Late Afternoon Vermont Storm Update. Possible Tornado In Woodstock; Severe Threat Is Over, But It Will Stay Showery For Days

Weather radar in Vermont looks really busy shortly 
before 1 p.m. as a line of thunderstorms was passing 
through. The irregular yellow rectangles are severe
storm warnings, and there has been reports of wind
damage these storms across various parts of Vermont.

That line of storms blasted through Vermont as expected. One tornado might have touched down in Woodstock. That's being investigated.  

Some of the stronger storms did put up a spin, so they got close.  The storm in Woodstock particularly showed rotation.  

The severe thunderstorm warnings were mostly in central and southern Vermont. Many of the warnings had enhanced wording that mentioned that tornadoes can form quickly out of severe thunderstorms. 

The wording was added because radar indicated some rotation in the storms, but National Weather  Service meteorologists didn't think a tornado seemed imminent. 

There were some reports of damage. A tree fell on some power lines along Pond Road on the Fairfield/Swanton town line, early this afternoon, but the road was soon reopened. 

In Woodstock, where the possible tornado touched down, numerous trees were sheared off on a hillside and part of a small barn was ripped away. 

Elsewhere, a large tree snapped off and several other tree were damaged in East Pittsford, not far north of Rutland. Power lines and at least one tree was reported down in East Barre. Numerous trees, branches and wires were down in Hartford, Vermont. 

Trees and power lines were also reported down in Williamstown, Lincoln, Middlebury and Danby.

The number of Vermont power outages zoomed upward to over 21,000, mostly in southern and eastern parts of the state, as that's where the thunderstorms were most intense.  

I'm sure more reports of storm damage will come in as the storms depart.  If any damage reports pique the interest of the National Weather Service, they'll send personnel over to determine whether it was a tornado or straight line winds. I suspect a meteorologist might pay a visit to Woodstock, but that has not been established yet. 

The tornado watch that was in effect across Vermont has expired.as o 3 p.m. A tornado watch continued in far southern Vermont as of 3:45, but that probably will have expired by the tine you read this.  The threat of severe weather is over in Vermont.

A tornado watch remained in effect across New Hampshire and western Maine as the line of severe storms continued on thorough that area. 

One flash flood warning was issued in Vermont, in northwestern Bennington County. That area got a ton of rain Sunday, and another one to there inches fell in a short period of time today. So I'm sure some gravel roads and driveways suffered some damage in that area.

WHAT'S NEXT?

The wind advisory is still in effect.  The gusts weren't as bad as expected ahead of the thunderstorms, though Bennington did gust to 44 mph this morning. Strong southwest winds were blowing in central and western New York, gusting over 50 mph in spots. 

Some of those southwest winds are coming  into Vermont but they shouldn't be as bad as in New York. Still, some gusts over 30 mph might happen. A few areas in the eastern slopes of the Green mountains especially in southern Vermont could see gust to 40 or 45 mph. We'll have some isolated additional cases of trees blowing over and widely scattered power outages because of this. 

As of 3:30 p.m, there was an odd line of thunderstorms in northwestern New York on up into Montreal. They were heading east. If they hold together, they'll make it into northern Vermont late this afternoon and this evening. They might contain lightning and brief downpours if the hold together, but I don't expect anything severe out of them. 

Also, a new downpour was developing for some reason over the middle of Lake Champlain and was headed into Chittenden County as of 4 p.m. 

We'll have cool, showery weather through the weekend, but it won't rain all the time. Best chances of showers are north and mountains. Some areas of southeast Vermont might only get a sprinkle or two out of this. 

 

44 mph gust Bennington 11 a.m. 

 

Something Else To Worry About: Droughts Can Make Tree Branches Break Off Spontaneously

Trees wilted by drought near Colchester, Vermont this
month. Another hazard was highlighted in
British Columbia: Repeated droughts can cause
trees and branches to spontaneously break off.

In British Columbia on July 31, a mother and her five month old son died when a tree fell on them while they visited a beach at Cumberland Lake Park campground on Vancouver Island. 

On August 10, also on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, a woman was injured when part of a large tree fell on her.  

In both cases, there were no storms, no strong winds. In both occasions, it was a gleaming, bright sunny day. 

So what happened?

It might have been drought. Per CTV News in Canada:

"A tree physiologist said that several years of repeated drought in British Columbia mixed with heat stress increased the likelihood of branches breaking off and this could even happen on a 'perfectly calm day' without any breeze."

Chances are the trees that caused the British Columbia tragedies had something else wrong with them besides drought. But the dry weather could have been a tipping point. Cumulative droughts tend to weaken trees more than one-offs, so that could have been a factor as well. 

Here in Vermont, the drought hasn't exactly been good for trees, especially those that turned brown, yellow or completely wilted in places where the soil has completely dried out. Examples include the now-sad, wilted, brown trees and bushes you see on the ledges along some of Vermont's Interstate highways. 

However, the risk of tree branches suddenly breaking off for no reason while you're at a state or local park are pretty low. But drought does appear to up the chances of that happening, at least a little. 

Vancouver Island has had repeated droughts in recent years, though the island is not currently especially dry for summer. 

Peter Constabel, a professor of biology at the University of Victoria, said he has seen branches of maple and oak trees just break off and fall on calm days during recent droughts.  

Per CTV News again: 

"It's just hot and dry for a long time, and the branch just breaks off. It's really kind of counterintuitive,' said Constabel, adding that the water in the cell walls in the old helps stabilize a weakened tree. 

Simon Fraser University biological sciences professor Jim Mattsson said he had recently witnessed big branches fall from a Douglas fir on Burnaby Mountain 'If some had been hit by that, that could be quite serious,' said Mattsson, adding that a prolonged period of drought can wear down even a Douglas fir, which is usually very drought-resistant."

Droughts reduce photosynthesis and growth, cut energy and sugar reserves and degrade defenses. All this creates a chain reaction that increases the risk of insect and fungal diseases, causing trees to rot inside.

That inside rot inside, increasing the risk of the tree or large branch breaking or falling over. 

Trees in urban settings are most at risk due to compacted soil, less access to water and hotter temperatures in a city's heat island. 

Climate change can make droughts worse, long lasting or more frequent, so this is an issue that will always be there. And it might get more frequent. 

Trees also lose leaves during droughts. That's why you see a lot of leaves on the ground here in Vermont even though it's only August, not October.  Trees try to conserve water during droughts by dropping leaves.  The fewer leaves on a tree, the less water they need. 

It's too soon to tell whether all this will have any effect on our fall foliage season. 

Ice Storm Videos Really Make Us Glad We Didn't Have To Deal With That Much

The effects of last weekend's ice storm in Michigan

 Last weekend, a massive ice storm stretched from Wisconsin, through the northern Great Lakes, into southern Ontario and Quebec and into New England.  

We had our own issues with that ice, as we know, with tree damage and power outages in central and southern Vermont. 

But we didn't have it nearly as bad as places like northern Michigan and parts of Ontario. The following videos in this post are at once horrifying, beautiful and sad.

The videos brought back memories of the Great Ice Storm of 1998 here in Vermont, (And Quebec, Maine, New York and a few other places).

The trees were the saddest loss. But eventually they do come back and after several years, everything looks normal again. We hope for a fast recovery for all those who lost their beloved trees in the hardest hit areas.

The videos: 

Here's a compelling video of the ice storm in northern Michigan. It's a drive through the region, and it's a combination of sadness, beauty, awe and destruction.  Click on this link to view. or if you see the image below, click on that:

A walk through a forested neighborhood in Gaylord, Michigan reveals the damage and the almost gunshot like sounds of tree collapsing under the weight of the ice. Again, click on this link or if you see the image below click on that. 

A aerial look around Gaylord, Michigan after the skies cleared reveal the awful beauty of an ice storm's destruction. Again, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

In southern Michigan, watch what increasing thunderstorms winds, finally reaching 95 mph, does to the mobile home in the surveillance video. Once again, click on this link to view or if you see the image below click on that: 

 

Florida Trees Turn Brown In Wake Of Hurricanes

Hurricane Milton caused countless trees in western 
Florida to turn brown. Arborists say most of these
trees will recover. Photo from WBBH

 Throughout America, leaves and turning color and falling as we progress through autumn.

This includes much of Florida, including the western part of the state. 

But that shouldn't happen, right? Florida is not known for its fall foliage displays. And it's not even cold down there yet, at least by the standards we northerners have. 

Leaves, though have turned brown on many trees, and they're falling in Florida. What's going on?

Blame Hurricane Milton. 

The force of so much wind for so many hours has put many trees in stress mode. Even though it was raining through much of the event, the wind pulled moisture from the leaves, turning them brown. 

So, on top of everything else they're dealing with, Floridians in the hurricane zone are dealing with trees that look dead or half dead. Most of the brown leaves are on the south and southwest sides of the trees which makes sense. 

"Basically, out;s the wind whipped the leaves around and sucked all the moisture out before the leaves could rejuvenate themselves," arborist Chris Corner told television station WBBH NBC2

 Most of the strong winds in Hurricane Milton across western Florida was from that direction. The southwest sides of the trees took the brunt of the storm. 

It didn't help that the strong hurricane winds pulled sea salt well inland, which plastered trees as well.

The good news is the vast majority of those trees will survive and make a nice recovery. The dead leaves will all fall away, and the trees will sprout fresh new leaves.  Arborists are advising homeowners to leave their trees alone and they should recover without help. 

However, those same arborists are telling homeowners to keep an eye on those trees, because in a few cases, there could be some hidden damage that won't allow some to recover.  

Japanese Palm Tree Gains Big Fans After Surviving Punishing Typhoon

 There's something about certain trees that I become deeply emotionally attached to.

This palm tree in Japan, nicknamed Yasshi, was whipped
violently recently for hours by a typhoon. It was on a 
live camera feed and people became intensely interested
in its survival. It ended up doing fine and is
still standing after the typhoon. 

As a child, there was an immense sugar maple on our property. It had five main branches, each about the size of a mature old maple, sprouting from the most wide tree trunk I've ever seen. 

 My dad built a tree house in it for me. I'd spend hours up there, decompressing from the effects of a high strung mom. And inventing in my head adventure movies starring Yours Truly. 

My sister Lynn and I spent countless hours under that tree. In the fall, we'd jump off the swing into an immense pile of leaves from that maple. 

I still cherish the memory, I wept when it was cut down by the power company because they didn't like how close it was to their wires.

As an adult, I have three immense poplar trees in my St. Albans, Vermont back yard. I call them the triplets. Like all close friends, they can be a pain in the butt, like when wind storms prune some dead twigs from it, or it extends annoying roots into my summertime raised beds.

But the triplets are an ingrained part of my life. I can hear them outside now, a gusty wind whooshing through the thousands of leaves up there. 

All this is to say that humans love trees. Most of us, anyway. 

Which leads us to Kyushu, Japan. It's the nation's most southwestern-most main island, which was just hit by Typhoon Shanshan. 

It was a nasty storm, as typhoons usually are, causing devastating winds, floods and storm surges.  

As the Washington Post reports, thousands of people were drawn to a YouTube live stream showing the coast of Kyushu, in the throes of Typhoon Shanshan. In the video's foreground was a palm tree, whipping back and forth violently, always seemingly on the verge of snapping under the force of the hurricane winds. 

But the tree never succumbed. The typhoon's forward motion was slow, meaning the island - and the tree - were subject to horrendous winds for a longer period of time than people experience in most typhoons or hurricanes.

(Typhoons are what hurricanes are called in the western Pacific Ocean).

As WaPo reports, the tree's performance won worldwide fans. "The dramatic display of resilience won the hearts of thousands online, many of whom flooded the comments to root for the tree. - known affectionately as "Yasshi" - to survive."

The spoiler here is the tree indeed survived. The typhoon moved on and the live stream after the storm showed the tree with its fronds battered by the wind, but standing tall. 

There's something about trees, especially ones under duress, that we all root for. When I watch all those severe storm and tornadoes on YouTube (I'm a hopeless weather geek after all). I always root for the storm tossed trees to somehow survive.

When iconic trees die, or are killed, or are endangered, we all collective mourn. Some examples:

Hawaii Banyan

An enormous 150-year-old banyan tree in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii was badly burned during last August's   catastrophic wildfire that destroyed most of the tourist city.  People seemed almost more upset by the potential loss of the tree than the deaths and destruction in Lahaina.

People have been tracking the fate of the banyan tree ever since.  As the Associated Press reports, the sprawling tree survived and is coming back to life, gradually turning from ash gray and black scar he'd to green and growing back.  All thanks to intense efforts by arborists and volunteers. 

Half the tree's branches died in the fire. But arborists carefully removed those branches so the tree would redirect its energy toward the branches that might survive. Heavy irrigation and care has resulted in new green leaves and branches sprouting. The tree will survive.

British Vandalism Victim

International outrage erupted when some complete morons in 2023 cut down the Sycamore Gap tree in Britain. It was one of the most photographed places in the world. The tree sat between and at the base of two steep slopes. 

Two people were arrested, a 16 year old and man in his 60s. But they were subsequently freed. Two men in their 30s were then charged. They face fines equivalent to the estimated worth of the tree, which was about $785,000. No motive has been provided. 

Eight tiny shoots have since emerged from the stump of the tree, suggesting it might regenerate itself in some form. 

Washington DC's Stumpy 

The Tidal Basin in Washington DC is famed for its annual spring cherry blossoms. About 3,700 cherry trees put on a spectacular display every spring, usually in mid to late March. 

Climate change has made the Tidal Basin even more tidal. Sea level rise has caused more flooding, which affected some of the cherry trees.  The salt water damages the roots, and the trees get sick and eventually die. Earlier this year, the National Park Service cut down about 160 cherry trees due to rising tides and damage.

One of those trees was Stumpy. 

Stumpy, as a certain tree was dubbed, became something of a national treasure.  The salt damage made it gnarled, stunted and misshapen. Think the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, except worse. 

Stumpy's persistence and unique look won it tons of fans.  It was chopped down this year along with the 160 others. But right before that happened, Stumpy put on a blossom show that was its best in years. 

That tree wanted to go out with a bang.  God bless it. 

Meanwhile, in Japan, Typhoon Shanshan is long gone. Yasshi can recover in the tropical sun until the next typhoon comes along. 

Video: Yasshi the palm tree survives a typhoon. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

 

Planting Trees Does Not Always Combat Climate Change

 Trees are rightly considered our heroes for a bunch of reasons

Map shows where it's fine to plant trees to combat
climate change and where it's a bad idea to do so.
Blue areas are good places to install trees, orange
areas are bad. Click on the map to make it
bigger and easier to see. 

At least a couple of those reasons involve climate change. They pull carbon dioxide from the air and burp out healthy doses of oxygen.  Plant a bunch of trees in a hot city, and that city will turn a little bit cooler. 

Just like anything else that's a good thing, trees don't work everywhere when it comes to climate change. As Yale Environment 360 tells us, it's actually a bad idea to plant trees everywhere. 

One of those places is in or near the Arctic.  At first glance, that's fine, since nobody is interested in going to middle of nowhere northern Canada and Siberia to plant trees.  The problem up there is, since it's getting warmer in the Arctic. There's a bunch of tundra up north that was always too cold to support trees.

Now, trees are creeping north because they are now finding it warm enough to sprout. Tundra is more often than  not white with snow and ice. That reflects the sun's heat back to space. Trees are darker, so they absorb heat from the sun. 

The result is the trees just help speed up Arctic warming.   

This will seem a bit odd at first glance, but the same problem trees cause in the Arctic do the same in hot desert areas.  In these areas, people are sometimes tempted to plant trees to improve the environment. Perhaps some people innocent think the trees will do their part to combat climate change. 

They don't. Trees in formerly desert areas are darker than expanses of sand and dust.  Just like in the Arctic, the dark trees attract the sum's warmth, making hot conditions worse. 

Thankfully, trees are allies in the fight against climate change in vast areas of the globe. Those include the entire eastern United States, the Pacific Northwest, the Amazon, a huge stretch of central Africa, most of Europe, Southeast Asia and a few other places.

Luckily these areas are precisely where people have chosen for tree planting projects. 

This news is based on a  study by Nature Communications. They include a handy-dandy map, which you can see in this post. It shows where planting trees is OK, and where it's not a great idea. 

Judging from the map, it's A-OK to plant more trees here in Vermont, and anywhere in the eastern United States. 

Did Reforestation Forestall Climate Change In Eastern U.S ?

I boat sets sail on Lake Champlain on September 4, 2023, when 
it was 90 degrees. The trees in the foreground probably
made it feel a bit cooler.

They say trees are great for the environment.

One large scale example of the benefit from trees might have come over the past five decades or so in the eastern United States.  

First, the mystery, as reported in The Guardian. 

"While the U.S., like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called 'warming hole; over parts of the U.S. Southeast, where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend."

Most of the East was deforested for farms and such with European settlement. The lack of forests continued well into the 19th century. But starting in the 1920s and accelerating after World War II,   forests re-grew.  

The Guardian continues:

"'The reforestation has been remarkable and we have show this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,' said Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research. The 'warming hole' has been a real mystery and while this doesn't explain all of it, this research shows there is a really important link to the trees coming back."

Tree blunt heat because water that was drawn up by red roots are released into the air via leaves as vapor. That water vapor cools the surrounding air a little bit. 

The renewed forests cooled the eastern U.S. by around two or three degrees each year. The cooling effect is most noticeable in the summer, as the trees are estimated to have cooled the air by roughly four to eight degrees Fahrenheit. 

The Guardian notes that trees probably weren't the only things keeping the East a little on the cool side. Pollution before the Clean Air Act purified the atmosphere in the late 20th century probably blocked sun, keeping temperatures from rising too much. 

It's possible agricultural irrigation might have had a small cooling effect, too. 

 POSSIBLE VERMONT EFFECTS?

In the age of climate change, Vermont has warmed more than places further south along the Appalachian chain and southeastern United States.

Still,  we might have partly gone through that cooling phase due to reforestation, but just a little earlier than the Southeast. 

After clearing the state for lumber and farms, only around 20 percent of Vermont remained forested by the late 1880s. Most of that was at high, rather inaccessible elevations.

During the 1990s, the trend reversed, but Vermont didn't become fully reforested until the 1960s or so. Since then, around 75 to 80 percent of Vermont was forested.

Remember how I said especially in the Southeast, the cooling effect of forests was most noticeable in the summer?

In Burlington climate records, I noticed that there was a relative peak during the 1930s and 1940s in the number of days in the summer that reached 90 degrees or more.  As more of the state became forested, the number of 90 degree days, as measured in Burlington, declined through the 1950, 1960s and 1970s.

At Burlington, there were six consecutive years from 1944-49 that each had eight or more days of 90 degree temperatures. Such a long streak of hot summer weather didn't happen again until 2015 through 2023, with each of those summers having eight or more 90 degree days. Climate change was very likely one major contributor to these very recent hot spells. 

The hot weather of the 1940s probably wasn't entirely due to a lack of forest. Drought can allow the air to heat more efficiently than wet ground can.  As noted earlier in this post, air pollution in the 1950s into the 1970s might have dimmed the sun enough to keep 90 degree weather at bay. There might have been just a persistent weather pattern in the 1940s that created hot days.

But there's no denying trees are probably helping us cool off at least a little on hot summer days.  In Vermont, and pretty much everywhere else, trees can help mitigate the effects of a warming planet, especially in the summer. 

One of the reasons the city of Burlington, and so many other cities across the United States plant trees is for that cooling effect in the summer.  

It's probably weird that we're talking about heat waves on a February day that brought morning temperatures to near zero.  But it will be summer soon enough. If you want to stay cool, thank a tree near you. 

Dumbest Religious Climate Takes Will At Least Entertain Us

The dumb hot climate takes just keep on coming. Photo
by Pete Foley/Getty Images/Flickr RF

 I've gotten used to some really, really dumb takes on climate change. 

Everything from bringing a snowball into the U.S. Senate on a chilly February day to "prove" climate change doesn't exist to hapless Pennsylvania man who said an increase in tornadoes in the eastern United States is due to the proliferation of roundabouts that are replacing four-way intersections. 

Sadly, I am not making this up. 

The most strident climate deniers more often than not invoke God and the Bible in their "solid proof" of climate change being a hoax. 

Most seriously religious people are pretty intelligent and have a good grasp on reality. Some on the other hand, oy vey. 

I got a couple new ones that really have me shaking my head. 

As JoeMyGod and others reports, Pennsylvania GOP state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz tells us we have nothing to worry about climate change, because it doesn't exist! The Bible says so! 

Here's what she said: 

"When Democrats are pushing bills like banning gas-powered mowers and gas powered stoves in New York City, all under the name of a climate control agenda, we can all see that is really going on here.

The truth is, is in Genesis 8:22 it says, 'as long as the Earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.'

I'll say that again, 'will never cease.' Of course, we are to be good stewards of God's creation, but not through a forceful climate control global agenda."

I'm losing brain cells doing this, but I'll spell it out for our friend Stephanie. Whoever wrote that Bible passage was being Captain Obvious. There's winter and summer. You plant seeds in the spring and you harvest crops toward autumn. It's daytime unless it's night. 

Is she saying climate change doesn't exist because there are seasons? Or it doesn't exist because winter is colder than summer?  Is it just me or am I not following her leaps of logic? 

Probably my favorite response to her nonsense was a comment on X by somebody with the handle @SkyWasYellow:

"So, by the word of Genesis, harvests could drop to such low levels that mass starvation occurs, but since they didn't 'cease' all is well? And cold and heat still exist as extreme droughts and blizzards, as a result of climate change, but all is well because it didn't 'cease'?"

There was another religious hot take on climate change in the past week, too. 

The esteemed climate expert and Illinois Rep. Chris Miller, a Republican announced the other day that climate change doesn't exist because God made trees.

Said Miller: "We're not having a climate crisis.....Green leafy plants actually absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. It's the way God made it.'"

I'm picking on the dude, but let's be clear: I'm not picking on trees. I love trees. And they do absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Trees are our allies. 

But there's only so much trees can do. Before we started burning fossil fuels like crazy, trees were part of the system that kept the world's climate relatively stable. 

Besides, if Miller is such a fan of trees, why isn't he upset that humans are mowing down the Amazon forest?

These shysters always invoke God. Many people are serious about the Bible, for good reason. But you know somebody is bullshitting you when they do more flips in their mind to "explain" the Bible than the real physical flips the cast of Circ du Soleil perform. 

It's their lame way to think they have the final word. They make up something out of thin air they claim that God and the Bible said. And that's supposed to be the final word because Jesus. Or something.  

Or they are grifters using the tried and true method of using a false god to gaslight people. 

This isn't a rant about religious people. It's the  ones who yell and scream about how pious they are that sends my bullcrap meter into overdrive. The truly religious lead their lives in concert with their beliefs and not take talking points from the fossil fuel industry bosses.

So here's my question: What would Jesus do?

 

Deadly, Weird Storm Unleashes 90 MPH Winds In Parts of Europe

Damage from weird Storm Poly this week
in the Netherlands. 

 During the winter, large storms come roaring off the North Atlantic and lash large parts of western Europe with gales, floods and high tides.  

These storms are obviously dangerous, and are arguably the biggest weather hazard Europe can have in the winter. 

This type of winter storm goes away in the spring, and Europeans can go through their summer without having to worry about these tempests.

Until this summer.

Storm Poly swept through the Netherlands and Germany this week with 90 mph and at least two people died. (Europe names each winter storm, or at least a storm of this type, even when it doesn't happen in the winter.)

A woman died in Haarlem, The Netherlands when a tree fell on her car.  Another person died in Rhede, Germany when a tree fell on her.

Reuters reported that this was the strongest storm on record to hit the Netherlands during the summer, and the strongest storm for any season since 2018.  It was the first summer storm like this since 2015. The storm in 2015 was the first time a storm of this type hit in more than a century.

In both 2015 and this week, and El Nino global weather pattern was underway, so I wonder if that contributed to it. Climate change might also have helped make the storm stronger than it otherwise would have been. 

The strong winds were also caused by a strong difference in air pressure between the storm and a high pressure system over Russia. Also, most of these storms happen in the winter, when trees are leafless. In the summer, the leaves on the trees act like little sails, pulling the trees with the wind much more than you'd see in the winter. 

Video showed trees and debris strewn around the streets of Amsterdam, The Hague and Haarlem. 

Trees fell on numerous cars in Amsterdam, and on houseboats moored in the city's canals. 

Luckily, the storm weakened after it passed by the Netherlands and northwestern Germany.

Videos:

News report out of the Netherlands with scenes of the storm. Click on this link to view or click on image below if you see it. 

Dash cam video gives you a sense of the wind's strength, and the extensive tree damage the storm caused in the Netherlands. Again, click on this link or, if you see image below, click on that. 

Video: April Heat Wave Pushes Spring Along - Fast!

Budding daffodils in St. Albans on April 13, the start of 
a record heat wave. Within two days, they were in full 
bloom as spring raced ahead in the warmth. 

 During the bout of record heat around my place in St. Albans, Vermont on April 13-16, I went out daily to document the jack rabbit fast progress of spring under those weather conditions.   

The change was dramatic, as you can see below in the videos I took during that spell of weather. I didn't necessarily shoot the same scenes each day. Some days I did, other days no. But you can see how the landscape changed.

Some of the trees ultimately leafed out by April 16, earlier than I've ever seen in Vermont before. And I've lived here all my life so far, 60 years to be exact

The video almost looks like four weeks went by instead of four days. 

Click on the image below to see the video. If you don't see the image, as some devices won't show it, click on this link to watch the video.  Talk about spring exploding in one fell swoop!

 

When Trees Aren't Great For Climate Change

A spruce tree growing in the Alaskan Arctic in a place
where it had been too cold for trees for many millennia. 
Photo by Roman Dial via Outside Magazine.

 Trees are usually heroes when it comes to climate change mitigation. 

They suck up carbon dioxide and spit out nice fresh oxygen. What's not to love? 

The only thing not to love is when climate change makes trees grow in the wrong place.  

The tundra in northern Alaska and other areas way up there, not far from the North Pole, aren't supposed to support trees. It's too cold. The summer growing season was always too short to allow trees. You just got low shrubs, grasses and sedges.

But as scientists are discovering, actual trees, mostly white spruce, are spreading north to places where no tree could have grown for the past 20 millennia or so

Roman Dial, an ecologist at Alaska Pacific University, has been working on this phenomenon. In 2019, he'd seen satellite imagery that showed odd shadows on parts of the tundra.  He flew out there, then hiked around, and what he saw confirmed what he suspected from the satellite pictures. There were trees growing in places where it used to be impossible for them to do so. 

As Wired reports:

"The journey confirmed what Dial suspected: That the shadows in the satellite images were in fact out-of-place trees that are part of a phenomenon known as Arctic greening. As the Arctic warms more than four times faster than the rest of the planet, that's bringing down ecological barriers for plants in the far north, and more vegetation is marching toward the pole."

The white spruce are marching north across the tundra at a rate of 2.5 miles per decade, faster than any conifer tree line that scientists have measured, says Wired.  

Scientists had not expected to see spruce trees this far north until many decades from now. The trees have been spotted in northern Alaska, north of the Brooks Range growing in a spot where trees have until now not grown for at least 20,000 years, before the last glacial maximum, notes Outside magazine. 

Researchers had also expected to find these Alaskan trees struggling at the outer edges of where they can grow, but many seem to be thriving. They're not big but still, they're healthy.  For example, they found one spruce that was about five feet tall and had been there for about 20 years. But its growth is accelerating. The spruce they examined, for instance, had tripled its height in the last five years. 

Here's why all this is bad, as Wired reports: 

"The white spruce colonists are likely warming the Arctic landscape, too. Normally snow cover makes these northern lands reflect the sun's energy back into space - in scientific parlance, the land's 'albedo' is high. But trees are darker, so they have a lower albedo and absorb heat, which warms the area. 'The albedo effect is the the big thing,' says Goetz. 'They absorb a lot more energy.'"

The trees also trap snow beneath them, out of the reach of the sun.  But that snow beneath the trees protects the winter frost and freezes from penetrating as far into the ground as they should. That makes melting permafrost more likely when it warms up in the summer. Melting permafrost releases carbon dioxide and methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas. 

Which means the spruce trees are technically also aiding and abetting climate change in the winter, too.

This is yet another example of how climate change works in surprising ways, usually not good ways. I'm sure there's a lot of other oddball effects of the climate crisis I'm not aware of. I imagine scientists are aware of a lot of these, but probably not all of the scary effects of this global change. 

It's probably what keeps climate scientists up at night.