Rumbles Of Thunder This Morning Are Another Big Sign Of Vermont Spring

Lightning detector map from shortly before 5:30 a.m today
shows strikes especially across central Vermont and in
the far northern Champlain Valley. 

Many of us across Vermont, New York an New Hampshire woke up to the sound of thunder before dawn today.  

I would imagine some found the noise vaguely annoying. I happily found it that best confirmation yet that spring is here. 

Thunderstorms get more common as we head into the warmer months.  The warmer air and the increased moisture in spring and summer can create the rapidly rising air needed to create lightning. 

Now, it wasn't exactly warm while these storms were coming through northern New England this morning. In fact. a few spots in eastern Vermont and New Hampshire might have been getting freezing rain while lightning was flashing. Thunderice?  Not sure what to call it. 

But there was warm air.  The storms were triggered by a warm front moving in.  The warm air aloft pushed ahead of the front helped create the balmy lift in the air, leading to the lightning flashes. 

For some reason warm fronts coming through in the pre-dawn hours in April often turn out to be create the first thunderstorms of the year in Vermont. So the timing and nature of our thunder early today was pretty classic. Judging from lightning detector maps, the storm with the most lightning cut across central Vermont early this morning. 

Another area of lightning just clipped northwest Vermont.  Here in St. Albans, I heard a few rumbles around 4:30 a.m., along with a brief downpour and strong, gusty winds. So it was noticeable. 

The showers and thunderstorms were moving along at a fast pace, so nobody is getting all that much rain. Even if a thunderstorm has a downpour associated with it, the heavier rain hasn't been staying in one place very long. 

Bottom line: The storms are cool, but are not causing any real trouble. 

REST OF TODAY

As of 6:30 a.m., a little more lightning was flashing near Rutland, and in central New York, so we're probably not quite done with it yet. The warm front will pass through later this morning, ending the threat of more thunder and most showers. 

It was in the 30s to near 40 early this morning amid the showers and rumbles of thunder ahead of the warm front. Once it passes through, temperatures will zoom into the low 60s for most of us. This will be the mildest day we'll have for awhile, so enjoy it. Some sun will mix in, too, to give the crocuses a little boost. 

Winds were really screaming from the south early this morning, especially in the Champlain Valley. I'm on an exposed hillside in St Albans, and I would estimate some gusts were up to around 50 mph. I'm noticing a smattering of power outages in northwest Vermont, so don't be surprised if your power at least flickers this morning in the Champlain Valley. 

It'll stay breezy to windy all day, but the strongest winds were probably happening as I wrote this around 7 a.m. They'll diminish some as we go through the day. 

All in all, despite the stormy start of the day, it'll be a rather nice one. 

THE WEEKEND

Our storm will drag a lame cold front through tonight, cooling us off only slightly. Saturday will be generally cloudy and mild-ish as the next storm approaches. By mild-ish, I mean low 50s, just a few degrees above average.

This one probably won't have any thunder an lightning with it. The showers will definitely ramp up, though, Saturday night and Sunday morning.  We'll have more rain than the light stuff we're having this morning. 

Between Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon, it looks like we'll have roughly half an inch of rain, with perhaps a little more than that up along the Canadian border and a little less in far southern Vermont.  Don't worry about any flooding: Rivers will probably rise somewhat, but fall short of any real flooding. 

Highs Sunday will be in the 50s. 

BRIEF WINTER

The cold front with the second storm will be much stronger than tonight's so it will get much colder Sunday. Lingering rain showers will at least mix with, if not change to snow showers Sunday night and continue into Monday. 

Don't worry too much about the snow showers, They'll the light and scattered and mostly in the hills ad mountains. 

The first half of the week will be cold, with highs in the mid 30s to mid 40s and lows solidly below freezing. Yes, that's chilly for this time of year, but not really odd for early April. We should be able to sneak back up into the pleasant 50s for the second half of the week. 

March Was A Solidly Warm Month In Vermont

Paw prints left in the snow from Henry the Weather
 Dog after he took some weather observations on 
March 20 in St. Albans, Vermont. The month 
turned out to be solidly warmer than average.

The weather headlines in the United States was the extraordinary heat that shattered all-time record March highs. 

Vermont was on the outside of all this weather excitement, much cooler than the extreme heat in the South and West. 

Even so, we in Vermont ended up with a March that was solidly warmer than normal. As measured in Burlington, the average temperature was 36.4 degrees, a good 4.1 degrees milder than average. It was 19th warmest out of the past 139 years.

As the month opened, we had just been through four consecutive cooler than normal months, and were entering yet another winter cold wave. By the morning of March 2, it was below zero statewide.

But then, that was about it.  The warming trend peaked on March 7-12, when every day was at least 14.4 degrees warmer than normal. 

The heat peaked on March 10. Burlington reached 73 degrees, breaking the date's record high by an impressive 10 degrees. It was also the warmest temperature for so early in the season. Other hot Vermont cities that day include  71 in St. Johnsbury and 74 in Bennington, 

Before the mid-month heat wave, Vermont rivers were locked up in thick ice from a long, cold winter. The sudden warmth led to numerous ice jams in the Green Mountain State, Some of them caused minor flooding. It could have been a lot worse if there had been a lot of rain, but precipitation during the warm spell was light. 

The rest of the month toggled between relative warmth and winter chill, but there never were any particular extremes. 

Winter did return after the heat wave that was centered around March 10. A storm on March 20 had been forecast to dump half a foot of snow on northeastern Vermont, but only a couple inches in the Champlain Valley. 

Instead, nearly five inches of "wet cement" snow came down in just a few hours during the late morning an afternoon. It turned out to probably be the biggest traffic snarler since a similar late day dump of wet snow in November. 

It was a reminder that winter was not over. 

That day's snow (which fell as rain in southern Vermont) was a good shot of some needed precipitation, though. There's drought lingering from last autumn in parts of the state, so a wet spring is actually a good thing this  year. 

The news on the precipitation front in Vermont was sort of meh as rain and melted snow rain just about normal statewide. An exception was in the southwest, where Bennington turned up with a nice 4.36 inches of precipitation, which was 1.71 inches above normal ,

On the hand, Burlington;s precipitation of 2.27 inches was only 0.03 inches above average,  That was just the 68th wettest March out of the past 144 years. 

APRIL OUTLOOK

The month has begun with its usual schizophrenic attitude, with rapidly changing temperatures, and weather. 

Overall, NOAA expects most of the the U.S. to be warmer than normal in April. An exception is the Great Lakes a New England area a tossup: It'll end up either warmer or colder than normal, out somewhere near average. Precipitation would be above normal if NOAA's forecast is accurate. 

A Bout Of Icy Weather In Some Parts Of Vermont Then a Brief, Warm Interlude

We can't quite shake winter. Areas in yellow and orange
can expect a glaze of ice tonight before much warmer
air arrives tomorrow, 

 It's another overcast morning in Vermont, with some rain falling far southern sections of the states. 

The wide-ranging temperatures we saw over the past few days have finally evened up for now. 

Pretty much the whole state started today in the low to mid 30s. Early April in Vermont can be a little like November. But at least we're not facing along winter like we would be in November, so we have that optimism. 

Although it was cold enough this morning for snow in southern Vermont, there's warm air aloft, so it's rain. Some sleet might be mixing in at a few spots, but web cams so far show little direct evidence of that. Still, a special weather statement notes the risk of freezing rain this morning, mostly at elevations above 2,000 feet in the southern Greens. 

That warm overhead cold surface have wintry implications for tonight. It's April, but here in Vermont that doesn't necessarily mean wintry weather is over 

A winter weather advisory is for Vermont from the Green Mountains east and from about Springfield north to the Canadian border tonight. 

It's the same problem we've frequently had in late winter and early spring. Warm air is trying to push in, but cold high pressure in Quebec is feeding in low level cold air. The result is the risk of freezing rain

We know there won't be much precipitation of any kinds, and what does fall over and east of the Green Mountains won't be entirely freezing rain. 

However, as usual in these cases, the freezing rain will be spotty. If you're driving anywhere in the winter weather advisory zone overnight and early Friday, you'll encounter patches of ice alternating with above freezing areas, so this will keep you on your toes.

Western Vermont should be too warm for freezing rain.  Some of the overnight showers north and west could actually contain a rumble of thunder or two. That's not exactly a sure bet, but since it's spring, thunder is beginning to become more possible with storm systems. 

WEEKEND

It will warm up really quickly Friday as a warm front blows by, so any freezing rain will stop being an annoyance pretty early in the day. There should be showers around especially during the first half of the day and especially north an west as another storm blows by far to our north. 

The cold front with this storm will be incredibly lame, so not chilly air will be able to work in. Which means Saturday should be fairly mild with highs into the 50s. As the next storm approaches Sunday, the chances of showers will ramp up. It'll stay on the warm-ish side as we once again reach the 50s 

 BEYOND THE WEEKEND:

Unfortunately, we can't sustain spring quite yet. The first half of April is known for its excursions back to winter. 

So, at least the first half of next week will be cold, with highs in the 30s and 40s with subfreezing temperatures overnight. That might keep the sugaring season going on a little longer in parts of the state that haven't had too much warm weather yet. 

And let's face it, the chill early next week won't be anything extreme. We can still have huge snowstorm this time of year, and historically, record cold would mean temperatures in the single numbers to low teens. 

Neither of which will happen next week,  Our world will soon green up regardless of whether we get a little cold air or not.

This Time Of Year, Temperatures Are Usually All Over The Place

Cold and gloomy early this morning in St. Albans, Vermont.
Temperatures before dawn ranged from near 32 at Canadian 
border to near 60 by the Massachusetts border. 
Temperatures will continue to swing wildly over the
next few days, which is common this time of year, 

 Before dawn today, temperatures were either cold or balmy, depending on where you are. 

At 5 a.m. it was 34 degrees in Burlington. Ice is underfoot closer to the Canadian border.  Meanwhile, it was 61 in Bennington. In between readings were in the 40s and 50s. 

Depending on where you are today in Vermont, you'll need your tired old winter coat or that cute new spring lightweight sweater  you just bought. 

Yesterday, it was more of the same. In far southern Vermont was actually sort of humid, with springlike showers and thunderstorms. 

Up in the far north, yesterday ended up overcast, dark, foggy, drizzly and cold, the temperatures having dropped to chilly levels shortly after midnight

In the middle of the state, most of Vermont, really  it either stayed mild into early today, or it was still on the warm side. 

The relative warmth combined with rain that's been melting the mountain snow has created sharp rises along the rivers of Vermont .  Most have stayed within their banks, but a flood warning was in effect along the Walloomsac River in Bennington County for minor flooding. The warning has since expired. 

 Looking over the past week, we have seen the same the same big temperature swings. It was 58 degrees on March 26, then we endured a couple days in the 30s. 

By Monday, it was back up to 68 degrees in Burlington. Dry south winds created perfect conditions for brush fire starts, and they certainly got going in a couple places. A brush fire on Monday in Ferrisburgh, burned through more than 100 acres, which is unusual for a Vermont fire, It took about 75 firefighters several hours to put out the flags. 

Another, much smaller brush fire in Waterbury on Monday was also extinguished.

WILD SWINGS CONTINUE :

These wild swings in temperature are because Vermont is usually near the border between frigid winter air in Canada and balmy air across  the southern United States. The contrast is usually greatest from mid-March to mid April, give or take. 

Ma Nature doesn't celebrate April Fool's Day. It celebrates April Fools Month. 

By April Fools Day, spring hasn't usually made many inroads across most of Canada In the central and southern U.S., it's hard core spring. When the front essentially separating winter an spring pass over Vermont, which is frequently, the weather goes wild.

Every once in awhile, this can create big disruptive, damaging storms in Vermont. That's not the case this time, which is great news.

For the next couple of days, it'll be on the cool side, especially north. 

An approaching warm front could spread a little rain in the warmer areas, and a little ice mainly east of the Green Mountains. The National Weather Service is toying with the idea of issuing a winter weather advisory for that potential ice Thursday night and early Friday, 

They'll wait for a little more data to come in before deciding whether to trigger such an advisory,

By Friday, temperatures should reach the low 60s across many areas of Vermont, so if we do get any ice from freezing rain, it'll disappear fast. The warm front's parent storm will pass far to our north and west. It won't really be able to pull down much of that cold air from Canada. 

Which means for now, it looks like it'll be a springlike weekend. Springlike means a risk of showers, of course. The warm temperatures and the rain will make rivers rise again. But just like yesterday, no flooding is expected. 

There's also a wrinkle. There's always a wrinkle, Some forecasts keep Saturday and Sunday in the 40s, so we'll have to keep an on it. 

Variable weather is hard to predict sometimes. 

By early next week, it'll be breezy and chilly once again and the Canadian air will flood back in. It is April, so daytime highs next week should get into the low or mid 40s.  

I'm Back! Here's Why I Went Missing For A Few Days. It Ain't Pretty

A strange, intense bug has kept me away from this blog or the
past few days, but I'm finally starting to feel better, so 
hopefully I'll soon be releasing as many posts
as I usually do,   

 For the first time in many years I was too sick to post on this here blog thingy It's some sort of virus, apparently, but it was an immensely strange one.

It started Friday night. We'd gone to the Vermont Comedy Club and we had a great time. But toward the end of the night, my abdominal muscles were seizing up and spasming. Something was wrong.

This kind of thing happens to be occasionally once every few months  I call them stomach attacks. Usually, I have a rough night, and by the next day, everything is fine. 

Not this time. 

I ended up sleeping for nearly two days - right through Saturday and most of Sunday.  I didn't eat during that time either. 

The pain was weird. My stomach /hurt, which is what you'd expect  But my thighs were also quite painful.  And my nipples. I'm like, what the hell!   

The stomach pain has decreased in intensity and those other pains are gone. But now my lower back, right knee and of all things the big toe on my right foot hurts.

On the few occasions I got up my feet, I felt unsteady.  My surroundings felt muffled and blurry, as if I   was experiencing the world through a dirty window pane.,

Needless to say, my extreme fatigue and my inability to focus have kept me away from this blog. I am feeling somewhat better. At least I'm eating a little and am no longer in bed 24/7.  But I still much more than the eight hours of sleep I usually get. Since I'm not at full strength yet posts here might temporarily be less frequent than usual for awhile.

I'm seeing a physician tomorrow, so no need for any diagnosis from anybody 

I just really appreciate all my readers who have been patiently waiting for me to report on anything after all these days

I swear the next post will be about climate and weather, 

Trump Bribes Company $1 Billion To Stop Offshore Wind

Maybe he hates offshore wind projects because breezes
mess up his hair? In any event, Trump, having lost
court battles to stop offshore wind installations,
has resorted to basically bribery with taxpayer dollars.

As we've talked about here a few times, Donald Trump hates wind generation. Especially offshore wind. 

He tried new anti-offshore wind regulations and pronouncements, only to be repeatedly shot down by the courts. So, Trump has gone straight to corruption. He's now successfully stopped an offshore wind installation with what amounts to a $1 billion bribe. 

Here it is from CNN:

"The Trump administration announced it will pay nearly $1 billion to French energy giant TotalEnergies in exchange for the company abandoning plans to build offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean and instead pursue fossil fuel project in the U.S." 

Yes, that's 'your tax dollars not at work. Trump is using tax revenue - and a lot of it to - pay somebody to not do something. 

It's not a direct raid on the treasury. Instead the Trump administration is paying back TotalEnergies for federal leases it bought during the Biden administration. So the money Biden raked in for the federal government is getting pissed away all because wind turbines are against Trump's aesthetics. 

The Trump gang has already stopped approving federal permits for renewable energy projects. That move killed offshore wind projects that were in early development. 

This goes against the wishes of numerous clean energy companies and several state governments. Those entities think offshore wind is a win-win: It generates badly needed electricity while also avoids the fossil fuels that contribute to ever-worsening climate change crisis. 

The more recent bribe, as I insist on calling it,  ries to make sure companies can't continue building under any future administration that has a friendlier attitude toward offshore wind, as CNN reports. 

In any event, Trump's bribe means 4 gigawatts of electricity will not be generated for houses and businesses in the U.S. 

TotalEnergies doesn't even get to decide how to spend the bribe money. To keep the Orange One happy, the company will develop a new liquified gas plant in Texas that will help export U.S. LNG overseas to Europe, per their agreement with the Trump administration.   

The company will also do some oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. and shale oil projects elsewhere in the U.S. 

Burn that fossil fuel, baby!  103 degrees during March in Kansas isn't nearly hot enough. Gotta get that climate really boiling. 

The deal is "an outrageous misuses of taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly when they need it the most," said Ted Kelly of the Environmental Defense Fund.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says offshore wind is "one of the most expensive" forms of energy and is only produced when wind is blowing. I guess he never heard of batteries that store electricity and keep the juice flowing until the wind blows again. Which it almost always does in the wide open ocean. 

It's true offshore wind power is expensive because it's, well, offshore. But wind has no fuel costs. And CNN points out that states negotiate set power price agreements with offshore wind producers that don't fluctuate like natural gas and oil does. 

As with every stunt Trump and his minions pull, I see lawsuits coming with this. 

Canarymedia com explains:

"....offshore wind experts said that no process exists for Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)  to return the funds it collects from leasing federally controlled waters.

'There are significant questions about under what authority Interior is doing this,' said Elizabeth Klein, who led BOEM from 2023 to 2025 during the Biden administration"

 This Orange Briberymight  create broader problems beyond encouraging fossil fuel consumption, which can only worsen climate change. As NPR points out:

"Industry analysts say the agreement threatens to undermine business confidence in the United States by exerting unprecedented executive power to influence the private sector,"

Back in the day, like it or not, Republicans preferred to leave business alone. Let them do their thing with a little regulation or government interference as possible. So much for that. MAGA has turned that on its head. 

NPR's reporting goes on to explain that by stopping projects he doesn't like, Trump risks messing up infrastructure spending across the economy, not just in offshore wind. The uncertainty this creates could make infrastructure projects move more slowly and become expensive. 

The uncertainly goes into fossil fuel plant and oil production projects, which Trump keeps telling us he loves so much.

"When you're building a power plant or thinking about oil production, you're thinking not just about the current administration, you're thinking about the next couple of decades.....And the pendulum swing is a real policy risk," said Timothy Fox of ClearView Energy Partners. 

All this is one of Trump's few "skills."  His chaos causes so much uncertainty that investors, companies, and just regular people don't know what the next best course of action is.  Ultimately, nothing gets done.

Except Trump and his oligarch friends get ever more richer at our expense.   

We're Now In What Might Well Be The Last True Winter Cold Spell Of The Season

Interesting radar image from yesterday as light rain
covered most of the area. The "hole" in the rain near
and south of Burlington lingered for hours. Moisture
coming in from the west was blocked by the Adirondacks.
leaving a dry spot in the Champlain Valley.

As we expected, the spring warmth of yesterday is gone and t's cold here once again in Vermont.

The transition to the colder weather started out unevenly yesterday and created some sort of interesting moments. 

There was actually two cold fronts. The first originated as a warm front that stalled over southern Quebec It worked its way back southward as a cold front during Thursday afternoon and abruptly ended the brief warm spell in the far north. 

In Highgate, a temperature of 56 degrees at 12:30 p.m. Thursday was own to 45 by 2:30 p.m.. Elsewhere in northern and central Vermont, it took until very late afternoon or early evening to get much chillier. 

While all that was going on, whatever moisture there was came streaming in from the west. Nobody in central and northern Vermont got all that much rain, with amounts near a quarter inch, give or take.  

But if you looked at radar returns there was a "hole" near and south of Burlington most of the afternoon and evening were pretty much no rain was falling. The Adirondacks were blocking the moisture coming in. So rainfall dried up in the Champlain Valley, but resumed in the Green Mountains when the air was forced to rise up the slopes, wringing out a little rain. 

It looks like only far southern Vermont got substantial precipitation. Bennington reported a decent 0.61 inches.  

Overnight, the second and strongest cold front blasted through. even found evidence on my truck and the trees around my St. Albans home that we got a little bit of freezing rain late last night. 2Now it's temporarily winter again. 

LAST COLD SPELL?

As of 7 a.m. today, temperatures across Vermont were solidly below freezing except in the far south. Stiff north winds were holding wind chill in the teens. It won't get above freezing in most of the state today. 

Tonight will be down in the single number and low teens for the most part. Saturday stays below freezing, too, in much of Vermont. Saturday night will be cold, too, but not quite as bad as tonight. 

After that, fingers crossed, this might be the last truly wintry cold spell until, well next winter. There will still be frigid air lurking in central and northern Canada, but I don't think it will able to make any kind of strong push into our neck of the wood next week, or the week after. Then, by mid-April, it's usually too late to get wintry. 

Sure, it can get cold and snowy after mid-April, but not as if you're in the depths of winter cold and snowy. 

It looks like we'll have an active weather pattern, though, with frequent chances of April showers. It remains to be seen how much rain we'll actually get, as at this stage of the game, results vary when you look at the various forecasting models. 

Temperatures should recover from the cold spell by Sunday afternoon, as temperatures rise into the 40s. Readings will bounce around after that as warm and cold fronts sail through New England.  At this point, next Wednesday looks like the warmest day, with highs in the 50s to low 60s. A few models take us well into the 60s. We shall see!