a chunk of ice with a light. 'It's not melting  (it stinks) the you set fire to it OMG, Jesus Christ what is happening!!!"

The video is a slo-mo showing flame licking snow blue no water drips. Cooper Sutton says "This is not melting" she said. "What is falling from the sky hitting the ground?"

Her colleague on the City Council, Walker, responded to Cooper Sutton's post with the words "Man Made"

OK, I'll take off their tin hats and put on my Captain Obvious hat and explain it.. 

I wasn't there for their little science experiment, but I imagine the smell came from the butane lighter they were using.   There's not much water in a handful of snow, so not much water would drip from it. What little was there probably soaked into the tiny air spaces within the piece of snow. There's a lot of air in there, even if it's hard packed snow.  

Anyway, our friendly Memphis councilors got blow back immediately. 

A local activist named Hunter Demster decided to wade into the social media thread with this reasonable comment: "(Disheartening) to see several sitting Memphis City Council members literally pushing conspiracy theories about 'man made' sow," Demster wrote on Facebook. "Sigh......We are screwed as a species."

That just encouraged more people to double down on the conspiracy, and other to deride it. 

Cooper-Sutton later told WREG she meant her social media statements as light-hearted posts shared with family and friends. She went on to say how much she's done for the community and that she was getting death threats for questioning whether the snow was fake.

I'm sure Cooper-Sutton does a lot for Memphis, and anyone who sends out death threats to someone just because they have a very odd false, unscientific is way over the top. Don't do that! Death threats over this are much dumber than thinking the snow was manmade. 

Still, I have a lot of questions for our esteemed city council members.

If that was a manufactured material that resembles snow, who made it? And how did they make so much? Why? If somebody is sending a message by making that stuff, what is the message? Are there any whistleblowers who could help? Documents? Any other kind of proof? If this stuff didn't melt when you brought it in, why is it slowly melting outdoors when the temperature rises above freezing?  

Many people around Memphis said the stuff that fell on the city in late January  felt different to the touch than in most past winter storms. These many people are right. When Memphis does get winter storms, more often than not it's either the powdery snow that blows around, or wet, heavy cement. 

This stuff felt like small, heavy granules. Because they were. Almost everything that came out of the sky during that storm over Memphis was sleet. 

It wasn't just our city councilors. A now-apparently deleted post on the social media site Threads asked "So what chemicals are in that white stuff on the ground that's called SNOW? I have never seen ice or snow that doesn't break or melt in my life. Now if I'm asking a crazy question just let me know."

Well, I wouldn't call the question crazy, but again, it's not chemicals, either. Where this person was probably got a little snow a lot of sleet and a little freezing rain to turn the mess into something I'd call snowcrete.  

Concrete consists of gravel aggregate and a cement-like water slurry that binds it all together. In the case f that big storm, a bunch of sleet became the aggregate and the freezing rain the cement slurry to form the "snowcrete," 

In other words, millions of people experienced was just a big, strange, oddly widespread mixed precipitation storm 

There's also a TON of videos on line of people, like the Memphis City Councilors, putting the flame of a lighter to the snow. It leaves a black mark every time. That wasn't caused by a weird plastic substance in the snow, which the tin hat crowd would have you believe.   It was soot from incomplete combustion of the butane in the lighter. 

This is just little ole me telling the world to relax, there's no conspiracy to create storms of plastic pellets or chemicals to terrorize the public. The only terror was the amount of sleet and freezing rain, composed purely of frozen or freezing water that came out of the sky. Like it does in every winter storm. 

There are so many conspiracy nuts out there, that my little voice won't make a dent in all this. But I have to try anyway.  

Climate Change CAN Worsen Winter Storms. But It's Complicated

Upper level forecast shows how cold weather
in eastern U.S will last into early Februarty.
Green lines depict the jet stream. Note how
wavy it is and how it heads southeastward
into the United States. Those red dotted
areas indicate areas of high pressure and warm
air for the region. That so much of the red
dots mean there's an Arctic amplification,
which means cold air is being squashed 
southward toward us. Scientists are 
studying whether climate change is making
weather patterns like this more likely. 

I suppose I can't blame President Trump for wondering where global warming went. 

There's massive amounts of ice and snow from New Mexico to southeast Canada. The South is locked in ice after a bunch of freezing rain. People are shivering in their homes without electricity. 

Dozens of daily record low high temperatures and record low overnight temperatures have already been set this weekend, mostly in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  More records will fall in the next few days, mostly across the South and southeastern parts of the U.S.  

Whether this storm, or any other extreme winter event in recent years can be tied to climate change is iffy. But there are some picky scientific details that suggest the warming world can paradoxically helping create these epic winter storms and cold snaps. 

As Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli explains, climate change can during relatively brief periods enhance the cold in places like the United States.

Sometimes - and this is occurring now - blocking high pressure settles over the Arctic, especially near or over Greenland - making them warm. At least warm compared to the insane cold you should expect up there. 

This setup shoves the cold air down into places like the United States and western Europe. 

Meanwhile, the Arctic overall is warming at a pace up to four times greater than most of the rest of the world.  That's called Arctic amplification. In fact, right now it's super warm for the season in parts of Greenland. In Nuuk, on the relatively mild southwest coast of Greenland, normal highs this time of year are around 20 degrees with a low of about 12.

The Weather Channel says Nuuk will have a high temperature of 42 degrees today, and it probably won't go below freezing tonight. 

Berardelli notes that the extra warming from climate change amplifies the blocking high pressure over the Arctic or Greenland.  That, in turn even more firmly pushes the cold air toward the United States and other mid-latitude places .

The air coming down from the Arctic because of this pattern isn't any colder than it used to be. In fact it's somewhat warmer. Punches of frigid air that have always blasted into the Upper Midwest are generally a bit milder than the were a generation or two ago. 

For instance, one study by Climate Central noted that the lowest temperature of the year has increased by 12 degrees since 1970. 

But when these Arctic air masses get pulled all the way down into the southern half of the United States, big trouble ensues. Like the winter storm we're having this weekend. 

There's at least circumstantial evidence that a wavier jet stream has started to occasionally send at times unprecedented blasts of Arctic air far south, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

We had the big Texas freeze and utility collapse in 2021, the one that killed nearly 250 people. Last January, an unprecedented snowstorm swept the Gulf Coast, burying places from New Orleans to Pensacola, Florida in more than six inches of snow. New Orleans was actually under a blizzard warning in that event. 

Just last week, it snowed again in northwest Florida. Now this storm. 

The Arctic and Greenland blocking helps make the jet stream wavier, which helps explain why there's such a harsh cold spell going on now.  When jet stream plunges south from northern Canada, it's going to be horribly, miserable cold.

There's still a lot of debate in the scientific community on whether climate change itself is making the jet stream much wavier, especially in the winter. 

When that happens, we could see bigger southward dips in the jet stream, like we're seeing now. 

There's at least circumstantial evidence that a wavier jet stream occasional has started  sending at times unprecedented blasts of Arctic air far south, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Per Grist:

"'The problem is that it's really hard to show whether or not that's happening,' said Jacob Chalif, who studies the phenomenon at Dartmouth College. 'Arctic amplification started really kicking off in the '90s, and we only have really solid record of the jet stream going back to 1979.'"

That leaves about a decade of records to help determine whether what's going on now is something new. 

Dartmouth researchers are now using machine learning to get a picture of jet stream patterns during the  the entire 20th century. There's evidence there were even wilder swings in the jet stream between 1900 and 1979. 

So, the jury is still out as to whether a warmer Arctic is increasing the chances that the U.S. will have terrible winter storms due to whacked-out jet streams. 

Another factor is the polar vortex. It's that big whirl of absolutely ridiculous frigid air that roams the high latitudes. When it's in Canada, closer to the United States, chances are at least part of the nation will be on the cold side.

Sometimes, the polar vortex stretches, and becomes more oblong. if it stretches toward the U.S., we get frigid and fast.

Some science suggests that the polar vortex is stretching more frequently than it used to

Per CNN

"Judah Cohen, a research scientist at MIT, said the stretching of the vortex is tied in part to sea ice loss in parts of the Arctic from human-caused climate change. He also said above average snowfall in parts of Siberia raises the likelihood of such stretching events, and this too is influenced by a paucity of sea ice in the Barents and Kara Seas in the Atlantic Ocean."

'"On the southern flanks of the polar vortex, over the U.S. and Asia, an under that where that stretching is happening, there's been an increase in severe winter weather,' Cohen said. 'I'm not saying any one weather event is attributed to climate change,' he said. 'But I do think it loaded the dice here.'"

Even if you ignore the polar vortex and the Greenland Block and the wonky jet stream, the fact of the matter is it's winter. Sure, the climate is warmer, hut that doesn't mean winter is canceled. It can still get brutal out there.

We're living that out right now.