Frost Advisory In Vermont As We Get Clipped A Bit By Large Cold Spell

My lilacs in St. Albans, Vermont starting to make an 
attempt at blooming, despite some damage from a 
hard freeze in late April. A frost advisory is up
for much of Vermont tonight, but won't be intense
enough to cause further damage to lilacs.
However, sensitive plants should be covered up
or brought indoors this evening

 A heads up for gardeners and such in Vermont and surrounding areas:

There's a frost advisory up for most of the state tonight. 

This won't be a hard, killing freeze by any stretch of the imagination, though the usual cold spots will probably get below freezing.  

Areas near Lake Champlain are not covered by tonight's frost advisory, because current forecasts have temperatures staying warm enough to avoid frosts there. We hope. 

Temperatures elsewhere in Vermont will be marginal, and frost could easily form as skies clear overnight and winds slacken off. If you already planted tomatoes or other really sensitive stuff in your garden, a dope slap to you!

It's too early. You should have waited. Cover them up if you have them out there. For those who are hardening off their sensitive plants, bring them indoors this evening, just in case. Large scale crops, like apples, should be fine as the cold will not be intense enough to cause problems with blooms or anything like that. 

After tonight, you should be fine for awhile as it looks like a bit of a warming trend will set in.

The risk of frost in mid-May around Vermont as you might well know, is pretty common. It's rare not to have a night or two with a frost risk this time of year .

It's been as low as 25 degrees in "tropical" Burlington as late as May 31 and frosts away from Lake Champlain sometimes happen in early June. 

This cool weather is part of a large cold snap that affected much of the northern tier of the nation.  It snowed in northern Pennsylvania Sunday, and Colorado got a late season snowfall yesterday. 

Frost advisories and local freeze warnings covered areas extending from Nebraska to Maine.  Just like in Vermont, all these areas are expected to warm up over the next few days, minimizing the risk of frosts heading into the weekend. 

Freezing levels were low enough in the atmosphere yesterday so that some of the showers that developed in Vermont Tuesday contained pea sized hail. I got pelted briefly by such hail while working in a South Burlington garden, and there were at least a dozen reports of the hail elsewhere in Vermont. 

All the hail was brief and the hailstones were all much too small to cause any damage.