As California Burns, Homeowners Insurance Is Getting Harder To Obtain

My home in St. Albans, Vermont is not prone to wildfires and
not in a flood plain or coastal area. Still, as weather disasters,
many of them driven by climate change, get worse,
my and everybody else's insurance rates could go up. 

A good chunk of California, especially in the southern parts of the state near heavily populated Los Angeles and San Diego, are under fire alerts again today and tomorrow.    

Strong, dry winds and an ongoing drought are making things dangerous. This at a time of year when the winter rains should be starting to move in. There's little sign of rain for at least a week out there, probably more. 

This new, seemingly never ending California fire season is consistent with climate change. We've been warned about this for years.

The problem isn't just the immediate risk of fires.  Many homeowners are having difficulty obtaining insurance, or are at least paying more for it, because of the increasing dangers and increasing expense of wildfires. 

In some of the most fire prone areas of California, state regulators are seeing an increase in insurance coverage that's not being renewed by insurance companies.  That obviously exposes these homeowners to extreme financial risk. 

According to the Sacramento Bee:

"Carriers sent non-renewal notices to 42,088 homeowners in the foothill counties in 2019, compared to 23,925 the year before (California) Deputy Insurance Commissioner Bryant Henley announced Monday. Almost every one of these homeowners had to buy replacement coverage from the state's "insurer of last resort," the FAIR Plan, often at prices double or triple what they were paying before."

More strict building codes might help. It'll make houses more insurable, but also more expensive to build. Such requirements would mean houses would need fire resilient roofs and siding, along with other improvements. 

 This kind of insurance problem will spread amid climate change. As coastal areas become more prone to flooding due to sea level rise and more intense storms, coverage of coastal properties will be more difficult to obtain and more expensive. 

You have to wonder what kind of ripple effect this might have across the entire insurance industry.  Your home might not be at particular risk from wildfires or flooding, but will your insurance rates go up because of the increasing cost of disasters, many of them climate related?

Renters could be affected to.  Your landlord might pass on the cost of higher insurance to their tenants. 

It's another example of how nobody is truly immune from the effects of climate change. 

Woe The People Who Need To Clean Up After Nor'easter

Satellite view of the nor'easter off the Northeast coast
Saturday. 

 The big nor'easter that hit much of New England is rapidly departing, leaving people a really difficult cleanup job.  

That's because it most places where a lot of snow fell, that snow was very, very sloppy and wet. 

When snow has a high water content, like this snow did, it creates lots of problems with downed trees and power lines. And it creates an unenviable job of shoveling it away.  It's like shoveling wet cement. 

One stat illustrates how much water is in this snow in many areas. One town in Massachusetts had three inches of snow.  In a standard issue snowstorm, that would roughly be the equivalent of 0.3 inches of rain. But Saturday's three inches in this Massachusetts town was the equivalent of 1.16 inches. 

Snow amounts were about as predicted, or a little less than predicted in Massachusetts.  There just wasn't much cold air available to the storm, so what snow fell came while temperatures were at or a little above freezing in most places.  

There were exceptions. A high elevation in Paxton, in central Massachusetts had 12.5 inches. 

Up in New Hampshire and Maine, totals in many spots were more impressive. Rangely, in western Maine, had 13.5 inches. Gorham, New Hampshire saw 15 inches. 

The snow was especially problematic in Maine.  Widespread power failures hit this past Monday as high winds hit that state. Then, just as the number of people in Maine still without power finally dwindled, this wet snowstorm hit. 

NECN reports at least 220,000 people in Maine without power due to the wet snow. The heavy weight of the snow reportedly also collapsed two barns in Maine. 

Here in Vermont, this was, as expected, no big deal.  There were many reports of two or three inches of snow up and down the Connecticut River Valley and in the Northeast Kingdom. Western Vermont mostly had flurries or nothing at all. 

While not much of the storm's precipitation reached into Vermont, the nor'easter's thick overcast did. Between that, a low sun angle and low level moisture creating low clouds and fog, Saturday was a quite a dark day in Vermont. It was almost as if the sun never came up.  That's a drawback of living in an otherwise beautiful state.  It can be remarkably dreary in the Green Mountain State in November and December. 

This was a very challenging storm to forecast, and those forecasts still ended up being pretty accurate, so I'm impressed.

This whole week in Vermont will be quiet.  There will be a lot of clouds around, which is typical for December.  More dark days. Um, yay? 

Chilly weather, but nothing odd for December, will continue through Tuesday, then readings will rise again to somewhat above normal for the second end of the week. 

We'll have very little precipitation this entire week, which is a bit odd for what is normally a stormy time of year. 

Eastern New England About To Be Blasted By Nor'Easter. Vermont Is Meh

Heavy rain was moving into southern New England before dawn today, the opening salvo of what promises to be a humdinger of a nor'easter for the region today and tonight. 

Big nor'easter for the eastern half of New England, but
as this forecast map from NWS Burlington, Vermont
will largely escape this storm

That is, with the exception of most of Vermont, which should escape anything earth-shattering. 

The storm, just off the Mid-Atlantic coast this morning, is heading north, and strengthening fast.  The rate at which it's getting stronger will actually increase further as it heads towards New England later today. 

Had there not been warm air in place ahead of the storm, some parts of eastern and northern New England would be looking at two feet of snow out of this.   As the storm approaches, it will cool the air and quickly change the rain to snow, except not so much on Cape Cod and the Islands. 

Given the fact the nor'easter will be strong and getting stronger as it passes New England, things will get wild east of the Connecticut River this afternoon and tonight. 

Snowfall rates in some spots will be a whopping one to three inches per hour.  Thundersnow is likely in a few areas.  The snow will be wet and heavy and coming down fast.  Winds will increase with gusts over 40 mph.

That wet, heavy snow is a recipe for  a lot of power failures. 

On the other hand, LOTS of snow is in the 
forecast for New Hampshire and western Maine. 

This will be a pretty memorable storm for eastern New England.  

Parts of northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine could easily see a foot of wet snow. It's conceivable parts of interior Maine could get close to two feet. This is certainly not the worst  New England storm ever, but still, fairly impressive. 

Not so in Vermont. We'll see the outer edges of the storm. It won't really be anything to write home to ma about here in the Green Mountain State. 

Interestingly the Connecticut River seems to be working out as the dividing line between a full blown winter storm and something less dire. 

True, the northeast corner of Vermont could still see six inches of snow out of this, but if current forecasts hold, the Connecticut Valley on the Vermont side should only see two to four inches of snow. 

Once you get west of the Green Mountains, most places should expect an inch or less later today through Sunday morning. 

I mentioned yesterday that forecasts for the storm were really uncertain.  Things have gotten clearer this morning in terms of what most forecasters think the storm will do. 

However, there's still room for surprises. The western edge of the storm will have a sharp cut off between heavy snow to the east and practically nothing to the west. If the storm ventures just a wee bit further to the west that most of the region's meteorologists expect, parts of Vermont come into play. 

The storm will be fairly compact in size for a nor'easter.  If it somehow gets a little wider than expected, eastern Vermont could pick up some extra snow. 

In any event, things will definitely turn more wintry, more seasonal here in Vermont for a few days. 

Central Massachusetts is also under the gun for a big
wet snowfall from this nor'easter

It was awfully mild in Vermont at dawn this morning, with pretty much all of us in the 30s.  

As the storm approaches, winds will pick up from the north, gusting into the 30s mph this afternoon. That will add some bite to the air, especially as temperatures start to slowly fall this afternoon. 

With that, many of us won't get above freezing again until about Wednesday.  Highs Sunday through Tuesday will be close to 30 degrees. That's not at all odd for this time of year, but still, a shock to the system after such a warm November and early December.

The upcoming week does look quiet, with temperatures once again heading to above normal levels (mid 30s to mid 40s for highs) by the second half of the week. 

Betcha Any New England Storm Forecast This Weekend Will Be Wrong

The brave folks at the National Weather Service in South
Burlington took a crack at a snow forecast for the 
upcoming weekend storm. Expect changes to this
forecast due to lots of question marks remaining
about the storm

There's a weather tricky forecast for anybody trying to figure out how a winter storm will affect New England this weekend.   

Whatever  you're hearing about this storm now will probably be at least partially wrong.

This is definitely NOT some kind of diss against all the great meteorologists in the New England region.  It's such a difficult forecast that it's bound to have some problems. 

First off, it will be a rapidly developing and strengthening storm. Such storms are always dicey when they're in that stage. 

Some parts of New England will have temperatures that are marginal for rain or snow, so that will greatly affect how much accumulates and where. 

This is a nor'easter, so any deviation from the forecast track makes a big difference in what kind of weather you'll get. If you're off by a dozen miles or so in the forecast of most weather systems, it's not that big  deal. But a slight fudge in a nor'easter forecast and you're screwed. 

This is especially true with this storm. It will be fairly compact, so on the western side of the storm, you will have a sharp east to west gradient of heavy snow vs. not much at all. 

There's one more problem with this storm.  It's supposed to come into New England tomorrow. Usually, a day or so before a storm, the computer models that help meteorologists with forecasting have come into fairly good agreement with each other as to how things will play out. 

As of this Friday morning, those computer models were still arguing with each other. 

You see why New England meteorologists are pulling out their hair?  This is a worst case scenario in terms of how high the potential is for a forecast bust. 

So, the bottom line is, it appears somebody in New England will get a lot of snow out of this the coast will have a lot of wind and maybe some coastal flooding, but otherwise all bets are off. 

If you can find any kind of consensus in the models so far, it seems like the best chances of more than six inches of snow would be in central Massachusetts, much of New Hampshire and interior Maine. 

Even that's no guarantee. Some model leave a good chunk of New Hampshire with not much snow and push that precipitation more eastward. A few bring the heavier snow into eastern Vermont. Who knows?

Whoever gets the snow is at risk for tree damage and power failures.  The places that do get nailed will have heavy, wet snow and gusty winds later Saturday, Saturday night and into Sunday.  That's a recipe for problems. 

Here in Vermont, the going forecasts have places east of the Green Mountains getting some snow.  The heaviest snow would probably be in the far northeast corner of Vermont up by Island Pond, where current forecasts call for more than six inches of snow.

The rest of eastern Vermont would get one to four inches in this scenario and the Champlain Valley would get maybe an inch, if that. 

But, yeah, that's the current forecast.  Don't hold anybody to it. 

Just a slight wobble westward with this storm, and the whole state of Vermont would be in play for some decent snows. A slight wobble east and the Northeast Kingdom is off the table. 

So here's how to manage your weekend plans with this uncertain scenario.

First of all, we're supposed to try to stay home and away from people anyway to protect ourselves against Covid.  So this iffy forecast is just another great excuse to not go anywhere.

If you're adamant about heading out Saturday afternoon through much of Sunday, to be on the safe side, plan on dangerous driving conditions. It might or might not happen, but plan for it anyway.

The forecast actually gets much easier once the storm departs later Sunday.  Next week will generally e cloudy, with a slow warming trend starting with slightly cooler than normal weather Monday to a little warmer than normal by the end of the week. No big storms are in sight after this mystery storm goes away on Sunday. 

Finally Colder In Vermont, But Hot News; Other Weather/Climate Problems Continue Elsewhere

Motorist fleeing a southern California wildfire last night.
Photo by Leonard Ortiz/Orange County Register/Getty

We've definitely cooled off from our record December heat, and it looks a little more normal outside my St. Albans, Vermont window.  

We had a dusting of snow Wednesday, and at least a little more snow is in the forecast later in the weekend and next week. So for now, record heat is not in the cards for us. 

However,  that's not true for different parts of the world, as heat waves and worrying climate trends continue on. 

AUSTRALIA WILTS

Spring time is moving on to summer Down Under in Australia, but for many who live there, summer has been broiling for a month now. 

As The Guardian points out:

"Australia has sweltered through its hottest spring and November on record, with both the season and the month more than 3.6 degrees warmer than the long term average."

A heat wave capped the warm month of November. 

"The extraordinary heat last weekend broke heat records for November in South Australia, Victoria and NSW (New South Wales).  Smithville, in northwest NSW reached 46.9C (116F). Andamooka, in the far north of South Australia hit 48C (118F) and Ouyen in Victoria equalled the previous high for the month of 45.8C (114F)"

This early season heat is ominous for Australia. It seems like eons ago, but last January, weeks of record heat in Australia dried things out and created the worst bush fire season in that nation's history.  Will history repeat itself a year later?

SPEAKING OF WILDFIRES

Lots of climate scientists have noted that wildfire season in the west keeps getting longer and longer, almost never ending, due to increased heat, and altered weather patterns due to climate change. 

A seeming case in point is going on in California right now. Extremely critical fire danger alerts are up for much of southern California near Los Angeles and San Diego.  The winter rainy season is a little bit late there. Strong Santa Ana winds, ultra dry vegetation and very low humidity is creating this latest danger.

One large wildfire has already erupted today.  What started as a house on fire spread to vegetation and raced onward, covering 5.5 square miles overnight southeast of Anaheim, California. Mandatory evacuations are ongoing.  The situation is expected to continue worsening today. 

It's somewhat unusual but certainly not unheard of to have wildfires this late in the season in southern California. That part of the state is usually the last to enjoy the winter rainy season.  Still, there should have gotten some rain by now, so this is definitely odd. 

What might actually turn out to be unprecedented is the potential for wildfires in California later in the weekend and next week.

This fire forecast is still iffy, but the fact that anybody is even talking about it is strange. By early December, northern California should be pretty damp, as the usual parade of Pacific storms should have introduced the rainy season a good month ago.

San Francisco,  for instance, only had a third of an inch of rain for all of November and no precipitation since November 18. No rain is in the forecast for more than a week.  Vegetation is the driest on record for this time of year in northern California. 

If wildfires break out in northern California in the coming days, it will be unprecedented. 

ALASKA FLOODS

Serious flood damage in Haines, Alaska after the wettest storm
on record in that region. Photo by Darwin Feakes via
Anchorage Daily News

The weather pattern so far this season has diverted storms northward away from the United States West Coast and toward the southeastern panhandle of Alaska - Juneau and that area.   

That part of the world is normally quite wet to begin with. After all, there are some beautiful rain forests in this area.

Recent rains, though, have gotten extreme. At last report, six people are missing due to flooding and mudslides after the wettest day on record hit cities like Juneau, Haines and Skagway. 

A landslide swept through homes and the cruise ship dock in Haines. Numerous roads are washed out. 

Nearly a foot of rain fell on the town of Pelican in one 48-hour period. Juneau had about five inches of rain just on Tuesday, its wettest day on record. 

This was an "atmospheric river" storm, in which a channel of warm, very moist Pacific air directed itself like a fire hose into coastal southeastern Alaska. Atmospheric river storms are common in this neck of the woods, but this one was extreme.  

The latest Alaska storm is also consistent with climate change.  We've been warned that some normally wet storms could become even wetter as the world warms.  

Weird, Warm December Vermont Day To Slowly Give Way To Winter

Springtime in December. Honeysuckle vine leafing out
in my St. Albans, Vermont garden yesterday amid
record warmth. 

Yesterday in Vermont was certainly a strange one.  

Temperatures, at least for awhile, were at mid-May levels.  Convective showers and even thunderstorms, the kind you'd expect later in the spring and not December, roamed about. 

And we had dramatic views of clouds, sharp sun and rainbows. It was a terrific - and comfortable - day to be outdoors, watching the skies. 

Burlington reached a record high for the date of 66 degrees, besting the old record set in 1934by two degrees. 

Montpelier managed to break its record high for the date before dawn. There, it was 60 degrees, beating the only record set in 1991 .

St. Johnsbury clocked in with a record high of 65 degrees, beating the old record set in 1934 by two degrees. 

While this record warmth bathed Vermont, not too far to the west - in western New York, it snowed all day. Go figure. 

A first for my property in St. Albans, Vermont. A flower
buds in my garden amid record warmth

Over here in the warmth, those showers and storms broke out.  That was also really unusual for December.  

You do sometimes get a lightning strike or two in an intense snow squall or strong nor'easter passing by, but even that rarely happens this time of year. 

What we got Tuesday was almost summertime thunderstorms.  Small hail was reported around Montpelier.

I noticed several flashes of lightning from my viewpoint in St. Albans, Vermont, as a late afternoon thunderstorm rumbled northward through the northern Adirondacks of New York. 

The parent storm system that caused this pulled subtropical air from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic waters off Florida all the way north to New England, which caused the unusual warmth. 

Storms that aren't hurricanes have cold cores.  As the storm edged closer to us, the air aloft cooled first.  The contrast between the very warm surface air the the chilly air higher up created a lot of instability, which helped fire the odd showers and thunderstorms. 

Spring-like convection fires up southwest of St. Albans,
Vermont Tuesday amid record warmth on December 1

As this decaying parent storm system moves north, the colder air  at the surface behind it is finally bleeding into Vermont today.  It was back to reality before dawn today as I took the dogs outside in St. Albans, Vermont and was greeted by snow flurries. 

Still, temperatures were in the mid-30s, which is kind of mild for early morning this time of year. 

Snow showers will pick up steam this afternoon, but might mix with rain in the lower valleys. We actually might end up with a dusting to two inches of snow out of this, at least in some areas. 

It will stay relatively mild, but nothing like Tuesday, into Saturday. 

Then, as they say, the weather could get "interesting."

"Interesting," as the National Weather Service office in South Burlington put it in their Tuesday afternoon forecast discussion, usually perks up my ears. 

It seems another fairly decent storm - though not as strong as the one that affected the East Monday - will head north along the Eastern Seaboard.

A faint rainbow, dark storm clouds and a shaft of bright
sun lights up the trees on an odd weather day, yesterday,
December 1, in St. Albans, Vermony

We'll be in the colder, west side of the storm.  This sets us up for perhaps the first decent snow of the winter.  That's not guaranteed just yet.  It's unclear if heavy precipitation will make it as far west as all of Vermont. 

Temperatures will be marginal, too. Which means if we do get this storm, valleys could see more cold rain snow. 

All this would happen Saturday night and Sunday, so stay tuned.  We'll have some clarity on this possible situation I hope by Friday. 

I've been hinting that winter would finally arrive, at least for now, and it does look like that.  It looks like next week will feature seasonably cold weather with chances of snow here and there 

Seasonable means highs in the upper 20s to mid 30s and lows in the teens and low 20s this time of year.  If you didn't bask in those periods of warm spring sunshine on Tuesday, you missed your chance. 

Big Storm Gives Us A Very Warm Squirt After Toasty November

This morning, December 1 in my St. Albans, Vermont yard.
Grass is still and the perennial beds look ready to burst
into spring growth.  It was a very warm November and
December is off to a toasty start.

The large storm that gave us here in Vermont some decent rains and some destructive winds elsewhere has helped us kick off a remarkably toasty start to December. 

Early morning temperatures today were in the low 60s in parts of Vermont, which would have been a bit above average for that hour in July. 

Eastern Vermont was the warmest.  Island Pond, usually a notorious cold spot in the Northeast Kingdom was at 61 degrees early this morning. Morrisville was 62 degrees and Montpelier was 60.

Further afield, Caribou, at the northern tip of Maine, was at 57 degrees, just one degree shy of the all time warmest day for December up there. If it makes it to that record, it would be the second month in a row with the all time hottest temperature. It reached 75 degrees up there in early November. 

Even so, this does not portend a record hot day for most of us.  Temperatures will actually slowly fall here in Vermont during the rest of the day, though still stay quite warm by December standards. 

This follows a very warm November, both locally and nationally.  Virtually all of the continental United States was warmer than average in November. Many cities east of the Mississippi River had either their warmest November or at least scored in the top five warmest. 

Here in Vermont, November averaged out to 43.3 degrees in Burlington, enough to tie the record with 2011 as the third warmest November.  Unless December turns out to be remarkably cold - unlikely according to current forecasts - this will be one of the warmest years on record here in Vermont.

Elsewhere in Vermont temperatures ran two to four degrees above average in general.

Rainfall was near normal in eastern Vermont and below normal west of the Green Mountains. It's good that eastern Vermont bore the brunt of what precipitation we got in November. They were the drier part of the state.  In fact, there's still some lingering drought east of the Greens, but that's diminishing. 

Yesterday's storm also got eastern areas wetter than the west. Go further into New Hampshire, Maine and southern New England, you had a worse storm, as expected. Those areas had widespread power outages and local flash floods. 

Vermont got brushed by those high winds. As of early this morning, nearly 2,000 homes and businesses were without power in Orange County, near the New Hampshire border, according to Vermont Outage Map.

Further south, tornado watches were up as far north as New Jersey, and it appears at least one tornado touched down in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

Back here in Vermont, the trend will be toward gradually cooler weather, with slightly above normal  temperatures Wednesday through Saturday, with near normal temperatures from Sunday well into next week at least.

Near normal in early December is certainly cold enough for snow, so winter sports tu

The weather will be active, with several chances of rain and snow, then snow through next week.  It's still hard to tease out whether any of these rainy and/or snowy spells will amount to anything substantial. 

It still looks like more springtime in Vermont, the kind of conditions we had this morning, will have to wait until, well, spring.