California Horror Gets Exponentially Worse; A National Gut Punch. Climate Related Disasters Are Overwhelming Our Abilities

Horrifying image of the California fires
from television station KTLA.

 Much if not most of Pacific Palisades, California is wiped out.  Aerial views of that area look like Hiroshima after the 1945 atomic bomb. 

Downtown Altadena, California is gone, as are many neighborhoods there. 

So far, five people are known to have died in the fire, but unfortunately I fully expect that toll to rise. One person was found dead, garden hose in hand, after unsuccessfully trying to save his home. 

So much that is familiar to local residents, and to an extent the rest of us are gone. The Reel Inn in Malibu, which had been a seafood restaurant destination for celebrities and visitors was destroyed after four decades in business.

The Palisades Charter High School, which you probably saw in movies like "Freaky Friday" and "Carrie," was also destroyed. 

The unique Bunny Museum in Altadena is history, too. 

The Getty Villa, home to 40,000 pieces of priceless art, was saved only because of preparation and firefighting. The grounds of the center burned, but crews had a policy of aggressively removing brush as it would try to take over the property. Since there wasn't all that much to burn, firefighters were able to keep flames out of the building. 

The Pacific Palisades fire is now described as the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history, Previously the worst fire in Los Angeles County history was the Sayre fire of November, 2008, which wiped out 604 structures in Sylmar.

This one was far, far worse, with 1,000 structures gone so far. That's a preliminary estimate. The actual number is probably quite a bit higher.

Yet another fire broke out Wednesday night in Studio City and the Hollywood Hills last night, which looks like it destroyed a few more homes.  Somehow, firefighters, after an intense 90-minute battle, got that fire largely contained before it could attack another large swath of Los Angeles.  Most of the evacuation orders with that fire have been lifted for now, fingers crossed. 

Somewhat calmer winds today are raising hopes that firefighters can begin containing some of the fires.

Hollywood has for decades cranked out more epic disaster movies and shows than anybody can count. Those movies were an escape. Now, reality is hitting us with real catastrophes that we thought just belonged on the big screen.  

When it becomes real like it did this week, it's a a national gut punch. 

These huge disasters keep coming, one after another, with more and more extremes and greater frequency.

I know those of us who don't live anywhere near California can't feel sorry for ourselves, given the suffering of thousands of people who have lost their homes. 

But it's still distressing to everyone to watch California burn, or North Carolina wash away, or Valencia, ,Spain to scour away in unprecedented floods, and on and on it goes. It takes a toll on all of humanity, really. 

CLIMATE, MEGA-DISASTERS AND RESOURCES

It's clear that climate-driven disasters like this one in California are overwhelming infrastructure designed for the climate we used to have a few decades ago, not the one we have now.  

The remains of a Christmas tree as seen through
the window of a burning home in California'
this week. 

In the old climate, the Los Angeles cataclysm we just saw shouldn't have happened. Yes, there have always been destructive wildfires in the region.  And yes, more people are now living in the way of those wildfires, making both fighting and fleeing the fires more difficult. 

Still, this fire shouldn't have been so awful.  But climate change made probably made it worse.

The two previous winters in Los Angeles were much wetter than average. That created lush growth in the steep brush lands that surround so many neighborhoods. Then, this winter, the rain failed. The lush growth turned to tinder. 

The rainy season should have started by now. It didn't. So when the Santa Ana winds howled, fires started and here we are.

Emergency officials knew days in advance a dangerous situation was brewing. In Pacific Palisades, three huge tanks, each with a million gallon capacity, were filled to the brim ahead of the fires. But firefighters used so much water so quickly to fight the flames that the tanks quickly emptied. Water pressure waned. Hydrants became almost useless. 

In some cases, they could only stand by and watch neighborhoods burn. 

Evacuations were chaotic, to say the least. The death toll could have been much worse as people fleeing got caught up in flames on narrow roads. People fled their cars on foot, and the abandoned cars blocked roads needed by firefighters to access the flames. Bulldozers had to be called in to shove the cars out of the way. 

This reminded me of the 2018 fire that destroyed virtually the entire city of Paradise, California, leveling 19,000 homes and other buildings. Eighty-five people died in that blaze, many of them trapped on winding, narrow mountain roads as they tried to flee. Homes in Paradise were in the woods, and not fire resistant. 

Those rebuilding in Paradise are keeping those issues in mind, changing roads, building houses out of materials that can ward off flames to an extent. They're keeping vegetation away from homes. 

That was an enormous undertaking in just one town. Imagine dealing with this in southern California given the scale of these new, ferocious fires.

It's not just California with fast-moving, out-of-season fires. On December 28, 2021, ferocious winds tore through the Boulder, Colorado area, pushing what became Colorado's worst wildfire in history.  Two people died and 1,000 or so homes were destroyed. 

It was another case of a strangely intense fire coming at an even stranger time of year, when Boulder is often covered in snow. 

It's not just fires. Climate-driven disasters are striking places that "shouldn't" have such extreme trouble. The extraordinary floods in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene come to mind here.  Roads, neighborhoods, everything was overwhelmed by the unprecedented power of the water and floods. 

They couldn't handle it. Nobody could have. 

We're dealing with this here in Vermont, too. After the big floods of 2023 and 2024, we are thinking long and hard about how to deal with the inevitable next big flood, since storms seem to have gotten more intense.

Do we move people away from river valleys? Who do we move?  What types of bridges, culverts and drainage can we build to withstand floods, and can we afford all that?  Many of our most treasured cities, towns and villages are in flood plains. Can these communities survive? What if they can't? Will the Vermont we've gotten so used to over generations become unrecognizably different?

That's the type of thing that billions of people around the world are grappling with in the age of climate change. These thoughts, these worries, are punctuated by catastrophes like California this week. These huge disasters give us a sense of urgency, and dread and sadness.

I also hope these disasters also motivate us all into compassion and strength.  We need those more than ever. 

VIDEOS

Chaotic news clip from the Eaton fire as a reporter watches new fires keep breaking out everywhere around her, amid a cacophony of sirens. Click on this link to view or if you see the image below click on that:

Palisades Branch Library up in flames. Also in the video what appears to be a church and a school destroyed. Again click on this link to view or if you see image below, click on that

Remnants of burning house collapse on camera. Again, click on this link to view or if you see image below, click on that: 

Footage of homes burning in one neighborhood, and people trying desperately with buckets and garden hoses trying desperately to save houses that hadn't started burning yet. No fire trucks in sight. Click on this link to view or if you see image below, click on that. 

Biden Bans Offshore Oil Drilling, We'll See How Long It Takes For Trump To Reverse That

President Biden this week announcing a ban on oil
drilling in much of the offshore waters
around the United States.

 It might be a bit of a Hail Mary, and probably a bit Sysiphean, but President Joe Biden this week banned new offshore oil and gas drilling in almost all U.S. coastal waters.  

The move was an effort to at least throw a monkey wrench in incoming President Donald Trump's plans to, as he puts it, drill, baby drill. 

Climate change is part of Biden's motivation for this. "As the climate crisis continued to threaten communities across the countermand we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren," he said. 

Biden's move was also probably prodded by his memories of the big oil spill along the beaches of Santa Barbara, California in January, 1969.

".....drilling  off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation's energy needs," Biden said in a statement. 

Biden's acton will at least delay the offshore part of incoming President Trump's climate-denying drill baby drill approach to fossil fuel extraction.

Trump continues to cling to the notion that climate change is a hoax, and that clean energy is basically worthless, so we have to keep burning fossil fuel. His brain hasn't really left the 1950s. And besides, the United States has never produced as much oil as we do now, even with efforts to transform to a "clean energy economy."

For his part, Trump said he would end Biden's drilling ban on "day one." 

"I will unban it immediately," Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, "I have the right to unban it."

Actually, he doesn't.

According to the Associated Press, Biden's authority to enact this ban is under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which allows the president to protect offshore areas.  Once a president does what Biden has done, an act of Congress is needed to undo it.

It's a Republican Congress full of Trump fanboys and girls, so no doubt they'll do the deed, but it will take a lot more longer to complete than it say, the act of throwing ketchup against a White House wall.

Environmentalists were strangely elated at this development, considering the Republican Congress will get rid of this order soon enough. A for instance from the AP: "This is an epic ocean victory!" said Joseph Gordon, campaign director for the environmental group Oceana. 

For a little while, anyway. 

As NPR explains, much of the ocean territory where Biden banned new drilling is not of immediate interest to oil companies, except for an area they're salivating over in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Still, the ever-present American Petroleum Institute, who spent last week throwing darts at Vermont's climate superfund law, are in a bit of a snit over Biden's move.

"American voters sent a clear message in support of domestic energy development, and yet the current administration is using its final days in office to cement a record of doing everything possible to restrict it," American Petroleum Institute president Mike Sommers said in a statement. 

Or did voters actually send that "clear message?"

Trump clearly won the election, but in the popular vote it was only a 49-48 split in the percentages. And I didn't see any polling during the election in which there was a huge groundswell of Americans demanding new drilling.

Sure, nobody wants to pay an arm and a leg for gasoline, or fuel oil, and I suppose increased domestic production would help tamp prices down. Though it's a global market, so world events could upset that anti-inflationary setup no matter how much oil the United States pumps out of the ground. 

Besides, at last check, the United States was producing more crude oil than any other nation at any time, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Given that fact it will be hard for Trump to increase oil production beyond where we're already at.  

Trump thinks his efforts will cut energy costs in half for consumers. That's a tall order, but he doesn't have a great track record of following through with his promises anyway, so take that with a grain of salt. 

Meanwhile, we're cranking out the oil and burning it up and making climate change worse and thus making disasters worse and making the world a more difficult place in which to live. 

Trump wants to make the U.S. dominant, all right. One of the main things we might well  be dominate at is making the most destructive contributions to climate change of any nation in the world.  

Winter Asserts Itself In Southern U.S. .And Up Here In The Great White North

Snow blows off my St. Albans, Vermont roof today as
we continue to get flurried to death under cold,
moist northwest winds. 

Yet another winter storm is gathering forces in the South, likely to lay down another stripe of heavy snow and ice just south of the path of a similar storm a few days ago. 

Meanwhile, up here in Vermont, our "flurries" have amounted to a bonafide snowstorm in a handful of lucky towns, while the ground has at least gotten white most (but not all places) in the state.

Before we get into that, the next big winter storm. 

SOUTHERN STORM

This one promises to stretch from Texas and New Mexico, the plow through parts of Arkansas, in through Tennessee and Kentucky then northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia and finally on to northwestern South Carolina and a decent chunk of North Carolina.

Dallas, Texas could see its first three inch deep snow cover since February, 2021. Raleigh, North Carolina could see its first inch of snow on the ground in three years. 

This follows the first storm Sunday and Monday that left impressive amounts of snow.

Snow totals from the first storm include, 20 inches in Carrollton, Ohio, 19 inches in Thomas, West Virginia, 18 inches in Chapman and Alta Vista, Kansas, 15 inches in Mount City and Weatherby Missouri, 12.5 inches in Bridgeville3, and Milton, Delaware and McHenry, Maryland, 

The southern winter storm will completely miss us here
in Vermont, but our light snow and flurries will
continue to pile up in northern Vermont and
New York mountains for the next couple days 

As of early this afternoon, winter storm warnings extend from around Dallas/Fort Worth on through Arkansas. All this areas can expect three to eight inches of snow, locally more, with some sleet and freezing rain thrown in for some spots.

Winter storm watches extend all the way east to the mountains of North Carolina.  Those watches will probable extend eastward to near the Mid-Atlantic coast eventually. 

On the western end of this storm, things should go down hill tomorrow morning and remain nasty until Friday morning at least. By the time you get to Tennessee and North Carolina, the storm will wait until Friday night and Saturday. 

While it's been awhile since these areas have had snow, this type of thing does happen from time to time. It'll probably end up being all over the news because these southern storms hit areas where people aren't used to it, and they don't have the snow and ice removing equipment we have up here. 

I notice Atlanta is under the winter storm watch Friday and Saturday because they are expecting a boatload of snow and ice. That'll shut down the city, even though they're only expecting a few inches of snow and a glaze of ice. 

NEW ENGLAND/VERMONT

You might have heard rumors this storm would ultimately create a big nor'easter for New England, maybe extending into Vermont.

Ain't happening. 

Traffic cam shows a snowy, cold and desolate looking
stretch of Route 105 in Berkshire early this afternoon.

A minority of computer models did indicate a nor'easter would blow up this weekend and blast across the New England coast. But those were outliers. Everything else indicated the storm would pass out to sea well south of our region.  

That's still very much true. It's going to be a miss, by a wide margin for us in Vermont and other sections of northern New England.

Instead, we're still getting flurried to death.

Between late Sunday night and Tuesday afternoon, most places in Vermont only got an inch or two of snow. 

But the Green Mountains and some of the western slopes got clobbered. More than flurries, that's for sure. 

I saw reports of 10 inches in Waterville, Starksboro and higher elevations in Waterbury, and just shy of 10 inches in Huntington, Underhill/Jericho and Enosburg. 

By my counting, Westfield, not far from Jay Peak, has collected 31 inches of snow since January 1. Jay Peak says they've collected 40 inches of snow in the past week. 

This persistent light snow is surprising motorists. It's cold, and the light snow often packs down under car and truck tires into a barely discernible, thin layer of black ice. It often looks like dry road until you hit the brakes, and then you're in trouble.

Or, roads remained snow covered, as the falling flakes were pretty persistent. The result was plenty of car accidents and slide offs.

After a lull, the snow is picking up again this afternoon, especially across northern Vermont and really, super especially on the mountains. Another wave of deeper moisture is working its way down from Quebec.

The snow will continue well into tomorrow morning most spots. It'll never snow hard, but once again, the northern mountains can expect at least a half foot, maybe a foot by noon tomorrow. 

It's really cold and windy today, too. So for the rest of today and tonight, expect lousy road conditions in much of northern Vermont, snow, blowing snow and a nasty wind chill. Isn't January wonderful?

I anticipate more of the same as the snow picks up in many areas this afternoon and evening. 

Although the snow might diminish for this weekend, it'll stay on the chilly side.  This won't end up being another mild January.  

California Wildfire Nightmare Brings Latest Deadly Climate Calamity; Breadth of Disaster Extreme

Another likely climate-driven mega-disaster.
Enormous wildfires raging now in the Los
Angeles area causing massive destruction.

The Los Angeles area was in flames overnight and this morning. 

Three major wildfires were racing through neighborhoods, destroying an as-yet unknown number of homes and businesses, likely killing and injuring a number of people and causing chaos in the region.

It's the latest climate-related disaster. Strong Santa Ana winds, gusting in the worst instances to 100 mph, are fanning the flames, turning them into blowtorches. Santa Ana winds are usually at the worst in October, November and early December, not in January. 

Although it's too soon to concretely attribute climate change to this calamity, the circumstantial evidence is there. 

Climate change has seemed to turn California's winter's into something much more unpredictable. Either the winter rains are extreme, it seems, or they are nonexistent. 

So far in southern California, the rains are missing. By now, in January,  the hillsides around Los Angeles should have been wet and damp and drippy and green. These horrendous winds should be knocking down some trees and power lines. But the fires should be nonexistent.

Those fires are anything but. 

The reports on the fire early this  morning were hard to keep up with, there was so much new, tragic information coming in.  Worse, since yesterday, the firefighters couldn't keep up with the flames, either completely overwhelmed by the size of the fires, the panicked evacuations, the lack of water, the extreme winds. 

Given the speed of the fires, and the dense neighborhoods they invaded, I'm sadly pretty sure there have been deaths, but as of this writing, there's nothing confirmed. 

The news reports are horrifying. Fox 11 in Los Angeles reported that badly burned people were found staggering along the Pacific Coast Highway overnight.

Early this morning, a Good Morning America reporter stood in a parking lot of the largest supermarket in downtown Pacific Palisades surrounded by flames. The supermarket was reduced to a wall of flame, and all the businesses surrounding the normally busy neighborhood were in flames. 

The first of the fires broke out in Pacific Palisades around 10:30 a.m. local time Tuesday. I watched live news reports in horror as the disaster escalated in the blink of an eye.  Panicked residents fleeing that fire clogged a road, then abandoned their cars and fled on foot. 

The abandoned cars blocked emergency vehicles, so bulldozers were called in to push the Bentleys, Mercedes, Teslas and BMWs from the roads in the wealthy enclave so firetrucks could get to the scene.

Once firefighters got there, they could only watch helplessly as the flames hopscotched from home to home. Hydrants weren't working - for some reason water wasn't coming out of many of them. There wasn't nearly enough personnel to handle the calamity, and the erratic winds send embers flying for miles, starting new fires. 

Buildings all along Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades - one of the most famous streets in the world - were in flames.

Overnight a new fire erupted around Altadena and Pasadena, and that one quickly invaded neighborhoods too. A little while later, a third fire appeared in Sylmar, and the same thing happened.

The L.A. Fire Department called in all off-duty firefighters to come in and help. More than 1,400 firefighters were trying, and so far failing to stop the flames. That's not a knock against these heroes. It's just that no human could stop the exceptionally erratic winds and flames in and near Los Angeles.

The bad stories keep coming:  Residents of an assisted living facility, some on gurneys or in wheelchairs, were huddled in a Pasadena 7-Eleven parking lot in strong gusty winds, having fled an assisted living facility and awaiting transport to....somewhere. Nobody was quite sure. 

The Pacific Palisades fire burned all the way down to the beaches. Video showed life guard stations on the beaches of Malibu up in flames. Numerous beachfront homes along the Pacific Coast Highway  in and near Malibu were also reportedly in flames. 

The Getty Villa Art Museum was also threatened. 

Distressing moments keep popping up on news broadcasts. Like the quick interview of the panicked, tearful man saying he'd been trying for five hours to get to his house to rescue his dogs. (Thankfully, he was eventually reunited with his now-safe pups.) 

The most extreme winds with this Santa Ana event were ongoing early this morning. The winds were forecast to only slowly subside between now and Thursday, so this catastrophe will continue to get worse today. 

This is obviously a developing story and there will be more sad updates to come. It's going to be a long, tragic day in California as yet another likely climate fueled disaster puts us all on edge. 

 Videos: Scary report via Good Morning America had my nerves soaring and my heart breaking. Click on this link to view or if you see the image below, click on that.  

The Today show also showed some heartrending, scary reports. Again, click on this link or if you see the image below, click on that. 

California Bracing For Ferocious, Destructive Winds And Extreme Fire Risk

Southern California is hoping to avoid a repeat of this
scene from November as the region gears up for the 
strongest Santa Ana winds in more than a decade 
amid tinder dry conditions. The normal winter'
rains have so far failed to materialize in SoCal. 

UPDATE: 3 p.m EST TUESDAY

Very ominously, large fires have already broken out in parts of southern California, and though its windy, the strongest winds and lowest humidity have yet to arrive,

The largest fire as of noon local time was burning in Pacific Palisades, and I can't keep up with how fast it's growing. Evacuation orders are in in place.

The fire looks to be heading into a heavily developed area, and news media seems to show at least a few houses already on fire.

People are being advised to avoid the Sunset Boulevard are near Pacific Palisades as fire crews are trying to get through to bolster firefighting efforts. 

This is going to get really, really bad.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Southern California should have hit their rainy season by now. 

The risk of wildfires should be relatively low as midwinter Pacific storms dampen the dry brush in the hills and mountains around Los Angeles and San Diego.

Instead, southern California is set to have its most ferocious Santa Ana windstorm in more than a decade starting today and peaking Wednesday. And since it hasn't really rained yet this winter in southern California, the fire risk is off the charts. 

Even if by some miracle no fires break out today or tomorrow, this is going to be a huge mess. Forecasters say many, many trees and power lines will snap in this storm, even in areas that are normally protected from these strong easterly Santa Ana winds. 

Meteorologists expect widespread gusts between 60 and 80 mph, with some areas gusting to 100 mph or  more. They describe the impending wind storm and fire risk as "life-threatening" and a "particularly dangerous situation."

Some of the communities most threatened by the wind are in expensive zip codes like Pasadena, Burbank, Hollywood, Sylmar, Simi Valley, Altadena and Malibu. 

The millions of people to be affected by the winds are being told to park cars away from trees, charge their devices and stay indoors and away from windows during the storm. 

More ominously, residents should have a "to go bag" with necessities like medication, insurance papers and other essentials by their front door so they'd be ready to flee in a moment's notice if a wildfires starts.

Power companies plan to shut off electricity in some vulnerable neighborhoods so that if power lines do fall, they won't arc and cause wildfires. Some roads in spots were fires are most likely will be closed to everyone except local residents to give fire trucks and other emergency vehicles easy access to the fires, and to leave room for people to flee in their cars. 

This is the third time this late autumn and winter that southern California has come under extreme risk from high winds and wildfires, though this threat is the worst of the bunch. A Santa Ana event led to a wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes in and around Camarillo, California in early November. 

Another Santa Ana storm on and around December 10 with gusts to 80 mph spread more fires and led to  evacuations in Malibu.  In that case, 48 homes were damaged or destroyed by fire.

Celebrities like Cher and Dick Van Dyke had to flee their homes, though their houses ended up being spared. (Van Dyke, just shy of his 99th birthday on the day of the fire, collapsed in his driveway as he tried to untangle a hose and evacuate.  Neighbors rescued him, and he quickly recovered).

Of the three Santa Ana windstorms and fire threats, the one that starts today and peaks tomorrow is by far the worst. 

Though mostly small wildfires are not unheard across southern California in January, usually the threat this time of year is mudslides from heavy rains.  With climate change, the wildfire season in California has expanded and now happens "out of season" during the increasing periods of drought the Golden State has been seeing. 

This threat will be strictly a southern California thing. Central and northern California has been hit be some fairly soggy storms so far this winter, so the fire threat up there is very low. Plus, northern California is not expecting the type of high winds that places like Los Angeles and San Diego counties are about to endure. 

The southern California fire threat is expected to ease by the end of the week. However, little or no rain is in the forecast for southern California until at least the third week in January.  

To Nobody's Surprise, Vermont Being Sued Over Its "Climate Superfund" Law

People watch the raging Winooski River rip past
buildings during catastrophic flooding in Vermont
on July 11, 2023. Business groups are suing
Vermont over its "climate superfund" law, which 
seeks to make fossil fuel entities help pay for
damages from climate-related floods like this one. 

 Lawyers are gearing up in Vermont as business groups fight back against a first of its kind "climate superfund" law.  

According to the Associated Press:

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a top oil and gas industry trade group are suing Vermont over its new law requiring that fossil fuel companies pay a share of the damage caused over several decades by climate change. 

The lawsuit argues the U.S. Constitution precluded the act and that the state law is preempted by the federal Clean Air Act. It also argues that the law violates domestic and foreign commerce clauses by discriminating 'against the important interest of other states by targeting large energy companies located outside of Vermont."

The lawsuit is no surprise and the legal arguments are along the lines of what experts predicted when the law was passed last year. 

The lawsuit, reports the AP, also says that the federal government is already addressing climate change. I guess the argument is, "Why is Vermont sticking its nose in the issue?" Mostly, I think, because federal efforts to combat climate change are inadequate, at least in the opinion of some activists and scientists. 

The lawsuit also argues that greenhouse gases come from billions of individual sources so it's impossible to "accurately and fairly" measure the impact emissions from a particularly company in a specific location over decades.

To me, that argument is sort of as if some dude who bought gas in someplace like Idaho to fire up is Ford F-250 last year is just as much to blame for climate damage in Vermont as some fossil fuel giant like Exxon. 

Vermont's law, by the way does not target businesses that distribute fossil fuels, like gas stations and fuel dealers. It does target big fossil fuel companies, like the big oil giants. 

This Vermont statute, and lawsuit is an interesting battle between the federal government and states regarding who has control of pollution regulation, and for that matter, interstate commerce. The Chamber of Commerce and Petroleum Institute doesn't believe little old Vermont should be meddling in the global fossil fuel trade. 

More from the AP:

"'Vermont wants to impose massive retroactive penalties going back 30 years for lawful, out-of-state conduct that was regulated by Congress under the Clean Air Act,' said Tara Morrissey, senior vice president and deputy chief counsel of the Chamber's litigation center. 'That is unlawful and violates the structure of the U.S Constitution - one state can't try to regulate a global issue best left to the federal government.'"

The interesting question this raises is what is a state or even local government to do when they believe federal laws and regulation are not adequately protecting them.  

So far, lawsuits and threats of lawsuits have not dissuaded other states from considering enacting version's of Vermont's "climate superfund" law. As noted here just week, New York Gov, Kathy Hochul recently signed into law that state's version of this type of legislation, despite threats of lawsuits from the fossil fuel industry. 

Other states are considering these types of laws, too. 

Vermont passed this law less than a year after repeated floods in the summer of 2023 caused widespread, at times catastrophic damage across the state. Renewed, severe floods hit the Green Mountain State months after the legislation was adopted.

Scientists keep saying climate change is making many rain storms more intense, which leads to more intense and more frequent flooding. 

Anthony Iarrapino of the Conservation Law Foundation told the AP the fossil fuel industry is "trying to avoid accountability for the damage their products have caused in Vermont and beyond."

As New England Public Media reports, the Vermont law is modeled after the federal Superfund program.  It allows the state attorney general to seek payment from fossil fuel companies for a share of what climate change has cost Vermonters since the 1990s. 

I'll be first to admit it would be hard to tease out the proportion of last summer's flood, for instance that was created by climate change and which flood damage would have happened anyway. 

But not impossible. There's the growing field of attribution science, which use computer models, data  and other resources to assess to what extent a particular event was influence by climate change. 

I mentioned attribution science in another piece in this here blog thingy over the weekend, in which the World Weather Attribution concluded many of the world's deadliest weather disaster of of 2024 were made worse by climate change. 

Vermont hasn't finished tallying the damages from climate change and hasn't yet figured out how much to bill the fossil fuel companies.

Which, according to New England Public Media, is making legal scholars wonder if the Chamber and fossil fuel industry jumped the gun with their lawsuit against Vermont. The fossil fuel interests don't yet know how much Vermont wants to bill them, because Vermont itself hasn't figured that out yet. 

Then again, given that other states are interested in this type of legislation, maybe they want to try and nip this sort of legislation in the bud.  Who knows? 

As Anticipated, Heavy Snow, Destructive Ice, Even Tornadoes Cause Widespread U.S. Travel, Power Problems

Traffic really screwed up near Cincinnati due to
the big snowstorm that is hitting large swaths of the
nation.This scene was probably repeated from
Kansas to Maryland. 

The forecasts came true: The worst winter storm so far this winter is blasting a huge section of the United States with pretty much every kind of bad weather imaginable. 

The storm has featured blizzard conditions, heavy snow, sleet, tree-shattering freezing rain, downpours, even tornadoes. So far, three deaths have been blamed on the storm. 

The governors of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri and New Jersey have all declared states of emergency because of the storm. So far, the deepest snow from this storm is 18 inches in Chapman and St. George, Kansas. 

The damn thing has stretched at least 1,300 miles from Kansas to Delaware.  The storm should finally exit the East Coast tonight, leaving behind a big pool of frigid winter air. 

Though this is far from the biggest winter storm to ever hit the U.S. and the subzero cold behind it isn't breaking many records, it is causing its share of misery. 

This storm system proves that you don't need record extreme weather conditions to create havoc. All you need is a fairly strong, but not that unusual winter storm hitting a large population to really screw things up. 

Travel in the storm zone is a nightmare. FlightAware says 1,300 flights were canceled in the U.S. as of very early this morning. 

Traffic accidents caused huge backups and left people stranded on highways for hours around Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City and other big cities all the way to the East Coast.

Freezing rain has caused havoc in parts of Missouri, Kentucky and other states. Enough ice has accumulated on trees in some locations that those trees are collapsing under the weight of that ice. 

At last report, at least 250,000 homes and businesses were without power, mostly in the central U.S. and Midwest. In Kentucky alone, where freezing rain has been persistent, 81,000 homes and businesses are without power 

Washington DC is pretty much shut down this morning as the heaviest snow there arrived just in time for the morning commute. Snowfall rates of up to 1.5 inches per hour were moving into northern Virginia and the DC areas just before dawn today. 

Schools and federal offices around the nation's Capitol are closed as up to a foot of snow is expected. That would be the region's biggest snowstorm in years, probably more than a decade.

The storm has been pretty electric, with lots of reports of thundersnow, thunder sleet and thunder freezing rain from Kansas to the Appalachians.

There was also at least five reports of tornadoes in Mississippi and southeastern Arkansas with this storm system. 

A new storm could spread snow and ice from Texas to the Mid-Atlantic by this weekend, but the potential storm's strength and path is still full of question marks. 

Videos:

Dan Robinson captured trees collapsing under the weight of ice in Perryville, Missouri. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that:

Traffic accidents stalled cars and trucks for hours around Cincinnati. Again, click on this link to view or if you see image below, click on that: 

And no winter storm report is complete without Jim Cantore enjoying thundersnow, this time in Kansas City, Missouri. Thundersnow is clearly his favorite type of weather. Again click here to view or if you see the image below, click on that:

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