Remarkably Dry Weather In Much Of Eastern United States Raises Fire Concerns, Including Here In Vermont

A forest fire burns near Camels Hump, Vermont in October, 2016. 
Similar conditions to that year could start some wildfires
this year since it's been so dry.

The northeastern United States has gotten bone dry this autumn, and that's beginning to cause real problems, and threatening new ones.  

Some areas in the Northeast haven't seen any measurable rain all month, and stand a chance of attaining an entirely rain-free month 

Only a trace of rain  has fallen in New York City's Central Park so far this month. The last rain they had was 0.03 inches on September 29.  

The entire month of September featured just 0.68 inches of rain. September and October in Central Park would normally see a combined total of about 7.8 inches.

Places like Philadelphia and Newark have also seen no measurable rain this month. 

Here in Vermont, it's been a little wetter, but that's not saying much. Burlington has managed just 1.57 inches so far in October.  Montpelier has had barely an inch. And at least we have some scant amounts of rain in our forecast. 

FIRE RISK

Still, it's quite dry. 

Plus, throughout Vermont and the rest of the Northeast, we've had plenty of sunny, breezy and very dry days all through the autumn, which has helped dry things out. Temperatures have   been warmer than normal this autumn, which tends to exacerbate 

Now that the foliage season is approaching an end, all those fallen leaves are drying out, which provides potential fuel for brush and wildfires.

Today could be a particularly troublesome day in Vermont. Gusty, warm, dry south winds are expected ahead of a cold front, which would help spread any fires that start. As of early this morning the wind had already really picked up in the Champlain Valley.

Those winds will mix down some dry air from aloft later this morning and this afternoon. The combination of low humidity and gusty winds is a recipe for wildfires to start.

The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation has declared a very high risk today for forest and wildfires. It's rare that they make that kind of designation. 

Elsewhere in the Northeast the fire danger is if anything even greater than in Vermont, since even less rain has fallen lately in southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic States.

An 80 to 90-acre wildfire near Berlin, Connecticut is still burning and has claimed the life of one firefighter who was involved in an off-road vehicle crash while trying to get to the blaze. 

Several wildfires have burned in New Jersey, endangering some structures and sent billowing smoke into nearby communities.

DROUGHT

It also appears a flash drought might be developing in much of the Northeast.  Most droughts take months or even years to take hold as rainfall in a particular area remains scant for long periods of time

A flash flood is akin to a flash flood. Flash floods develop often in minutes.  Flash droughts obviously don't move nearly that fast, but they often become apparent within weeks.

As of last Thursday, the U.S. Drought Monitor had nearly a quarter of the northeastern United States in drought conditions. 

In Vermont, the U.S, Drought Monitor has designated the southern third of the state as "abnormally dry" with a small patch of drought showing up in far southern Vermont.

The next Drought Monitor report comes out tomorrow, and I bet it will show drought and abnormally dry conditions have expanded greatly in the Northeast over the past week.  

OUTLOOK

Precious little rain is in the forecast for the Northeast.

The latest seven day outlooks forecast no rain for places like New York City and Philadelphia, that takes them to at least October 30 with no additional rain.

We're doing slightly better in Vermont, especially across the north, but that's not saying much.  

A sharp cold front forecast to come through tonight. Though temperatures will drop quite a bit, the front will provide only a tenth of an inch of rain or so in northern Vermont and perhaps nothing in the south. 

More dry, breezy weather is due Thursday and Friday. Another cold front over the weekend, but that one will  probably also dump less than a tenth of an inch of rain in the north and very little in the south. 

Longer range forecasts call for below normal precipitation at least into the first week of November. 

GRIM AUTUMN FIRE HISTORY

Very dry autumns have led to some of the worst wildfires on record for the Midwest and eastern United States. This is shaping up to be an autumn in some areas like 1871, 1947 and 2016, which brought some extremely deadly and dangerous forest fires.

Some examples:

Peshtigo, Wisconsin, 1871:

On the same night as the famous Great Chicago Fire on October 8, 1871, a screaming wildfire know as the Peshtigo fire swept through eastern Wisconsin, claiming at least 1,200 lives.  We don't hear much about this one, since the Chicago fire got all the attention, but this Wisconsin fire was obviously much worse in terms of loss of life.

A long-lasting drought combined with strong, dry winds from a storm well off to the west created the Peshtigo firestorm. 

Maine, 1947.

New England endured repeated bouts of record heat and continually dry conditions through the late summer and autumn of 1947.

These conditions created numerous wildfires in Maine during October, 1947. Those fires burned through  220,000 acres, destroyed about 1,000 homes and left 16 people dead.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee, 2016

A long-lasting drought in Appalachia in the autumn of 2016 contributed to a forest fire that broke out in the east Tennessee mountains on November 23 that year. On the night of November 28, intense winds sent the fire roaring into the resort city of Gatlinburg and surrounding hills, damaging or destroying 2,400 buildings and claiming 14 lives.

I'm not saying we're in for any fires as awful as these examples. But it's a warning to be really cautious with fire in this oddly dry, warm autumn of 2024. 

Enjoy The Last Of Vermont Fall Foliage; Wind To Remove Much Of Late Season Color This Week

Trees in my St. Albans, Vermont yard were practically glow
in the dark late Monday afternoon as autumn foliage 
peaked. With gusty winds expected later this week,
a lot of those leaves will be on the ground by Friday.

 It's been a long, gorgeous and later than usual fall foliage season in Vermont.

We've gone into the third week of October and foliage is still at peak in and near the Champlain Valley,. and in the warmer valleys of southern Vermont. 

That's quite a bit later in the month than in most years, but then again, foliage seasons have been coming later as climate change takes hold.

Elsewhere in Vermont the color is past peak, but there's still pockets of bright autumn glory to be found.

Sunshine, light winds, and, on Monday, record high or near record high temperatures helped keep the foliage on the trees

Enjoy it for the next couple of days. We'll soon take a big but admittedly incomplete leap into stick season. 

Winds have already picked up from the nearly dead calm we saw Thursday through Saturday.  It's merely just kind of breezy, but each gust yields a blizzard of leaves from many trees.

Warm breezes will increase Wednesday ahead of a sharp cold front due Wednesday night or very early Thursday. In the Champlain Valley, we could easily see winds gusting to at least 30 mph. 

Then, when that cold front comes through Wednesday night, we won't see much rain, but some gusts could reach 40 mph just after the front blows through.  We'll be waking up to a different landscape Thursday morning compared to the beautiful one we're seeing today.

All is not lost, however. We will have fewer leaves on the trees, but we'll still have some remarkably late season color left in the banana belt sections of Vermont. This beginning to remind me of some recent year, like 2021, when unusually warm autumns allowed some nice spots of fall foliage to linger into November. 

  

Record High Temperatures in Vermont, Surrounding Areas As Indian Summer Over-Performs

A very orange fall foliage hillside Monday in St. Albans
Vermont, which matched the record high temperatures
much of the region experienced today. 

 If you felt toasty as you were enjoying the lingering Vermont autumn foliage today, you weren't imagining things. 

Warm southwest breezes brought temperatures to record levels in and around the Green Mountain State today, October 21 

Burlington reached 77 degrees, edging out the old record of 76 degrees set in 1995. A final report wasn't in from St. Johnsbury as of early this evening, but they at least tied their record high of 77 set in 1963

Across the pond in Plattsburgh, New York, it was even warmer, soaring to a summer like 81 degrees. That broke the old record for the date of 80 set in 1979.

We've got two more days of balmy weather in Vermont before reality strikes. But don't worry that strike won't be brutal.

Forecasters are going with highs in the low to mid 70s Tuesday and Wednesday. If that comes true, we'll come close to, but probably not break record highs again. 

That not so brutal hit of reality on Thursday and Friday isn't so bad. We expect highs then to be in the 50s and lows in the 30s, which is actually pretty close to average for the season.

It could turn even colder toward Sunday and Monday, but again, if that happens, it will only be somewhat chillier than average (Highs in the 40s to near 50, lows in the 20s to near 30).

Plus, there's preliminary signs we could warm up dramatically again in about a week. 

This year has been remarkably warm so far and we are still on pace to have 2024 become the hottest year on record in Burlington. Unlike in other areas of the nation, though, daily record highs have been a little hard to come by in recent months. 

Monday's 77 degrees is only the second record high we've seen since early March. However, February brought us four daily record highs. It's been a really long time since Burlington recorded a record low for a date.

The last time we did have a record low was when the temperature reached 29 degrees on May 18, 2023. Sine that date, there have been a dozen record highs. 

Roswell, New Mexico Latest Victim Of Epic Flooding

 The latest victim of an extreme rain storm and flood is Roswell, New Mexico.

Scary scenes in Roswell, New Mexico Sunday after extreme
flash floods overwhelmed the city. 

The intense downpours Saturday sent the Spring River channel blasting through downtown Roswell and other neighborhoods in town. At least two people have died.  

Video taken Sunday of the flood aftermath shows cars and trucks strewn like toys thrown around by a toddler having a temper tantrum.

 The force of the water pulled pavement from streets and knocked down sturdy metal fences and barriers. 

At least 300 people were rescued from the floodwaters and 38 of them were taken to hospitals. 

Roswell, population of about 48,000 is of course famous for an alleged UFO crash there in 1947. 

A storm dumped 5.78 inches of rain on Roswell Saturday, the most for any day on record there. The old record was 5.65 inches on November 1, 1901.  Up to nine inches of rain fell in some areas near the city. 

Most of that rain came in just six hours, and was almost half Roswell's normal annual rainfall. 

The flood came right after the end of a heat wave that broke all kinds of records for intensity, longevity and how late in the season it was.

That heat ended as an upper level storm system drew tropical air northward into the mountains and hills of the Southwest.  Large high pressure in the southeastern United States directed moisture toward New Mexico, where atmospheric moisture reached two to three times normal levels.

The most intense storms developed in eastern New Mexico, especially in and around Roswell. 

The Roswell flood is the latest in a long, frequent series of record floods this year in the United States and around the world. 

Though it sometimes is difficult to pin a particular weather event on climate change, what happened in Roswell is consistent with the global problem. 

A warmer atmosphere holds more water than a drier one, so under the right conditions, rainfall will be heavier than it would have been in a cooler world.

This is also the second time this year parts of New Mexico have endured an extreme flood.

Back in the spring, wildfires denuded the hills and mountains surrounding Ruidoso, New Mexico. Then in the late spring and summer, torrential storms hit those hills, sending destructive flash floods and debris flows into Ruidoso, causing extensive damage.  

Whack Job Conspiracy Theories Over Hurricanes Exhausting And Endangering Meteorologists

The nation's sizable tin foil hat brigade is torturing
meteorologists with whackadoodle conspiracy 
theories about hurricanes and government
weather control. People will believe anything, huh?

 The false information and conspiracy theories I wrote about the other day seemed to have spawned even more out-there wacky stories about weather control and more weird stuff.   

Social media has been rife with stories people make up out of thin air that the government, or meteorologist or somebody is creating huge hurricanes and steering them toward the United States for nefarious purposes.

Just in the past few months, it seems the madness got much worse. 

Instead of blaming meteorologists for inaccurate forecasts, it's now apparently their fault if a bad storm hits, because somehow, through dark magic or something, these meteorologists are steering hurricanes toward United States coastlines,. Or they're at least covering up for the government. 

The wackos think meteorologists are attacking us with bad weather, for gawd knows what reason. We've become a nation of idiots. 

Even a sitting U.S. House member, Marjorie Taylor Greene has joined the chorus. though I have to admit she's never been much of a reliable source. 

In any event, Greene, ever the scientist, posted the following gem on X:

"Yes they can control the weather, It's ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can't be done."

Apparently "they" - who ever "they" are - decided to unleash a flood of epic proportions on a section of the nation that is generally more likely to vote Republican than Democrat.  Apparently evil forces somehow steered two dangerous hurricane over the Southeast to suppress the vote in red counties to boost Kamala Harris. 

I wonder if the people supposedly steering hurricanes like this are the same people responsible for the Jewish Space Lasers?

The conspiracy theories would be hilarious, ore at least eye rolling if they weren't so dangerous.

As The Guardian reports:

"Katie Nickolaou a Michigan-based meteorologist, said she and her colleagues have borne the brunt of much of these conspiracies, having received messages claiming there are category 6 hurricanes (there aren't) and even that scientists should be killed and radar equipment be demolished.

'I've never seen a storm garner so much misinformation, and we have just been putting out fires of wrong information everywhere,' Nickolaou said. 

'I have had a bunch of people saying I created and steered the hurricane, there are people assuming we control the weather.  I have had to point out that a hurricane has the energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs and we can't hope to control that. But it's taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, especially with people saying those who created Milton should be killed."

Meteorologist Matthew Cappucci, quoted in Rolling Stone, said he noticed a huge change on social media over the past few months. 

"Seemingly overnight, ideas that once would have been ridiculed as very fringe, outlandish viewpoints are suddenly becoming mainstream, and it's making my job more difficult," he said.

Alabama meteorologist James Spann, with nearly five decades of weather forecasting under his belt, said he's never seen anything like the current climate. Spann told Rolling Stone he's "inundated" with misinformation and threatening messages like "Stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else."

To be Captain Obvious here, both hurricanes Helene and Milton formed the way they did due to atmospheric and ocean water conditions favorable for such storm development.  

Those favorable conditions were not created by humans, unless you quite fairly want to include the influence of human-caused climate change. 

That human induced climate change contributed to the unusually hot water in the Gulf of Mexico, which in turn helped give the twin hurricanes a boost . 

Steering winds in the upper atmosphere steered the hurricanes toward Florida. An unusual but NOT man-made weather pattern pulled Helene up  into North Carolina.  There was no secret cabal of meteorologists steering the storm.  Mostly because humans don't have any ability to steer a hurricane. At all. 

WHY THE CONSPIRACIES?

To go deeper into the rabbit hole, we should probably figure out what conspiracy theorists think is the reason meteorologists and the government are steering hurricanes. 

The leading theory, as mentioned, seems to be forces aligned against Donald Trump are pushing the storms into areas more likely to vote for him rather than Democrat Kamala Harris. 

It is true that Trump seems likely to do better at the ballot box in northwest Florida, and western North Carolina than Harris would. 

But if I go along with their tin foil hat arguments just for fun,  how would you explain why Hurricane Helene blasted through Atlanta, Georgia, a democratic stronghold?. Plus not everyone in Sarasota, Florida or Ashville, North Carolina favors Trump.

Probably most of the conspiracy theories are from people who've gone under the thrall of Trump and QAnon and other dicey sources of so-called information.  These groups instill distrust in all institutions, including science, leading to the rampant conspiracy theories and threats.

Most of the people who originate and spread these kooky ideas probably don't actually believe them.  But misinformation and conspiracies and threats have long been in the authoritarians' playbook. Distract a gullible population with nonsense so they can so their real dirty work.

It's really a divide and conquer strategy, as the Associated Press explains:

"...even when they fail to convince people, the conspiracy theories embraced by these groups contribute to mounting distrust of authorities and democratic institutions, causing people to reject reliable sources of information while encouraging division and suspicion."

Once they do that, the authoritarian types can step in and take power, and by the time we realize we're screwed, it's too late.

The purveyors of the conspiracy theories have already gained more strength in part because of the existence of AI, which can quickly and easily produce convincing content that looks "real" and convincing.

It doesn't help that players like Russia and China and Iran have bot farms that flood social media with conspiracies and lies that a malleable public that lacks critical thinking would readily absorb. Then you have people like Elon Musk, who doesn't seem to give a crap about the stuff that goes on  his platform X, formerly Twitter, as long as it boosts his buddy Donald Trump. 

Birds of a feather flock together, ya know. 

So the meteorologist being tortured by conspiracy whack jobs is just a small part of the big, big problem.

For all of you who live in the real world and not the crazy town of the conspiracy nut jobs, one word of advice: Vote wisely this year.  

UPDATE: "Cutiecane" Oscar Hits Cuba, And It's Nothing To Laugh At

Satellite view of small but dangerous Hurricane Oscar
making landfall in eastern Cuba just before
local sunset. Flooding and landslides are its biggest threats.

Tiny little Hurricane Oscar, as expected, made landfall in Cuba at around 5:50 EDT p.m. today.  

The eye hit the city of Baracoa in Guantanamo province with maximum sustained winds of around 80 mph. 

Oscar grew a little larger in size today, but that's not saying much. Yesterday, hurricane force winds extended out only five miles from the eye in the center of the storm. 

Right before landfall today, those hurricanes force winds extended out ten miles from the eye.

That's still a damn small hurricane. So small that at least one wag and hurricane dubbed Oscar a "cutiecane."

 Oscar's effects on Cuba will be anything but cute, despite its small size. The storm could dump five to 10 inches of rain on parts of Cuba, with isolated areas receiving as much as 15 inches. 

That amount of rain is expected to fall because Hurricane Oscar has a slow forward speed and if anything is slowing down. That'll give it plenty of time to dump a lot of rain.

The storm is hitting a mountainous section of Cuba, which leads to a high risk of landslides and mudslides. 

Moreover, Cuba has been hit by two catastrophic electrical grid failures in recent days. The grid collapsed on Friday, and the government was beginning to restore power when the whole thing collapsed again Saturday. It's unclear when electricity will be restored to most of the island.

The power failures make it harder to prepare for and respond to the effects of Hurricane Oscar.

The storm is expected to linger over eastern Cuba until early Tuesday when it will start to drift north into the Bahamas. It's still unclear whether Oscar will survive over the rough terrain of Cuba. But if it does remain sort of intact, forecasts don't expect it to strengthen back into a hurricane. 

But given Oscar's surprising history, you never know. 

National, Global Climate Data Not Available Due To Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.

The National Centers for Environmental Information
building in Asheville, North Carolina.  The structure and
its physical contents were not damaged in the storm,
but the disaster disrupted the flow of critical national
and global climate data used worldwide.

 Every month, almost like clockwork, I give you updates on how the previous month's United States and global temperatures compared to previous years.  

I do that because most months these days in the age of climate change end up being the warmest on record, or if not, somewhere in the top ten list. It's important to let people know these measures of how climate change is progressing.

These monthly updates are now delayed because of a weather event that was likely made worse by the very climate change all this data was tracking. 

NOAA's  National Centers for Environmental Information, which compiles all this detailed global climate data, is headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina. It's the world's largest environmental data center. 

As we know, Asheville was brutalized by the flooding from Hurricane Helene. Swaths of the city were inundated or even swept away by floodwaters. Power, internet and water were out for weeks, and still hasn't been fully restored. 

Because of all this, the U.S. September climate report, which was supposed to be released on September 8, and the global climate report, which was supposed to go out October 10, have been delayed and we still have no idea when we'll see these documents. 

That's not good, because these monthly climate reports are not just interesting to geeks like me. Both the private and public sectors use them, including organizations and governments involved in agriculture, energy, retail, reinsurance, transportation and media. 

Thankfully, nobody who works at NCEI was hurt in the disaster. The building itself is intact and computer systems and existing data were not lost.  Old archives on paper and film are also safe. 

The servers at NCEI need a big, powerful cooling system, which relied on Asheville municipal water to get the job done. Hurricane Helene cut off the municipal water supply, and just this week, only some of the first steps toward getting that supply flowing again have started.

NCEI has been scrambling to set up alternative cooling systems. 

As of Thursday, things were beginning to look up.  NCEI takes in a lot of data daily, and they were not able to do that for weeks. Most of the usual data had started coming in as of this week, as broadband internet connections have finally been restored.

However, they have to catch up with data that never arrived during the crisis, and they might never be able to recover some of that data,

I don't know to what extent that might degrade the quality of their climate reports, if at all. 

People use NCEI information and data streams to make the point we need to adapt for climate change, to adjust the way we do things. It appears NCEI will need to do the same.

It's likely too early to plan this out in earnest, but I imagine they will need to find a redundancy, some entity somewhere else that can act as a backup if something like this ever happens in Asheville again. 

Interestingly, according to WUNC, NCEI was relocated from New Orleans to Asheville in the 1950s. Asheville was chosen because it was closer to Washington DC and because it was thought to be a historically safe climate area,

So much for that idea.