Vermont Forest Fires Burn As Dry, Warm Spring Rolls On

Forest fire in Killington, as seen from Route 4. Photo by
Paul Holmes, via The Mountain Times

A stubborn forest fire in Killington that has been burning since Saturday re-intensified Wednesday as dry conditions in and around Vermont have officials pleading with people to be careful with outdoor flames. 

The Killington fire started Saturday when a new land owner decided to burn brush and slash from previous logging operations on their rugged property in the Green Mountains near Route 4. 

According to The Mountain Times, the landowner did not have a burn permit, which is required in Killington and most Vermont towns before you can set your brush pile alight. 

The land owner has so far not been publicly identified. 

The Killington fire warden said the new landowner might not have known they needed a burn permit, but that's no excuse.  

Also, duh!! Just walking into the woods and fields on Saturday, or yesterday for that matter, would have immediately told you conditions are dry and you might want to wait for wetter conditions before you burn brush. Fire wardens across the state are disinclined to issue burn permits until things get wetter out there.

For the record, the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation lists today's fire danger in the entire state as high. 

So far, the Killington fire is burning pretty far away from any homes and businesses and no structures are threatened. But it is on steep, very difficult to access terrain, making it hard to fight. 

Since Saturday, personnel from at least 10 fire departments from in and near Rutland County have been battling the fire, reports The Mountain Times. The fire appeared to be largely under control by later Sunday as crews raked fire lines to contain the flames. 

However, it was obvious the fire had re-flared Wednesday, as smoke rose from a hillside north of Route 4. Before Wednesday, the fire had burned around 25 acres, which is much bigger than average for a Vermont forest fire.  

The forest fire danger across Vermont is 
high today. No outdoor burning, please!

According to northeastwildfire.org, the average size of a Vermont forest fire is only about two acres or less. The Green Mountain State usually sees between 200 and 400 of these mostly small fires annually, mostly in the spring.

In the distant past, Vermont had much worse forest fires. In 1908, a total of 106 wildfires burned16,000 acres.  Fires in 1903 burned 5,000 acres. 

Back in Killington, the weather is not cooperating with firefighters.  

Warm temperatures and low humidity are allowing the woods to dry out further, and encouraging the fire. Forecasts call for temperatures in the 80s this afternoon with relative humidity quite low - in the 20 to 30 percent range.  

Some showers and thunderstorms are possible Saturday and likely on Sunday, but it's unclear whether those showers will amount to all that much. 

The Mountain Times said two smaller forest fires broke out in central Vermont in recent days.  One fire in Pittsfield was also started by an out of state landowner who set a brush pile alight without a permit. Another fire near Chittenden Reservoir was quickly contained.

Much more distant wildfires are affecting Vermont, too. The sky was hazy yesterday, and you'll notice the same today.  That's because winds are carrying smoke aloft from fires in southern and central Canada into New England.

Western New York is under an air quality alert today, in part due to particulates from fires embedded in this haze. 

Report: Heat Waves To Be Increasingly Deadly Threat In Coming Decades

Boaters seek cool breezes on Lake Champlain on a hot
day in 2016.  Dangerous heat waves are expected to 
lengthen and worsen both locally and around the world]
due to climate change. 

Here in Vermont, as previously advertised, we're getting this season's first taste of real summer weather.  The past two days have gotten to 80 degrees in Burlington. 

We'll be in the low 80s today and mid to possibly upper 80s Thursday. 

This week's weather is certainly much more nice than dangerous. Though since we're still unaccustomed to the warmth, you want to be careful exerting yourself in afternoon sunshine this week. 

The very warm weather we're in for today and tomorrow is by no means a heat wave and not the hottest weather we've ever seen in May. (That was last May, when Burlington reached an all time May high of 95 degrees. The previous May record was tied just three years earlier).

Those May stats hint at an increased frequency of heat waves, both here and almost everywhere else, and that is a real topic of concern. 

With climate change, heat waves are getting stronger, longer and more deadly. 

Several studies on extreme heat were unveiled at a recent conference, and those studies paint a dangerous picture of future hot spells, both internationally and in the United States, says Inside Climate News

The research shows that ever more intense heat waves combined with high humidity in some parts of tropical Africa and South Asia threaten to make those areas practically unlivable in future decades. 

Also, major cities in the United States are experiencing longer and more intense heat waves now than in the 1960s. If this trend holds, the heat could overwhelm the power grid, causing electricity failures and increasing the risk of a high death toll due to the lack of air conditioning. 

Heat waves are already deadly enough, says Bob Berwyn, writing for Inside Climate News:

"Globally, extreme heat killed at least 166,000 people between 1998 and 2017, according to the World Health Organization, including about 70,000 during a 2003 heat wave in Europe. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control calculated that extreme heat 'caused or contributed to more than 7,800 deaths' between 1999 and 2009."

Heat waves are not the kind of dramatic, "sexy" disasters you see on the news. Hot weather doesn't cause the type of dramatic property damage like hurricanes and tornadoes inflict, so it's not eye-catching. 

Heat deaths occur much more out of public view, and statistics on heat deaths take time to compile. It's not as immediately reportable as the casualties caused by a tornado or flash flood. 

These heat waves can hit the Great White North, too, with fatal results.  A record July, 2018 heat wave caused four deaths in Vermont, making that the state's worst weather disaster since Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. There was no property damage from the heat wave, but tell that to the families of people who succumbed to the heat.

That same July, 2018 heat wave was blamed for 70 deaths in Quebec.

Those increasingly deadly heat waves could also have global societal impacts. If parts of the tropics become places that are too hot to survive, you'll risk having massive migrations to cooler places. Those migrations can cause massive political and economic upheaval, possibly even leading to wars. 

Heat waves are slow moving, quiet disasters.  Stealth disasters like that need more scrutiny, and I'm glad scientists seem to be taking a renewed look at this hot global killers. 

Yeah, this is kind of a downer post, I know.  We all want to count our blessings, but we also ignore trouble spots at our own peril. 

 

First Real Summer Weather Spell In Eastern U.S., Vermont Included. Meanwhile Devastating Floods South

Garden and surroundings in St. Albans, Vermont now
approaching that look of full summer. Highs in the
80s this week will complete the process.

A big ridge of high pressure in the atmosphere is giving the eastern United States its first real taste of summer this week.  

Some spot 90 degree readings are possible as far north as the Northeast Wednesday and Thursday before slightly cooler air arrives during or just after this coming weekend. The Southeast is expected to stay hot well into next week.

Here in Vermont, the first 80 degree temperature of the season came to Burlington yesterday.  Today will remain ever so slightly cooler than that due to morning clouds and a weak weather disturbance.

However by tomorrow and Thursday the warmer Vermont valleys are expected to reach the mid-80s. Though highly unlikely, it's within the realm of possibility if there's full sunshine and conditions are just right, somebody in Vermont could see the first 90 degree reading of the year. 

Such warmth is made easier by the rather dry nature of the air. It can get hotter on sunny days if the humidity is low. Of course, to us it would feel hotter if it were humid, even if that moisture lowered the temperature by a couple degrees. 

The relatively dry air this week will make the unseasonable warmth pretty bearable.

There's some debate as to how quickly the early season "heat" will diminish, but the ridge causing it will break down over the weekend. We will start to trend cooler perhaps as early as Friday, but the process will be on the gradual side.

 A cold front will pass through, probably Saturday or Sunday, bringing temperatures down to near normal (70-ish) by Monday.

It doesn't look like that cold front will bring any needed, drenching rain, but at least it gives us a chance of some showers. We'll take anything we can get, right?

DANGEROUS SOUTHERN FLOODS

One big downside to this nice weather in the East is the same weather pattern is causing havoc in Texas, Louisiana and surrounding areas. The high pressure in the East, combined with storminess further west, is causing repeated rounds of torrential thunderstorms in this region. 

There's already is extensive flooding, and if anything, it will get worse today and tomorrow.  

Some places have already had a foot or more of rain in the past couple of days.  Some spot reports of nearly 18 inches of rain this week. 

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wrecked by epic flooding in 2016, is now experiencing another round of homes and businesses badly damage by flooding.  

Same is true in Lake Charles, Louisiana, which is still trying to recover from Category 4 Hurricane Laura, and then Hurricane Delta last year. About 80 people had to be rescued from flooded buildings and cars around Lake Charles, and hundreds of homes were flooded Monday. 

One video on social media showed people in Lake Charles casually eating in a diner with ankle deep water on the floor.  Officially, 12.49 inches of rain fell on Lake Charles Monday. Half of that rain came in just six hours. 

Also on Monday, a total of 28 tornadoes touched down, mostly in Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico.  Luckily, they caused relatively light damage. Other tornadoes struck Sunday, including one home in North Dallas that suffered severe tornado damage for the second time in three years.

Western Texas tornadoes stayed mostly over open areas, yielding picturesque funnel and wall clouds.  A gas plant was damaged, but that's about it for destruction from Monday's twisters.  

 More torrential downpours expected today and tomorrow in large parts of Texas and Louisiana will worsen the flooding. 

 

Spring Thunderstorms: Beauty In Vermont; Danger In The Plains

Sunshine lights up green foliage as storm clouds 
loom Sunday in St. Albans, Vermont.

On Sunday here in Vermont, we saw one of the first or at least one of the first, thunderstormy day of the warm season. 

The showers and storms were all hit and miss, as had been expected. The storms were more widespread than in previous days. 

Even those areas that did not get any rain Sunday saw some pretty views of towering convective clouds. 

Many of us heard thunder for the first time in months. For some of us, it was the first thunder since sometime last fall. 

The storms' behavior was pretty fun to watch, at least from a weather geek's perspective. They were slow movers, and for most of the day set up shop over the mountains. For a few hours, they lined up perfectly north to south in Vermont over and just east of the Green Mountains spine. The same set up was true over the eastern Adirondacks. 

The showers and storms caused some abrupt changes in temperature, too. The strong May sun brought afternoon temperatures into the 70s for most of us. But cold air lurked aloft.  Outflow winds from the storms would bring local temperatures down by 20 degrees, turning a warm May Sunday into a chilly one.

The rain-cooled air set the stage for a somewhat cold morning today as skies cleared overnight, allowing temperatures to drop further. It was 30 degrees early this morning in notorious cold spot Saranac Lake, New York and 34 degrees in Island Pond. Most of us saw temperatures in the low 40s at dawn, but don't worry, readings will rocket back up into the 70s by this afternoon.

Most of Sunday's showers were pretty light, so for most places, relief from the dry spell was either lame or non-existent.  Late in the day, St. Albans, got bullseyed by a shower and left us with 0.08 inch. Morrisville got 0.17 inches. 

This looks vaguely like one of those photos of a big
tornado forming in the Great Plains, but it's really just
a narrow,  benign rain shaft southwest of 
St. Albans, Vermont Sunday evening. 

One exception to the light rain rule was detected by radar near Smugglers Notch and along the Sterling Range in Lamoille County, says the National Weather Service in South Burlington. 

There, stalled storms, updrafts aided by the mountains and merging storms created a small area with an estimated three inches of rain. 

Meanwhile a forest fire burned further south around Killington, go figure. 

You could see rain shafts coming from the storms, and all of them were quite narrow. 

Some of the rain shafts had the shape of a big tornado forming in the Great Plains, but of course they were not spinning and were merely benign, brief bursts of locally beneficial rains. Pretty to look at, but that's it. 

There might be a few more showers and storms today, but they will be quite a bit fewer and further between than on Sunday.  More scattered showers and storms are possible toward the end of the week. 

We should get a taste of summer, too, with daytime readings possibly getting into the low 80s Wednesday into the weekend before a cold front brings us back to reality early next week.

SOUTHERN PLAINS TROUBLE

Thunderstorms were and are creating trouble, not beauty, in the southern Plains.  It's storm season, so it's natural to see a few tornadoes and some giant hailstones blast from the sky in that part of the country this time of year. 

The odd part of the storms there is and will be their persistence and the tremendous amount of rain they're producing. Flash flooding was already a problem in parts of Texas Sunday.  Dallas and surrounding areas suffered extensive flooding yesterday, with numerous people needing rescue from inundated cars.

The flooding will only get worse this week. 

Repeated storms are forecast to dump up to 10 inches of rain on much of the eastern half of Texas this week. Those areas have already had a lot of rain, which means flooding is going to be a huge problem all week. 

 

It'a Beautiful Peak Spring in Vermont, And Kinda Into Summer Now

Flowers blooming in my St. Albans, Vermont garden
this morning. It's peak spring! 

It is such a pleasure to be outdoors this time of year. 

The new leaves on the trees are now unfolding so fast you can almost watch them expand if you just stare at them  Fragrances of lilac and apple blossoms and the organic aromas of new growth make everything outdoors (except for me) smell so wonderful.  

The warm light of peak spring starts earlier than most of us get up in the morning and lasts well into the evening. 

Happy birdsong fills the air with eggs and hatchlings in the nests built in the past month or so in the shed rafters, atop outdoor lights and the crooks and crannies of the house deck supports. 

Take the dogs outside, and the roll around blissfully in the cool, sweet green grass.

Only the clouds of black flies that descend as soon as the breeze slackens takes away from this heavenly panorama.

I've always felt lucky to live in Vermont, where we're rewarded with such a glorious time of year after a long winter. I feel doubly blessed this year. The Covid pandemic has so far spared my family, my husband, myself. 

I've never taken springtime in Vermont for granted. This year, that's especially true. 

At this time last year, as the terrible pandemic took hold and grew, I wondered it that would be the last time I would be able to enjoy the season. Like everyone, I was at risk of losing the physical ability to fully enjoy the outdoors. Or lose my sense of smell, which is a real tragedy for anyone this time of year. 

The risk isn't over of course. But I'm still healthy, and I've had my Covid shots. So have my husband, siblings, mother, in-laws.  This all makes this sweet, colorful and busy season all the better. 

Even though it's the height of spring, I also have a broad definition of what constitutes summer, and to my mind we've arrived at that season. 

Oh, sure, we'll still have chilly days. There could still be a late frost. It's not unheard of to snow in Vermont this late in the season, though that's quite rare. 

Hosta leaves  unfurling in my St. Albans, Vermont
gardens this morning

But we've entered our first sustained period of what can easily pass for summertime weather. It got up to 78 degrees in Burlington Saturday, making it the warmest day so far this year. It could reach into the 80s later this week. 

We're lacking the rain we need, but we at least see attempts at the summertime ritual of afternoon and evening showers and thundershowers popping up in the afternoons and evenings. 

The showers will be few and far between and generally light for the next few day, but they'll be there. 

I see a familiar summertime pattern in the meteorological charts, too.  A big northward bulge in the jet stream is developing in the eastern United States this coming week. 

It will bring bonafide heat to parts of the East, with many places hitting 90, with of course those aforementioned 80s in Vermont by midweek. 

Another familiar summertime pattern are what a lot of us weather geeks call "ridge runner" disturbances. Those are little weather systems that ride the northern periphery of those northward bulges, or ridges in the atmosphere. 

As is often the case in the summer, we might well be in the path of those ridge runners later this week. If that's the case, those ridge runners could set off a few more of those scattered afternoon and evening showers and storms by late week. 

Please do yourself a favor and go outside and enjoy nature at its full glory. It'll clear your mind, bring you a measure of piece, improve your mood. Peak spring in Vermont is some of the best psychiatric medicine available in the world. And it's free! 

Maybe Those Winter Storms Were NOT Caused By Jet Stream Made Weird By Climate Change

There's new debate over the specific mechanisms causing
intense winter snaps in places like the U.S. and
Europe despite an overall warming climate.

A theory about sharp winter storms and cold waves made paradoxically worse by a warming climate just took a big blow. 

I've mentioned this idea several times before during rough winter weather in the past, but here's a recap:

The theory is that the Arctic is warming faster than the mid-latitudes. That reduces the contrast in temperature between the far North and places down here. 

The reduced temperature contrast slows the jet stream, making it more prone to having bigger twists and turns along its path.  Occasional bigger southward dips in this jet stream regime would create a few intense cold snaps and winter storms, despite an overall warming climate. 

This idea gets floated a lot, like during the big Texas freeze and winter storm back in February. And it really does make sense. 

Except that new research suggests this whole wavy jet stream scenario isn't happening after all. Or at least isn't happening as much as some first though. 

The journal Science published an article recently about this new research.

As Science states:

"Now, the most comprehensive modeling investigation into this link has delivered the heaviest blow yet: Even after the massive sea ice loss expected by midcentury, the polar jet stream will only weaken by tiny amounts - at most only 10% of the natural swings. And in today's world, the influence of ice loss on winter weather is negligible, says James Screen, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter and the co-leader of the investigation."

The thought that a fast warming Arctic would screw around with the jet stream gained notice in 2012 through a paper by scientists Jennifer Francis and Stephen Vavrus that examined this idea.

Francis and Vavrus had detected a weakening of the jet stream between the 1980s and the early 2010s that bolstered their theory of a more lame, meandering jet stream causing occasional extreme winter events in North America and Europe.

That weakening trend has since petered out even as carbon emissions and climate change continued unabated.

Of course, as Science notes, something else might be going on in the overall warmer atmosphere that is causing those occasional, intense, record breaking winter cold snaps that are interrupting our warmer winters now and then. 

Is less sea ice, combined with a trend for more snow over recent decades in Siberia, causing stratospheric disruptions. Those stratospheric disruptions mess with the polar vortex.  The polar vortex - a giant whirl of cold normally in the Arctic - then gets blown to pieces temporarily, helping send frigid air from the North Pole to places like Texas or Great Britain. 

Or, maybe atmospheric rivers - channels of warm, wet air - heading toward the Arctic more frequently, somehow displacing the normal icy air up there and sending it southward to torture the snow birds in normally temperate climates?

All this uncertainty proves the following: The basic science of climate change is settled science. Anyone who still believes the climate is not changing because of carbon emissions is either a crackpot or lying. 

However, the detailed mechanisms of this warming - how it affects specific weather events, specific locations and specific aspects of our complicated atmosphere - still need lots of study.

It's important to do so, because the more understanding we have of the deep details of climate change, the better society will be at anticipating and reacting to the negative effects of what we're doing to the atmosphere. 

 

 

Vermont Drought Eases, But Looks Like It Will Re-Assert Itself

Latest drought monitor shows things improving in
Vermont. Drought area, in orange, shrunk a 
lot from the previous week, and southern
Vermont even lost its abnormally dry designation.
However, weather forecasts for the next two weeks
indicate very dry weather, so back we go into 
drought, probably. 

Soaking rains at the beginning of this month eased, but did not entirely erase lingering dry conditions here in Vermont. 

And if forecasts for the next couple of weeks are correct, any drought that's still out there will start to worsen again.

According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, about 25 percent of Vermont was in drought as of May 11, down from 75 percent a week earlier.  Drought conditions are now mostly east of the Green Mountains north of Springfield.

All of Vermont was at least abnormally dry two weeks ago, but that designation was removed from southwestern Vermont in the past week. 

The whole Northeast has gotten better with dry conditions over the past month. The drought left in the region is those areas in Vermont and a small pocket in northern New York.

Now that we've seen improvement, we're unfortunately going to go back the other way. In the next few days, the best we'll do is scattered light, hit or miss showers.  Long range forecasts going out two weeks call for below normal rainfall. 

Humid weather can slow the drying process if the showers get shut off. But we're out of luck there, too.  This time of year, we can get the first muggy summer-type air of the season. 

But it looks like it will be relatively warm, but dry with low dew points most of the time for the next week or two at least.  At least the weather will be mostly nice, anyway. 

The bottom line is we'll still have to watch the water levels as we head into summer. 

At least we in Vermont are not doing nearly as bad as other parts of the nation with drought. Most of the western half of the United States is in drought. In the Southwest, it's extreme drought and the prospects for any rain out there are poor.

Wildfires have already broken out in Arizona and California, weeks or even months before they usually do.  It'll be a long, hot, troublesome summer out there.