Vermont: A Windy, Warm And Dry March; We Still Need A Bunch More Rain

We had a rapid progress toward spring during March, 2021 in
St. Albans, Vermont because of a warmer than normal  
month. Here's how one corner of my property 
 looked on March 6.........

Another month came to a close this week, so it's time to take our usual look back at the month just ended.  

March in Vermont was another warm, dry month.   We've had a lot of those lately. 

In most of the Green Mountain State, rainfall was around half of normal. 

For instance, Burlington barely topped an inch of precipitation for the month, which is 1.2 inches below normal for the month. Montpelier barely received an inch, too.  That was. more than 1.3 inches below normal. 

It wasn't a record dry March, but it was pretty parched for this normally stormy time of year. 

Snowfall was lame, too.  Burlington only received 1.4 inches of snow during March, making it the eighth least snowy March on record.  That's a marked contrast to some recent Marches. In 2017 and 2018, both Marches had more than 30 inches of snow. 

Though this March was warm, it was nowhere close to any records. The character of the month was some pretty intense and relatively long lasting warm spells punctuated by brief, sharp, winter-like cold snaps. 

Some record high temperatures were set on March 11, and numerous records fell on March 23 and 25. Readings got as high as 74 in Bennington, 73 degrees in Burlington and Springfield and 72 in Rutland.

All these abrupt shifts to warm to brief cold and then warm again all month contributed to making March a windy month. 

This was punctuated by a exceptionally rare early season tornado in Middlebury on March 26 that left two injured, severely damaged a house and caused minot damage to others. 

....and here's how the same scene looked on March 31. 
Look closely and you can see spring garden plants coming up

We already had plenty of wind in Vermont during March without any tornadoes. In Burlington, 18 days had gusts to 30 mph or more and eight days saw gusts to 40 mph and above. 

The dearth of precipitation in March is concerning, since this is the time of year you want to really recharge ground water if it's been dry.  

Trees haven't leafed out yet so the forests aren't really drawing much water from the ground.  

The outlook for April isn't great. Snow and rain did fall Thursday, April Fool's Day, which might help a little, but it doesn't really solve all of the problems.  

All of Vermont is still listed by the U.S. Drought Monitor as at least abnormally dry, with a bit more than half officially in drought. 

Plus, after this, it looks mostly dry at least through the first two weeks of April.  There might be some light rains here and there, but so far, it doesn't look like anything heavy is on the way for the foreseeable future