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| A bit of a dusting of snow on some garden plants in St. Albans, Vermont this morning to greet the month of May. |
It wasn't quite as extensive as I feared. There was no snow on the ground at dawn today in Burlington, but they did have a few snow flurries.
Here in St. Albans, nothing on the ground, at least when I first woke up. A snow shower shortly after 6 a.m. deposited a dusting of snow, though that quickly melted.
They had to close Route 108 through Smuggler's Notch again this morning due to snow. There was a report of 1.5 inches of new snow this morning from Shrewsbury, Vermont.
A traffic cam at high elevation Route 17 in Buel's Gore early this morning showed a good one to two inches of new snow on the ground. In southern Vermont, an area along Route 9 in Searsburg showed about an inch of snow.
Route 302 Topsham, Route 4 near the top of Mendon Mountain, Interstate 91 in Sheffield, among others, showed dustings of May snow as well.
The odd antics of the first morning of May continue the topsy-turvy weather we dealt with in April. It was dry, it was wet, it was wintry, it was summer-like. We really had a bit of everything, except tornadoes. We go through that back in March.
If you average April all out, it was somewhat warmer than normal, and - Glory Be! - somewhat on the wet side. Drought lingered, though starting on the 15th, welcome rains began to arrive.
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| The month of April opened with lots of sunny, dry weather, prompting more early flower blooms than usual. |
The first two weeks of the month put us on a pace that would have brought us one of Vermont's warmest and driest Aprils on record. Temperatures by the 14th were running more than eight degrees warmer than average. The maple sugaring season ended abruptly, and much sooner than we'd expect as result.
Only about a quarter inch of precipitation had fallen on Burlington through April 14, against an average about 1.4 inches for those two weeks.
The dry conditions by April 14 were getting scary. Early season Vermont gardens were dust bowls. Wildfire concerns were rising. With precipitation deficits piling up since last spring, ,the Green Mountain State was looking at the risk of a severe summer drought in 2021.
Then the weather pattern changed. It turned a bit cooler, and much wetter. The rainfall wasn't all that extreme, but at least we were getting something. The drought is by no means over, but at least we gained a little ground, especially with soaking rains on the final three days of the month.
Overall, rainfall in Vermont during April was around an inch above normal, thanks to the late month soakers.
This being Vermont, there had to be a priced paid for this moisture. And there was. It seems like every storm that came along just HAD to bring snow along with the rain. In the end, the snow didn't cause all that much damage, but it was disheartening.
We had snowfalls on April 1, April 16, and April 21-22, along with at least some snow showers on April 26 and of course, this morning, May 1.
The April 16 and 21 snows were especially impressive, given the time of year. The April 16 storm dumped as 10 to 11 inches of snow on towns like Winhall, Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Bridgewater and Mount Holly.
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| A daffodil in St. Albans, Vermont collapses and freezes amid several inches of snow, subfreezing air and strong northwest winds April 22. This flower death was an an exception. About 80 percent of the daffodils and other flowers that were blooming before the snow and freeze recovered once temperatures warmed up. |
The April 21-22 was a bit of a surprise with eight inches in some towns, and three to five inches all the way down into the Champlain Valley. Heavy snow squalls on April 22 rivaled the worst ones we get in the middle of the winter, and cold winds held temperatures below freezing in some areas most of the day
Yet, two days later, it was 70 degrees.
April is a notoriously fickle month in Vermont, so what happened this year with the weather I guess is something we should have expected.
May in Vermont can and usually does have its extremes. Just look at last May, when we had a snowy Mother's Day weekend, followed late in the month by the hottest May temperature on record in Burlington.
I don't know whether this May will be that off the rails or not, we'll see. In general, forecasts seem to indicate the first half of this May will feature generally cool and showery weather. That's good if we want to keep whacking away at any lingering dryness out there, bad if you crave a lot of sunshine.
And, I'm sure there will be a few surprises along the way.
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