How Dry I Am: March Could Be Near Record Dry In Vermont

Last year's dry brush near my house in St. Albans, Vermont.
Once the snow is completely gone, this type of dry
material can be a brush fire risk if we continue 
to have a dry spring 

So far this month, Burlington, Vermont has had just 0.12 inches of precipitation.  On this pace, we could have one of the driest Marches on record. 

The driest March on record produced just 0.22 inches of rain in 1915.  The tenth driest March had 0.90 in 2015.  

With just 0.12 inches in Burlington so far this March, we have a strong chance of being among the driest.  A normal March would have given Burlington a little under an inch of rain and melted snow by now. 

A super dry March is still far from guaranteed, of course. One mid-sized, run of the mill storm by March 31 could change this trend. But so far, things look oddly dry for the Green Mountain State.

The weather pattern since February, really, has been some really, really wet storms crossing the nation, but pretty far south. Too far south to give us much snow or rain. 

It's gotten worse in March as these storms have gotten even wetter, but more insistent on passing by well south of Vermont. 

These storms are responsible for serious flooding in Kentucky earlier this month and in Missouri the past couple of days. Another one of these storms is causing an epic snowstorm today in Colorado and Wyoming today, and yet another will create a risk of severe weather and tornadoes in the South midweek, and maybe some flooding in the central Plains. 

For us, repeated high pressure systems from Canada have shunted the storms through the Southeast and out to sea.

We get the yo-yoing temperatures out of these high pressure systems.  We had winter cold, then record warmth this month. Now, an Arctic high pressure system will bring us bitter cold this afternoon through Tuesday morning. That will be followed by another warmup - not as big as the last one - then a cool down, another warmup, rinse and repeat. 

Cold fronts introduce each new high pressure system, but with deep moisture pushed south, the cold fronts can only produce a piddling amount of rain or snow. Snow showers will blossom today, for instance, but everybody except the spine of the northern Green Mountains will get less than a tenth of an inch of melted precipitation. 

This dry trend, as I mentioned before is not good news. Before March even started, Vermont was already either in drought or abnormally dry.  This isn't helping.  

We should hope the end of the month and April turn wet for a couple of reasons. One, we need to start overcoming the rainfall deficit for summer, when drought can really put pressure on wells, stream flows and agriculture. 

Another more immediate problem is brush and wildfires. Early spring is peak season for that type of thing. 

In late March and April, the woods and fields haven't started to green up yet.   There's all that dead, brown and dry stuff from last year. With no leaves on the trees to block the sun, high in the sky by now, the woods can really dry out fast.  

This could be a recipe for a rough brush fire season.  We don't have anything like the wildfires of California, but here, you never know when an out of control brush fire can spread to a barn or houses. 

The whole Northeast is dry, and right now we're getting a foretaste of the kinds of fires we can get in Vermont later. There have been numerous brush fires from southern New England to the Mid-Atlantic States.

Today, Sunday, a windy day in the Northeast, there's a very high chance of brush fires in southern New England down to Maryland.

Here in Vermont, there's still some snow on the ground and we're getting light snow showers, so fire danger is still decidedly low here, for now. 

Weather forecasts are not encouraging. Things could change, but long range forecasts don't indicate any major signs of a big, wet storms in our future for the next couple of weeks. 

All the sunshine we've been getting has been lovely. But I'm starting to get into the mood for some rainy, dreary spring days.