Was An Electric Foliage Saturday In Vermont

Fall foliage glows in the evening sun in St. Albans, Vermont
Saturday as thunderstorms depart to the east and south.

 The fall foliage is still vibrant in much of Vermont and the state did, as expected, get an added jolt to the color on Saturday: Some vivid, out of season lightning. 

A band of thunderstorms that had been well forecast passed through Vermont during the afternoon, giving most of us a show.  Individual thunderstorms zipped along pretty fast, with a forward speed of 50 mph. 

However, these thunderstorms moved eastward on a line that spent Saturday afternoon slowly moving sinking southward across the state. Which gave a lot of us at least a couple hours of lightning and thunder. 

Also as expected, a few of the thunderstorms ended up being severe, with widely scattered reports of damage. Most of it was trees and power lines downed in gusty winds with the storms. The damage in Vermont was mostly in Addison County, around Ferrisburg and Monkton, and in parts of the Northeast Kingdom. 

In Elizabethtown, New York, there was a report of hail the size of ping pong balls. Smaller hail fell elsewhere 

Some of the storms had some spin to them. One of these rotating storms was intense enough to prompt a very rare and odd October tornado warning in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. So far, there are no reports of anything actually touching down. 

At least one more storm showed rotation over the southern end of Lake Champlain, but it never got wound up enough to create any tornado warnings. That storm did prompt a severe thunderstorm alert, though. 

At least the storms gave us another deposit of rain, which we still definitely need to ease a lingering drought. Burlington picked up 0.41 inches of rain Saturday, and the month is actually now running a little ahead of normal for precipitation there. 

Montpelier was a big winner in the rain sweepstakes Friday, gathering 1.32 inches in late afternoon, torrential thunderstorm downpours.  

Somber skies Saturday evening in St. Albans, Vermont as
thunderstorms depart to the east and south

Here at my place in St. Albans, we enjoyed three hours or some of lightning, thunder and dark clouds, but only collected about 0.10 in my unofficial rain gauge. 

Morrisville collected a respectable 0.72 inches, but St. Johnsbury only managed 0.16 inches, and dry Springfield only managed 0.04 inches. 

This is all too bad, because eastern Vermont is drier than the western half of the state and could have used some bonus rounds of showers and thunderstorms.

There's hope, though, even for eastern Vermont. 

Today will be a sunny, cool, bright autumn day. 

However, a series of relatively small storms and cold fronts will keep crossing near or over Vermont in the upcoming week, so that means frequent chances of rain.  While any one of these storms won't be a blockbuster, we do stand a good chance statewide to receive an inch or so of rain over the next seven days or so.

Quick video of lightning flash over St. Albans, Vermont Saturday. It was one of many