Vermont weather geek's hodgepodge of weather and climate news and opinion. Often Vermont focused, but taking a national and global approach, with sometimes an appropriate dash of fun, outrage, cynicism and compassion.
Satellite view of powerful Storm Floris blasting the northern British Isles earlier this week.
A type of storm that usually hits the British Isles in the winter just blasted parts of that region in full summer.
The system, Storm Floris, swept across mostly Scotland and Northern Island and northern parts of England earlier this week.
Some 70,000 homes and businesses in northern Scotland were without power, which brought gusts to over 100 mph in some areas. a gust to 134 mph was reported at the summit of Cairngorm in the Scottish Highlands.
In lower elevations, Wick airport in Scotland had a gust to 82 mph, with several other stations going over 70 mph according to the Met Office, which is the British equivalent to the U.S. National Weather Service.
SSEN, the electric utility in northern Scotland, said Floris was "the most damaging summer storm in recent memory, "reported the BBC.
Storm Floris was the equivalent of a strong nor'easter hitting New England this time of year, something that just doesn't' happen.
Train services and some ferry crossing were canceled in much of Scotland, which happens from time to time in winter storms but rarely in the summer,
The storm really affected Edinburgh, not because it caused a huge amount of damage, but it disrupted the peak of its summer tourism season.
Some venues and performances at the famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival had to be canceledbecause of the unseasonably stormy weather. Edinburgh Military Tattoo, massed ranks of bagpipers and drummers at Edinburgh Castle that's one of the city's biggest tourist draws, canceled its outdoor performance on Monday.
An Oasis concert in Edinburgh did went ahead as schedule. .
DEXTER
Meanwhile, a former tropical storm from waters near the United States is forecast to briefly become an oddly intense non-tropical, more winter type storm in the central North Atlantic.
Tropical Storm Dexter formed off the North Carolina coast and moved northeastward, out to sea. It will become a powerful storm with top winds of 70 mph roughly halfway between Newfoundland and Ireland. Luckily for the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe, former Dexter should weaken quite a bit on approach to the continent.
From Facebook, photo of damage at Austin Wildlife Rescue after the massive supercell and oxymoronically named large microburst in the city last week.
Texas is known for its, well, Texas sized storms.
But even by those standards, what hit the Austin, Texas area was absolutely wild. I guess the "Keep Austin Weird" slogan applies to the weather there as well.
A fast developing, giant supercell roared over the city on May 28. It almost, but didn't quite produce a tornado. But it might as well have, given the damage it caused. There were also no other storms around it, just an isolated, big, bad one, Very bad,
It produces one of the worst microbursts, one of the heaviest rainfall rates and some of the worst hail to ever hit Texas, and maybe the United States for that matter.
MICROBURST
As the name implies, microbursts hit a relatively small area. On average, they'll do their damage in a one to two mile diameter area.
Microbursts, as noted, are often are as dangerous as tornadoes, as the storm in Austin demonstrates. Some microbursts carry wind gusts of 100 mph, which is the equivalent of an EF-1 tornado. (For comparison thetornado that hit in Middlebury, Vermont, in March, 2021, seriously damaging one home and causing lighter damage to several others, was an EF-1
Strong updrafts suspend a bunch water droplets in the upper portion of the storm. At some point, the updraft is no longer able to sustain all that stuff, so it lets them go like a clumsy waiter dropping a tray load of dishes.
When the "tray load of dishes" hits the ground, all hell breaks loose, like it did in Austin, writ large.
The Austin area microburst, despite its name, was pretty huge.
The damage path was about ten miles long, with a path ranging from one to 2.5 miles wide. Maximum sustained winds within the microburst were probably between 65 mph and 85 mph, with a few embedded higher gusts. The Austin-Bergstrom International Airport had a 77 mph gusts, reports KXAN.
REAR FLANK DOWNDRAFT
To make matters worse, the supercell had something called a rear flank downdraft in which winds reached up to 75 mph. As KXAN reports:
The National Weather Service mapped out damage from the May 28 supercell and big microburst. Area in red is damage from the microburst, yellow is from a real flank downdraft. The darker the color, the worse the damage was.
"A rear flank downdraft is caused by pressure patterns within a supercell thunderstorm that force cool mid-level winds quickly down to the ground before getting pulled back into the rotating thunderstorm."
Rear flank downdrafts are common in in supercells, especially strong ones like that in and around Austin last week.
Like the microburst, the rear flank downdraft moved southeastward, in tandem with the microburst that was just to the north and east of the rear flank downdraft.
This downdraft and its 75 mph wind blew right through downtown Austin.
DAMAGE
The wind, as you'd imagine, knocked down a lot of trees and power lines. About 180,000 residents lost power. Winds of that speed tend not to seriously damage well-constructed homes, but it was enough to tear shingles off roofs and break windows I'm sure several homes and other buildings suffered damage from falling trees
Windows and doors were reported brokenby the wind at Austin-Bergstrom airport and the Texas State Capitol building in Austin. The canopy over gas pumps at an Austin service station collapsed onto cars beneath it whose owners were taking shelter from the hail. Thankfully, only minor injuries were reported.
The wind drove large hailstones sideways, damaging the siding on countless homes, Roofs, crops, trees and gardens were also blasted and wrecked.
Intense flash flooding swept cars off roads and left at least one person dead. At least five others had to be rescued from submerged cars.
The spot where the microburst first hits the ground is usually where the worst damage is. In Austin's case, there might have been a train of microbursts, one after another. Or, the supercell thunderstorm that caused it had much more rain and hail to unload than most storms.
It was also a single thunderstorm and not a line. While all hell was breaking loose on the north side of Austin and its suburbs, it was a pleasant evening with sunshine in the southern end of Austin.
Austin is weird.
VIDEOS
Compilation of some of the storm scenes in Austin: As always, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that,
More images, mostly of the flooding from the microburst last week in Austin: Again,click on this linkto view, or if you see image below click on that,
Foliage season is coming along, but it is running late in Vermont due to oddly consistent warm weather so far this autumn. There's a chance we could see some true autumn chill next week, but we'll see.
A long, long stretch of oddly warm weather continues here in Vermont.
The warmth hasn't been record breaking, but it's come close on a few days. What's remarkable is the staying power of the balmy conditions, without really much in the way of chilly intervals.
Normal highs are in the 60s and lows in the 40s right now.
In Burlington, it has not been below 50 degrees since September 11. That's 21 days and counting so far. I don't think I've ever seen such a long stretch of relatively warm nights this time of year.
By now, we routinely get a few days in which high temperatures never get out of the 50s. Sometimes not out of the 40s.
But so far, the last time Burlington had a high temperature under 60 degrees was on May 12. That HAS to be some sort of record for most consecutive days that reached got to 60 degrees or more. In fact, I'd bet this year shattered that record.
A cold front that was expected to chill us off just a little starting today is really running out of gas. So a cooler trend is not in the cards quire yet
A good batch of showers along it entered northwestern New York earlier this morning, but by late this Wednesday afternoon, they have become light, scattered showers entering northwest Vermont and then falling apart.
Any cooler air behind the front has dissipated, too. Some clouds will keep temperatures in the still-mild 60s to near 70 today. But we'll be back up in the low to even mid 70s in many valleys Thursday and Friday.
DOES AUTUMN EVER COME?
If the very coldest computer models are right, there's a chance we could see some "snowliage" next Tuesday, like this scene in Underhill in October, 2022. However many other computer models don't cool us off nearly enough to make it snow in the mountains next week.
Another cold front Friday night might actually get us closer to more seasonable levels for Saturday and Sunday, but it should still be a little milder than average for this time of year.
It now looks like Saturday night should be Burlington's first excursion to under 50 degrees since September 11.
There are signs some true autumn weather could finally hit toward Monday and Tuesday. As it stands now, a stronger cold front is set to arrive, and a storm might form along it. That would give us some chillier rain.
The computer models disagree on how cool it might get, especially toward next Tuesday.
The colder models would leave us with a bit of snow cover on the mountains on Tuesday(snowliage!) High temperatures that day would stay in the 50s or even upper 40s. Some places could belated see their first frost of the season Tuesday night.
All that, by the way, would not be the least bit unusual for early October in Vermont.
On the other hand, some computer models don't let that system early next week grab a whole lot of cold air from Canada. In that case, temperatures would merely just stay near normal.
Things might be more consistently turning to a cooler trend however. Longer range forecasts had been pushing near to slightly warmer than normal weather through mid-October. Today, those longer range forecasts have now decidedly leaning toward cooler than average conditions starting next week and going into mid-month.
A tanker truck loading up sap at a maple sugaring operation in St. Albans, Vermont in March, 2020. That's usually the season for sugaring in Vermont, but recent December warmth has prompted some sugarers to produce off season.
Now that it's gotten a little colder, I guess maple sugaring season is done.
Wait, what?
As any good Vermonter knows, sugaring season comes in March and April. That's when we start crawling out of the depths of winter.
We start getting those chilly nights and mild days, which makes the sap flow in the maples and we start boiling away to make syrup.
But, mainly due to a better understanding of maple trees and a little bit due to climate change making our winters gonzo, some maple producers got some production in this December.
Branon Family Maple Orchard in Fairfield made about 300 gallons of syrup during that episode. Temperatures briefly cooled down and they had to stop. But we had another warm week in the closing days of December, so Branon probably made more.
Other sugar makers in Vermont have reported making syrup, too.
Large maple producers like Branons tap trees early, since they have such an expanse of maple forests to cover. If sugaring weather is unseasonably favorable, like it was in the past couple of weeks, they can produce.
Don't worry about the trees. It's not like sugar maples have a limited amount of sap and that's it. As long as it's warm, the maples will draw moisture from the ground to produce sap. And the amount of sap taken from trees through maple sugaring is negligible, as far as the tree is concerned.
Thesame thing happened last year. After a brief, relatively harsh cold wave around Christmas, 2022, near record warmth hit Vermont in the closing days of December and the beginning of January, 2023.
Vermont is the largest maple producer in the United States, making about half the total for the whole nation. The biggest maple syrup producer in the world is Quebec.
Map shows areas of oceans warmer or cooler than normal. Orange areas are on the warm side. That stripe of warmth west of South America is normal for an El Nino. The warmth in the northern Pacific, though, might be disrupting the "normal" El Nino weather pattern.
As you keep reading in this here blog thingy, I keep mentioning the current El Nino that is helping boost global temperatures to record heights. It's working hand in hand with climate change.
We're heading into winter, and you'd expect a typical El Nino pattern to take hold. More often than not, that means a rather mild November, December and possibly January here in the Northeast.
Instead, it's been a rather chilly November here in Vermont. Not anywhere close to record cold, but it's still been on the nippy side.
El Ninos, especially when they're pretty strong like this one, tend to turbo-charge storminess, too. Not always, but often. Larger storms normally start to ramp up in November and continue on into the winter. Sometimes, El Nino helps storms get even stronger.
In the colder months of the year, El Nino tends to make the South stormy, and those storms sometimes roar northeastward up the East Coast, though they often pass south of New England, and their impacts frequently miss places like Vermont and New Hampshire.
Experts are honing in on one factor that has made at least early winter a bit odd. El Ninos always make the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South American unusually warm, and that's their case this time.
Those storms then travel roughly west to east across the southern and sometimes eastern United States. Those storms are missing due to the warm northwest Pacific, so the weather has overall been pretty quiet the past few weeks in most of the United States.
According to reports, scientists believe climate change is probably at least partly responsible for the warmth in the western and northwestern Pacific.
Scientists told the Washington Post they still believe the weather pattern will evolve into something more typical of an El Nino. That means increased storminess in California and across the South. It could also mean a warm December after all in the northern United States, including possibly here in New England.
There are already some signs of that trend. The latest National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center outlooks are leaning warm across most of the United Statesfor the first two weeks of December.
Many, but certainly not all forecasts for this winter point to a somewhat harsher late winter with possible bouts of Arctic cold later in January and February.
But who knows, really? Each major El Nino winter here in Vermont had its differences. The winter of 1997-98 featured arguably Vermont's worst ice storm in history, but was otherwise close to normal. The El Nino continued into the winter of 1998-99 and we had an exceptionally warm winter,.
Another El Nino winter, 2009-2010 was a rather snowy and a bit on the cold side, Finally, the last winter with a big El Nino, 2015-16, was the warmest winter on record in Vermont.
Given all that, I'll stick by the winter prediction I made weeks ago: I'll tell you in March, because the only way we'll know how the winter of 2023-24 turns out is waiting until it's over.
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 reportedthat 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.
This was an unusual event, being the first February tornado in New Jersey since 1999. The tornado was strong for New Jersey in any season, let alone winter, when tornadoes almost never hit that far north,
The tornado was rated an EF-2 On the tornado strength scale, with top winds of 115 mph. The scale goes from 0 to 5. It traveled for 5.8 miles, which is on the long side for a Northeastern tornado.
The tornado hit a populated area and caused quite a bit of damage to apartment buildings, businesses and homes in its 200-yard wide path.
Given how busy the area hit is, and how strong the tornado was, I'm pleasantly surprised there were no injuries.
As you would expect, local media swarmed into the tornado zone after the storm passed and began interviewing witnesses. A WABC reporter encountered a woman named Marilyn Anderson who was home with her sister when the tornado struck.
She gave probably the best and most entertaining weather interview I've seen in ages. It's in the video at the bottom of this post.
Please note I'm not laughing at Anderson. Not at all. I just think she's absolutely terrific. Her animated personality makes me wish I could go out for drinks with her. A tornado had just scared the bejeezus out of her and damaged her home, yet she remained so positive and animated as she recounted her story.
I wish everybody had as much joie de vivre as Anderson.
Here's the video.Click on this linkif you don't see the image below. Otherwise, click on the image to view.
