New Website To Replace Shuttered Climate.gov Thrives, But Can It Continue On A Long-Term Volunteer Basis?

A group of scientists have created climate.us to replace
a climate change information website to replace 
the federal website that the Trump administration
shut down so they can continue to deny that climate
change. So far. climate.us. seems quite popular

Our government does not work on our behalf. Under Trump, it's all about pleasing the billionaire class, along with associated scammers, criminals and such. 

So anything that is potentially helpful does not come from the federal government. 

So, we have to go around them. Canada, fed up with Donald Trump's constant verbal attacks and tariffs, is just creating new trade agreements with other nations and ignoring the United States. 

It's the same with information. Which takes us to a new website, climate.us.

Before the Trump goons took over, a NOAA-run website called climate.gov was a fantastic go-to place for climate information and the latest climate science. 

Climate science is, to steal from Al Gore's long ago book, an inconvenient truth to fossil fuel interests. Since Trump loves his billionaire fossil fuel buddies, so we can't have information on climate change lying around, can we?

So, Trump's administration shut down climate.gov's day to day operations last year. And big layoffs got rid of those pesky federal climate scientists who insisted fossil fuels were the problem. Gawd, science is so annoying!

Speaking o which, you can't keep climate scientists and climate information down. So in late June, the web site climate.us suddenly start to grace the internet. 

"Trusted climate information should not disappear when politics change," said Rebecca Lindsey, Managing Director of Climate.us."Climate.us is building an independent, durable platform so people can continue to find the data  and information they need to understand and talk about climate, and to teach, report, plan, prepare and make informed decisions."

The reborn climate web site restored the old Climate.gov's 15-year collection of climate news and stories, expert analysis, maps, data, classroom material and the Fifth National Climate Assessment.

Lindsey had been fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as part of the infamous DOGE cutbacks of 2025. She had been the lead writer and editor of the she and her team had built over 15 or so years. 

After she lost her job, she worried about all the information on climate.gov and how the science there conflicted with the worldview of Trump and his minions. 

Sure enough, The Trumpsters shut down the web site, hilariously calling the move "restoring gold standard science." 

Climate.gov had been heavily used by educators, policymakers and just interested members of the public. After the shutdown, people who had worked on the climate.gov website met periodically to figure out what could be preserved from the web site. They settled on created an independent, nongovernmental version, which is climate.us, reports Grist. 

Climate.us.is not just an archive. Frequent updates will include new videos, articles, Q&As and other features. "We just try to constantly take the pulse of what scientists say is valuable and important and needs to be talked about and explained,' Lindsey said. 

The web site launched in mid-June and received roughly 800,000 page views, which is pretty good, considering the old NOAA site had about a million views per month. 

The fact that climate.us is popular is also reflected in the funding. Lindsey ad her team crowdsourced $280,000 to get the technical part of the climate site off the ground. 

Volunteer also readily signed up to run climate.us including 80 scientists who are serving as subject matter experts to fact check what the site publishes, NPR reports. An anonymous donor also provided a one-time grant that will keep the site up until at least February, 2027.

Grabbing the content from the old climate.gov, was easy, since it was public information anyway. The technical aspects were harder, including establishing a cost-effective search capability on the site. But it's been done. Where there's a will there's a way. 

It's an example of how we now need to get accurate information from our now very inaccurate government. As NPR reported

"Now we have a lot of expertise outside the government because of so much brain drain from the government, and we can really stand up things. We can have powerful interventions, and (Climate.us), I think is a success story of that," said Gretchen Gehrek a science communicator at the Environmental /da and Governance Initiative, a nonprofit group that works to make information about the environment available to the public. 

It's not just climate.us.  As Grist reports, other groups are trying to take over the tasks that the Trumpsters abandoned: 

"The American Geophysical Union is trying to fill the void where it can. It has launched a global initiative to ensure that environmental datasets are more resilient against threats such as political interference, pulling together a group of 100 experts around the world.

It's also working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading authority on climate science, hosting an academic network that allows U.S. scientists to participate in key international reports even after the Trump administration withdrew from the group. 

Along with the American Meteorological Society, it has also released an invitation for climate manuscripts to maintain the research momentum of what would have been the sixth National Climate Assessment, with plans to eventually publish a special climate collection across different peer-reviewed journals." 

Also, NOAA used to track billion dollar weather and climate disasters. The Trump people ended that program last year. I guess it helped prove climate change is expensive, which we're not supposed know, apparently. 

So, Adam Smith who led the NOAA billion dollar disaster data base, is leading, maintaining and updating the information at the nonprofit Climate Central. Smith is working to take the project further and is working on documenting disasters that cost $100 million or more dating back to 1980.

This isn't a perfect solution. A patchwork of non-profit groups doesn't have the comprehensive presence of the federal government.  Donor money can dry up unpredictably.  But I'm encouraged by the outpouring of scientists who won't shut up, like the Trump regime wants. Science has gotta science, and we are grateful at least somebody isn't lying to us. 

Clear Skies In Vermont Yield To Long, Humid Spell Of Florida Weather. When Will It End? We Have Clues

A summer rarity. Yesterday afternoon's satellite photo
shows cloudless skies in northern New England, New York
and southern Ontario and Quebec. You see hints of 
wildfire smoke in Quebec. It's rare to see such a huge
area of cloudless skies in the summer. The afternoon
heat usual generates at least a few cumulus clouds

Believe it or not, yesterday was a weird weather day in Vermont.

It didn't seem weird. Just gorgeous. The odd part was the clouds. Or lack thereof. We spent the whole day in the Green Mountain State without a cloud in the sky. There were just the faintest hint of wildfire smoke, but that's it. 

We do have absolutely clear days in the spring and fall. Even, sometimes, in the winter. But cloudless summer skies are rare. There's usually enough lift in the atmosphere created by the heat of the day to generate at least a few puffy clouds over the mountains. 

Yesterday, nothing. No complaints, though it was a glorious summer day. 

Our cloudless days are over, thanks to the well-advertised burst of high humidity coming in starting today and intensifying Thursday. 

That miserable weather looks like it will stay with us until the early part of next week. There is hope, eventually that this will end. Keep reading and we'll tell you when

TODAY

Actually, still not bad. As far as clouds go, there will be some high clouds which will signal the more humid air coming in. And maybe a few puffy cumulus clouds over the mountains. But still, the sunshine will dominate. The humidity will be a higher than yesterday, but still not extreme. Highs in most places should get well into the 80s, so today is a great beach day. 

THURSDAY/FRIDAY

Ugh, High humidity, partly cloudy skies and highs in the 80s.  Since the air will be like what Florida sees in the summer, we'll have Florida weather. That means scattered showers and thunderstorms, most likely in the afternoon and evening. Unlike Florida, Vermont has mountains. The hillsides will create updrafts that will help trigger the storms, so most - but not all - of the activity will be near the mountains. 

Not everybody will see a shower or storm. They will be hit and miss. Those that get hit will see a briefly cooling torrential downpour, but the mugginess will return fast. Unfortunately the nights will be stuffy as hell.

SATURDAY

More ugh.  This could change, but it appear showers and storms might be a little more widespread that the previous days. Dew points will still be in the miserable low 70s. That'll be the third day in a row of that kind of super high humidity, which is very unusual in Vermont. 

SUNDAY

More of the same? Really? Looks that way. If we're lucky, the dew point might drop by a couple points, but it will still remain horribly humid. We also have a shot at a mostly rain-free day, but that's still iffy at this point. 

NEXT WEEK

The week starts with more of the same, but the temperatures might be only near 80, instead of the low 80s. The humidity will still be awful but then --- a change in the weather!!

Signs are pointing toward notably cooler and much less humid air toward the end of next week. And that cooler regime might last quite awhile, if iffy long range forecasts are correct. The weather during that cool down might still be unsettled with a risk of showers. But at least we'll be able to sleep at night for a change. 

Spokane Becomes The Latest City Victimized By Climate Fires. More Surely To Come, Unfortunately

A woman rushes her dog away as her house burns down
Saturday during the Spokane wildfire. She reported lost
other pets in the blaze,

Spokane, Washington has joined the sad list of American towns and cities mowed down by marauding wildfires in recent years. 

Fort McMurray, Alberta in 2016. Gatlinburg, Tennessee, also in 2016. Paradise, California in 2018. Lytton, British Columbia in 2021, the Boulder, Colorado area, also in 2021. Lahaina, Hawaii, 2023. Pacific Palisades and Altadena, California in 2025.

It's been quite a decade for fires blasting through North American towns and cities. The above is only the highlight. Numerous other smaller towns have lost many of their homes and businesses in other fires

Now, it's Spokane.

In just an afternoon and evening on August 1, more than 600 homes burned down in and around Spokane. Once again, we saw the horrible scenes of hasty evacuations, roads clogged with cars with panicked, fleeing families inside. 

History has other big fires smashing through towns of course. A wildfire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin that killed perhaps 2,000 people. 

An 1881 fire in Michigan killed 282 people.  An 1894 Minnesota wildfire killed more than 400 people. And in 1910 the so-called Great Fire swept through five million acres in Idaho, Montana and Washington. 

These urban firestorms seemed to calm down in much of the 20th century. Sure there were a few, like the Oakland-Berkeley  Hills firestorm in 1991, which killed 25 people. But too many of us assumed we had conquered the threat of a wildfire plowing into a town or a city

But now they're back. Especially over the past decade, as we noted.

WILDLAND-URBAN INTERFACE

One problem is the wildland-urban interface. More and more people are moving into woodsy areas as suburbs expand into once unpopulated areas. The appeal is obvious: A beautiful forest in your backyard, wildlife wandering by. It's hard to resist. 

The wildland-urban interfaces or WUI's, are not just in the western states. The states with the most houses in WUIs are California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

There's always talk of adaption in these zones, to keep the house from burning.  Clear the brush and the trees away from the houses. Clean the gutters. That kind of thing. But judging from the way the ravaged neighborhoods in Spokane appeared.you can't fully adapt yourself out of extreme wildfires. 

The neighborhoods that burned were typical suburbia. Nice lawns, flower beds. Scattered decorative trees. The flammable pines and spruces safe in the background. Or so you'd think. 

Under normal circumstances, when a single house goes up in flames, due to an electrical problem, clumsy kitchen cooking, an unattended candle, a small army of firefighters arrive. Neighboring houses get soaked down so they don't burn, too. 

In wildfires, there's never enough personnel to protect every home. The entire forest behind the neighborhoods is on fire. Embers are everywhere, setting fire to the old leaves in the gutters, sneaking into the attic vents, setting the area beneath the roof on fire. The pretty decorative cedar against the foundation - dried out by months of drought - bursts into flames amid the sparks. That blaze quickly sets the house on fire.

On and on the fires go, hopscotching from one house to the next. In the end, in Spokane, at least 700 houses succumbed. That's how it works in the wild land-urban interface.

DRY WEATHER/CLIMATE CHANGE

We knew there would be trouble in eastern Washington on Saturday. It's been building since this past winter. Unprecedented warmth and a lack of snow meant the landscape dried out much earlier in the spring than it usually does. 

It doesn't rain much during the summer in eastern Washington. Normally June precipitation is 1.17 inches in Spokane. This year, Spokane received just 0.26 inches. The city usually gets just under a half inch of rain in July. This year, there was only a trace.

The area is absolutely arid at this point. This weekend a dry cold front passed through the region. West winds with the cold front gained momentum as they raced down the east slopes of the Cascade mountains, drying out as they did so, 

The smallest sparks erupted in to firestorms on Saturday, and the disaster landed.  

By Sunday, 920 firefighters were battling the blazes in and around Spokane. That number was expected to rise to 2,000 during this week. More than 65,000 people had been evacuated, with no word yet on when all of them will go home. 

The weather forecast across the Pacific Northwest is discouraging. The wind has diminished, but it will remain dry and hot for the foreseeable future. Winds are expected to increase this coming weekend, but they won't be as strong as they were last Saturday. 

 It's no coincidence that these urban and suburban wildfires have increased over the past decade. It's not just the wildland-urban interface.  Spokane is a great, sad example. Climate change helped make the winter warmer, the summer drier. You see it over and over again. Paradise, California hit because the winter rains were late. Same thing happened in Altadena in 2025. 

Climate change has made things so much more extreme. So much more predictable. And this summer, the extreme weather continues, given an added boost by a wildly strong El Nino.

The fires near Spokane, in the rest of Washington State and the West overall will burn indefinitely. Probably until the winter snows fly. 

LOUSY CONDITIONS/LOUSY PEOPLE

Spokane wasn't the only wildfire problem. As of Sunday, seventeen major fires encompassing 260,000 were burning across Washington. In Oregon, wildfires have burned more than 2 million acres, by far the most acreage on record. August and September tend to be the peak fire season in Oregon. 

The record for an entire fire season - set in 2024 - is about the same as what has burned so far this year in Oregon

On Saturday, the wind and the dry air around Spokane and other areas of the Northwest made fighting the fires impossible. They basically morauded unimpeded through forests, scrublands and finally neighborhoods, 

 "There is not a fire department in the United States that can handle a wind-driven event this size," said Assistant Spokane Fire Chief Lance Dahl. 

The spikes in wind over the next couple of months will likely lead to more homes burned this year. Maybe not hundreds at a time like in Spokane but enough to hurt many, many more families. 

The end result of this conflagration in Spokane was so many moments of normal daily life cruelly interrupted. Per the Spokane Spokesman-Review:

"Signs of children lingered on sidewalks where hopscotch was chalked. Stone stairs that once led to a wraparound porch led to nothing Smoldering foundations were still hot enough to melt shoes."

At one, the homeowner found nothing salvageable except for a muffin tin. At another house, it was complete devastation except for a koi pond. The fish in the pond somehow survived. At yet another destroyed home, a father instructed his son to take a brick from the house as a memento. He'd already done that. 

The most infuriating thing about the Spokane disaster is its apparent cause - arson. On Monday, Aaron Farinacci, 37, was arrested in Spokane for allegedly starting the Old Trails Fire, the largest and most destructive of three large fires in and around the city.  

As NBC News reports, the fire began at around 10 a.m. Saturday A witness told police the saw the man looking into the trees an was later seen crouching at the side of the road near some grass before he "stood up and looked very nervous" and walked away, said Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels .

Police detained Farinacci Saturday about a half mile from where the fire started. He had waterproof matches and a butane lighter on him. Authorities let Farinacci go, apparently mostly because the most important job at the moment was understandably evacuating people hastily. 

On Sunday, investigators determined the Old Trail Fire started exactly where the witness saw Farinacci crouching, leading to Monday's arrest. At last check he's being held on $1 million bond.

So far, I haven't seen a motive for the arson. 

Farinacci is (allegedly!) the worst but not only horrible idiot associated with the fires. We saw at least 26 incidents of people flying personal drones over the fires. That mean officials had to ground air support for safety reasons, hurting the firefighting efforts. 

By the way, flying drones over an emergency zone is a federal crime. 

In Oregon, the Jefferson County Sheriff's office are warning boaters on Lake Billy Chinook could be completely shut down for recreation if people don't stop interfering with firefighting efforts. Onlookers have repeatedly gotten too close to planes and helicopters as they scoop water from the lake to fight nearby fires, Central Oregon Daily News reported.  

Goons are watching the fires, for afar, too, coldly trying to make money off the blazes. These days you can bet on anything. 

Prediction marketshare allowing people to place bets on wildfires. 

According to OregonLive:

"In a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, Sens. Ron Widen and Jeff Merkley joined lawmakers from other wildfire-stricken states in urging the agency to crack down on wildfire-related contracts. The group warned the markets could create financial incentives for arsons and criticized what they described as profiteering from disasters affecting vulnerable communities."

Reportedly, the 2025 Los Angeles fires prompted more than $1 million in wagers. Since then the betting market has grown exponentially. 

THE REST OF US

As is always the case with these big wildfires, it becomes everybody's problem. Thick smoke is billowing across the Pacific Northwest, set to create intense air pollution in cities like Portland, Eugene, Vancouver and Seattle.

 The smoke, combined with smoke from dozens of other western wildfires is drifting across the nation. Virtually everyone across the continental U.S. is either experiencing occasionally hazy skies and smoke, or will soon.

So, our lungs will once again suffer the consequences. 

As we've already noted, these huge wildland-urban interface wildfires have become disconcertingly common. Pretty much every year now. The droughts, the heat, the weird extremes brought on by climate change continue to take their toll.

Sadly, there's plenty of time for another Spokane this summer and fall.  There are so many towns and cities in California, Oregon, Washington and other western states that are sitting ducks for these kind of extreme wildfires 

Climate change won't stop anytime soon. It's another new normal in our abruptly hotter world. Some parts of the world are taking serious steps to combat climate change. The United States meanwhile, remains completely unserious about the problem.  

The money from the fossil fuel industry is too tempting for our so-called leaders. Too many Americans are willfully ignorant, as they prattle on about chemtrails and conspiracies and shrill references to an irrelevant hot spell in the 1930s. 

Nobody deserves to have their home burn down in a wildfire of course. Including those who say climate change is a hoax. But unfortunately, these firestorms will continue. Denial or not.  

Enjoy This Brief Sort Of Coolish Spell In Vermont This Morning; Tropical Week Ahead

Ever so briefly, the sky took on an autumnal look late
yesterday afternoon as a brief cooler, less humid
blast of air took over in Vermont. The rest of the
week will be very warm, with increasing humidity

 It turns out almost everybody got some rain in Vermont yesterday as a solid line of showers and thunderstorms crossed the state yesterday. That was followed by stiff brought stiff breezes made it actually feel cool outside last evening. 

Most places in Vermont were in the 50s this morning, with low 60s in the Champlain Valley. 

As we get through today, this sort of  coolish spell is over, for quite a long time. Let's get into it.

TODAY

The good news is the humidity stays fairly low. So as sunshine boosts temperatures into the 80s, it won't feel too terrible. The dew point, a rough measure of how sticky it feels out there, will hover near  60 degrees. That's not a totally refreshing level, but it will do. 

WEDNESDAY

A little hotter a little more humid. Dew points will be in the low 60s as afternoon temperatures climb well into the 80s. Sunshine will continue, so if you have the opportunity, it's a good beach day. We're into August, so there might not be too many such days left. Leap at this chance for fun in the sun.  Just be sure to OD on the sunscreen, please. 

THURSDAY-FRIDAY

Tropical humidity with a good chance of afternoon and evening showers and thunderstorms. We'll have to watch on Thursday whether the instability might be robust enough for some strong storms. This will be a winner/loser type situation, as some areas will get drenched by torrential downpours while other areas get little or nothing. 

We might also have to watch out for isolated instances of flash flooding once again, since the storms might not move all that fast. We won't have anything widespread in the high water department, it's just something to watch. 

WEEKEND

Still muggy with a risk of storms. But the weather pattern will have rearranged itself slightly so that we'll be in a battleground between the oppressive Bermuda High and an autumn-ish storm up by Hudson Bay. That means little weather disturbances will fling themselves through New England in a fast flow within this battleground. 

Hard to say when we'll get some rain and storms and when it will be dry. It's also impossible to say how impressive or wimpy the rain an storms will be. For now, file next weekend under he "iffy" category.

NEXT WEEK

It seems like the storm up in Canada might slowly gain more influence over us here in the North Country. If that happens, we'll gradually lose the humidity but will keep the chances of showers going. Hard to say for sure because forecasts beyond five days are often not very accurate. But this attempt at a forecast is your hope we lose all that sticky, gross air that we're going to deal with. 

Expected Overnight Rain Mostly Misses Vermont, Unfortunately. Hit And Miss Stuff Today

Late season day lilies "Country Club" variety, blooms
in St. Albans, Vermont this morning. Most of the
predicted rain avoided us, but there are some chances
of rain today, but it will be hit and miss

  Streaks of heavier rain that swept through New York and New England unfortunately mostly missed Vermont. Which is too bad, because many gardens and crops could have used a good drink.  

A few places got decent rain. Rutland had 0.56 inches through 8 a.m.  Other areas were pathetic. Montpelier has 0.15 inches. Bennington, 0.13 inches, Burlington a mere 0.05 inches. 

Southern and eastern New England grabbed the moisture. Flash flood warnings were up in parts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. 

So, will it rain today? Maybe, in some places. Let's get into it.

TODAY

We still have shots at getting some rain today, but it will be hit and miss. I'm hoping for more hits than miss. 

The moisture for the rain is certainly there. I'm sure you've noticed the continued humidity out there. A weak cold front is arriving today.  The front is sort of coming through in pieces, as is typical weak summer cold fronts.

That'll generate showers and storms that will cross the state from west to east today. In patches and bunches. There's a chance a couple of the storms could be fairly strong here and there. We'll end up with a patchwork of towns and cities that ended up getting a nice drink of water from the skies, while people in other towns watch the dark clouds bypass them. 

They'll be sweating as they do so as the humidity will bypass them, though the air will start to freshen up a little toward evening as the cold front staggers off into eastern New England.  The departure of that cold front means the showers and thunderstorms should be out of Vermont by late afternoon.

A trailing disturbance will probably set off some light showers this evening over northern Vermont, but they won't amount to much. 

TUESDAY

We'll have a brief break from the humidity so enjoy it, as it will be a delightful summer day squeezed in between days of mugginess. It'll be sunny, and highs will get into the 80s. So enjoy the lake, enjoy some hikes, or whatever else you're doing. 

WEDNESDAY

Actually, not bad. The humidity will creep up, but it won't get out of control. The sunshine will continue and highs will go well into the 80s. 

THURSDAY - SUNDAY

A strong Bermuda High off the East Coast still looks like it will dominate our weather. That'll pump the very warm, humid air our way. Even though it will be oppressive, temperatures will struggle to reach 90 degrees. High humidity will absorb the sun's heat, preventing extreme heat. But it won't matter, it'll be uncomfortable as hell.

We'll also have an ever-present chance of showers and thunderstorms, with the best shot at seeing thunderstorms in the afternoons and evenings. They will be hit and miss, so we'll see rainfall winners and losers, as usual. 

Little weather disturbances riding along the muggy southwest flow will provide bursts of more numerous showers and storms, but it's hard to tell this far in advance. 

It's summer. We get this kind of weather, Soon enough we'll be complaining about the cold. Embrace the humidity. 

July 2026 in Vermont Was Mostly Humid, And Stormy

Stormy skies over Lake Champlain in July. The month
of July was relatively hot and quite stormy across Vermont.

 Not that you need reminding, but July in Vermont this year was humid, stormy and kind of hot. 

As measured in Burlington, the average temperature was 73.7 which was 1.3 degrees above normal. That doesn't sound like July was that hot,  but it was the 15th hottest July out of the past 136 years of reliable records. 

I always have to throw in this caveat. Normal nowadays is not your grandfather's average Vermont weather. 

 "Normal" temperatures are based on the average of what we saw between 1990 and 2020, when climate change had already taken hold. 

If this July happened in the 1970s or something like that, July would have been about four degrees above average. Hot Julys have become the norm in Vermont. Six of the top 10 hottest Julys have hit since 2018. 

Overall, the rest of northern Vermont was warm and dry, though it was paradoxically a humid and stormy sort of dry. In other words, not all that much rain came out of those muggy and roiling skies.

Weather stations across northern Vermont reported a monthly average temperature of a little more than a degree above normal.

Burlington had 3.18 inches of rain, which was nearly an inch below average. That turned out to be the 61st driest July out of the past 144 years of reliable records. Most of the northern two thirds of the state were dry, too. Given the fact that showers and storms tend to make summer rainfall highly variable, there were pockets of above normal precipitation. 

Montpelier's rainfall was 4.74 inches of rain in July, which was about a half inch above normal, But 2.45 inches of that came in one ferocious thunderstorm on July 9,

When you got toward southwestern Vermont, it was a little cooler than the modern average, and on the wet side. Bennington's average July temperature was almost a degree cooler than normal, Bennington also had 6.45 inches of rain, which was 1.8 inches above normal,

Much like in Montpelier, Bennington's wet month was due to one storm. They had 3.75 inches of rain on July 28-30, as they were on the edge of that epic storm that caused extreme flooding in New York's Hudson Valley. 

That same storm dumped over five inches of rain on some towns in the far southern Green Mountains. 

STORMY MONTH

The first half of the month was especially stormy. 

July got off to a literal bang on the first day of the month. Hot, oppressively humid weather help light up the sky with waves of severe thunderstorms. The worst of the storms sprung up abruptly in the Champlain Valley, leaving a trail of damage across northern and central Vermont into New Hampshire. 

An area around Underhill, Westford, Essex and Cambridge suffered especially severe damage.  Another wave of storms later that night filled the sky with continuous lightning

On July 9 storms blasted across northern Vermont, especially up in the Northeast Kingdom, nailing areas around Burke Mountain with intense microbursts. Flash flooding hit the area around Barre, but luckily, the flooding was much less severe that the past three Julys. 

Vermont braced for a severe storm and oddly strong tornado threat on July 14 into the early morning hours of July 15. Wildfire smoke squelched many would-be storms, so the problem wasn't as widespread as feared. 

However, supercell thunderstorms spewing microbursts caused lots of damage in a stripe northwest to southeast through Rutland and Windsor counties. 

On July 16, showers and storms developed along a weak southward moving cold front. The storms looked lame on radar, but the gust front packed quite a punch. More trees fell across northern Vermont.

Also, wildfire smoke made an appearance in Vermont, as I alluded to above. The worse of it was at mid-month when some big fires flared up in Ontario and northern Minnesota. Those fires tapered off later in the final weeks of July, so the smoke thinned, too. Just some haze from blazes in the western United States. 

Looking ahead to August, NOAA is predicting a hot month for most of the nation. However, the forecast gives equal chances of above or below normal temperatures in an area from the Great Lakes through the Northeast, including Vermont. 

NOAA is leaning ever so slightly on the wet side, so that's essentially a toss-up, too 

Flood Concerns Stay Off To Vermont's West As We Stay Warm. Humid. Wet Early Monday

Later summer garden in St. Albans, Vermont this 
morning. The gardens should get a decent drink of
water tonight and tomorrow from a batch of 
relatively heavy showers in the forecast

As expected, we're in a warm, humid regime here in Vermont with little sign of relief on the way. 

Forecasts have settled on the heaviest rain today and tonight in western and northern New York and in Ontario. There, flood watches are in effect. 

For Vermont, we should eke out a decent day, with clouds and sun, and a chance of a late day shower or garden-variety thunderstorm, especially northwest. Many of us will stay dry. Highs should reach the 80s this afternoon, and you'll continue to feel that humidity build. 

TONIGHT/MONDAY

Most of the rain Vermont gets will hold off until later tonight and the first half of Monday. This will more of a Goldilocks rainfall - heavy enough to give gardens and crops a good drink, light enough to prevent any flooding. 

NOAA has a slight risk of flash floods level two out of four, in the extreme northern 'Adirondacks and along New York's Canadian border. They've put Vermont in a marginal risk, level one out of four for flash floods in case a local downpour causes trouble. But that risk really looks pretty low.

We'll see some downpours and embedded rumbles of thunder within this but nothing particularly scary. There is a marginal - level one out of five risk of severe storms in the southeastern two thirds of Vermont, and much of the rest of New England, but this won't be a widespread outbreak of bad weather. 

The rain and downpours will tend to taper off as we go through the afternoon and evening. A little sun might come out as well.

TUESDAY

The pick of the week if you have outdoor plans. The humidity should temporarily dip to somewhat comfortable levels, with dew points in the low 60s. That's considered just slightly sticky but not oppressive. Sunshine should boost temperatures into the 80s.

WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY

We have a long spell of warm, humid air with a daily risk of mostly afternoon showers and thunderstorms every day. We'll be sandwiched between a strong Bermuda High off the East Coast and a dip in the jet stream well to our west.  So, little disturbances in that humid southwesterly flow of air will keep those chances of thunderstorms going.

We're into August now, so at least in some years, the change in seasons begins to take the edge out of the constant humid weather. There are signs that we could have a sort of autumnal spell by mid-month. No promises, but there's a chance.