Spring Thunderstorms: Beauty In Vermont; Danger In The Plains

Sunshine lights up green foliage as storm clouds 
loom Sunday in St. Albans, Vermont.

On Sunday here in Vermont, we saw one of the first or at least one of the first, thunderstormy day of the warm season. 

The showers and storms were all hit and miss, as had been expected. The storms were more widespread than in previous days. 

Even those areas that did not get any rain Sunday saw some pretty views of towering convective clouds. 

Many of us heard thunder for the first time in months. For some of us, it was the first thunder since sometime last fall. 

The storms' behavior was pretty fun to watch, at least from a weather geek's perspective. They were slow movers, and for most of the day set up shop over the mountains. For a few hours, they lined up perfectly north to south in Vermont over and just east of the Green Mountains spine. The same set up was true over the eastern Adirondacks. 

The showers and storms caused some abrupt changes in temperature, too. The strong May sun brought afternoon temperatures into the 70s for most of us. But cold air lurked aloft.  Outflow winds from the storms would bring local temperatures down by 20 degrees, turning a warm May Sunday into a chilly one.

The rain-cooled air set the stage for a somewhat cold morning today as skies cleared overnight, allowing temperatures to drop further. It was 30 degrees early this morning in notorious cold spot Saranac Lake, New York and 34 degrees in Island Pond. Most of us saw temperatures in the low 40s at dawn, but don't worry, readings will rocket back up into the 70s by this afternoon.

Most of Sunday's showers were pretty light, so for most places, relief from the dry spell was either lame or non-existent.  Late in the day, St. Albans, got bullseyed by a shower and left us with 0.08 inch. Morrisville got 0.17 inches. 

This looks vaguely like one of those photos of a big
tornado forming in the Great Plains, but it's really just
a narrow,  benign rain shaft southwest of 
St. Albans, Vermont Sunday evening. 

One exception to the light rain rule was detected by radar near Smugglers Notch and along the Sterling Range in Lamoille County, says the National Weather Service in South Burlington. 

There, stalled storms, updrafts aided by the mountains and merging storms created a small area with an estimated three inches of rain. 

Meanwhile a forest fire burned further south around Killington, go figure. 

You could see rain shafts coming from the storms, and all of them were quite narrow. 

Some of the rain shafts had the shape of a big tornado forming in the Great Plains, but of course they were not spinning and were merely benign, brief bursts of locally beneficial rains. Pretty to look at, but that's it. 

There might be a few more showers and storms today, but they will be quite a bit fewer and further between than on Sunday.  More scattered showers and storms are possible toward the end of the week. 

We should get a taste of summer, too, with daytime readings possibly getting into the low 80s Wednesday into the weekend before a cold front brings us back to reality early next week.

SOUTHERN PLAINS TROUBLE

Thunderstorms were and are creating trouble, not beauty, in the southern Plains.  It's storm season, so it's natural to see a few tornadoes and some giant hailstones blast from the sky in that part of the country this time of year. 

The odd part of the storms there is and will be their persistence and the tremendous amount of rain they're producing. Flash flooding was already a problem in parts of Texas Sunday.  Dallas and surrounding areas suffered extensive flooding yesterday, with numerous people needing rescue from inundated cars.

The flooding will only get worse this week. 

Repeated storms are forecast to dump up to 10 inches of rain on much of the eastern half of Texas this week. Those areas have already had a lot of rain, which means flooding is going to be a huge problem all week.