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| Spring advancing quickly. What part of my property in St. Albans Vermont looked like on March 7.......... |
The long advertised March heat wave of sorts arrives today, and will spend nearly a week hanging out around here.
Today will be the "coolest" of these days, reaching to about 50 degrees this afternoon, which is still several degrees above normal.
Some of the banana belt valleys of Vermont have a shot at seeing four days in a row starting Sunday touching 60 degrees. That's not really record heat, but it's way warmer than normal for this time of year.
Since the weather is quiet, we'll just go over a few weather tidbits for Saturday.
DRY REMINDER
As I noted yesterday, the price we're paying for the dry weather is a brush fire risk, at least in the valleys. The last of the snow is melting away. The humidity under the sunshine for the next few days will be very low. That will keep drying out last year's brush and debris, so be careful with fire.
That includes the risk of sparks if you're off roading, along with the usual warnings about back yard burning and throwing cigarette butts out of your car.
For the record, the latest weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report, issued Thursday, still has virtually all of Vermont listed as being under drought or at least abnormally dry.
BUT NO FLOODS!
March and April is often the time of year when snow melt, combined with rain storms, produces flooding. As you might imagine, that risk is pretty low this year, at least for now.
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| ....same exact view just 12 days later, taken yesterday. If you look very closely, you could just see a couple green shoots of perennials popping up in the flower bed. |
The latest biweekly spring flood outlook from the National Weather Service in South Burlington, issued Thursday, makes it official. In general, it says the chances for spring flooding in the upcoming days or weeks is below normal.
The mountains, though still contain some snow pack, so some higher elevations have enough water contained in that snow to make the chances of flooding there in the next couple of weeks about average.
The snow melt through Thursday will be fairly rapid, but not super fast. Rivers might end up running sort of high and cold, but not spill over their banks during the week. Given the dry weather I mentioned above, we could actually use the rain, to put my Captain Obvious hat on here.
END OF WEEK RAIN?
Some forecasts are calling for - finally - a decent slug of rain toward Friday. A storm is forecast to go by just to our west, pulling a slug of rich Gulf of Mexico moisture up our way. That would give us our first mid-size, decent precipitation event since mid-February.
Of course, drought tends to beget drought, and so far this year, we've frequently had good prospects of heavier precipitation evaporate as the event draws closer. We'll keep an eye on that storm and hope it nails us with a good drenching.
MISSING OUT ON WINTER?
One nice thing about this extended spell of warm weather is we're missing out on the kind of wintry weather we often get this time of year.
Normal temperatures between today and a month from now rise especially fast- pretty much the most rapid increase of the year. That means cold and snowy spells quickly lose their oomph.
Sure, it can still get cold, even below zero in a few corners of Vermont into early April. It also usually snows in late March and April, sometimes heavily. You can get a foot of snow or more in a single storm in April.
But any snow we do get from now on this spring would melt really fast. And what seems like normal weather now (highs in the low 40s) would be much colder than normal just a month from now. Chilly high temperatures like yesterday (31 in Burlington) are almost impossible a month from now.)
Also, the abnormally warm, gorgeous weather forecast for the next few days becomes just average run of the mill weather by late April.
Spring, even with its snowy, chilly Vermont blemishes, has sprung.
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