As it tends to do, the weather pattern can get a little more variable in the autumn, and things are going to shake up a little bit over the next few days. Unfortunately, that pattern will then get somewhat stuck for awhile, which has some dangerous implications for the western United States.
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| A dim sun, obscured by lots of western wildfire smoke overhead, sets behind power lines Tuesday evening in St. Albans, Vermont. |
All of us are aware that the west continues to burn. Plumes of smoke are still crossing the nation. That's why it was so hazy overhead yesterday here in Vermont. Another big huge puff of smoke blew our way.
The west will see another big, hot ridge of high pressure bloom overhead. The process will be gradual over the next few days, but by the very end of September and the first week or more of October, that heat ridge will be well established.
Rainfall in recent days has helped somewhat in the western half of Washington and northwestern Oregon, but everybody else on the West Coast has been pretty dry. California doesn't normally see much in the rainfall until much later in the autumn anyway.
This upcoming pattern will bring the heat to the west, and also east winds blowing toward the Pacific Ocean. You don't want that. Firefighters need cool, damp breezes from the Pacific Ocean. That doesn't look like that's in the cards for the upcoming couple of weeks.
Cold fronts and storms forming much east of the Rockies will help send pushes of very strong, dry east winds into parts of California and maybe Oregon and western Washington at times .
This is a recipe for more mega-fires, as if the West hasn't seen enough already. We know California has already had a record fire year, and they are now just entering what is normally peak fire season. This won't be good.
There will be a corresponding big southward dip in the jet stream with this set up. That will keep the Midwest, and eventually probably the Northeast cooler than normal.
It also gives us Vermonters a shot of getting some needed rain. Up until now, Burlington, Vermont is on pace for having the driest September on record. The driest September on record has only 0.68 inches of rain, in 1927.
Not-fun fact: September of 1927 was super dry, but most of us know what happened a couple months later. The Great Flood of 1927 hit on November 3-4, 1927. I'm not at all saying history will repeat itself, but still, shudder.
Anyway, this shifting weather pattern gives us some shots at possibly decent rains to close out the month. I, for one, am happy we're probably losing a chance to break another weather record. I want rain!
So does practically everyone else in Vermont. The state's vast forests are usually kind of hard to burn, That's especially true if you're talking about deep, serious burns that don't just race across the surface.
The organic material in Vermont forests usually stays wet enough so that nothing beyond leaf litter burns during occasion dry spells. Our tree filled landscape has more than once been called the "asbestos forest."
It's so dry now that we're starting to get the rare fires that burn deep under logs and roots. There's such a fire burning now near Killington, though fortunately it was discovered early so it didn't spread much beyond a half acre. In a worst case scenario, this type of fire can blow up to become a real nasty one.
The upcoming weather pattern makes it more likely, but not definite, that we will have more rainfalls in the first half of October. We shall see.
Long range forecasts, as I always note, are dicey. So there will be shifts in the forecast heading into October.
I sure hope that heat ridge in the west is being overdone by computer forecasting models. By the same token, I sure hope we enter a rainy pattern heading into the autumn to replenish ground water reserves here in Vermont.
If there's another bright side, there are hints that California could receive some rain in mid-October. We shall see.
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