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| Seems like this never used to happen: Some sun and heat scorch damage to hosta leaves in my northern Vermont gardens, despite liberal watering. This is the fourth summer in a row this has happened and second in a row it's happened so early in the season. |
At least yet.
Quite a few clouds are cluttering the sky, keeping yesterday's scorching sunshine at bay. But the humidity has come up dramatically.
The dew point is around 70 today, which is the highest it's been so far this summer and a level that makes everybody feel miserable.
I'll get into what's in store for us in a bit, but first we really have to marvel at yesterday's heat. Burlington, Vermont got up to 96 degrees, a record for the date and the hottest for so early in the season.
Had this hot spell hit in early July instead of early June, we would have had a rare day of 100 degree weather. (Temperatures of 100 degrees have happened only four times in Burlington since the late 1880s).
Across the pond, Plattsburgh got up to 95 degrees, enough to beat the old record for the date of 94 degrees. Montpelier, Vermont mustered a relatively "frigid" high of 89 degrees Monday, enough to tie the record high for the date there.
The low this morning in Burlington was a stuffy 75 degrees.
Those hard core hot, humid nights make the heat all the more dangerous because it doesn't give us the opportunity to recover from a hot day. Lots of Vermont homes still don't have air conditioning.
It used to be we never needed air conditioning, since extreme hot spells were so far and few between. We finally broke down and bought an air conditioner ahead of an extreme hot spell in 2018 for our bedroom in St. Albans, Vermont.
Sure glad we did! We've had extreme heat now every summer since. I think it will be the cool summers that will be few and far between going forward.
The early season heat is confusing to us, animals and nature. Our dogs know something as wrong, looking at us with pleading eyes to stop the heat, and happily joining us in our cool basement. Still, the basement move is not the normal routine, so the dogs are unsettled.
Out in the garden, for the fourth year in a row, my hosta leaves are sun scorched and damaged, and for the second year in a row, this happened at the start of the season, well before the heat normally hits. I thought I had a cool climate garden, being in northern Vermont. Maybe I should have had a cactus garden instead.
On the bright side, we do have some substantial relief coming to us eventually.
The clouds will more or less hang on this afternoon across Vermont, keeping most of us from reaching 90 degrees again. A few places could reach that magical figure if they have a long enough break of sun. That to me is most likely in the northern Champlain Valley near the Canadian border and in the Connecticut River Valley south of White River Junction.
A shower or thunderstorm could pop up at any time this afternoon, mostly along and south of Route 2. That's be good for everybody who's parched and needs rain. But many of us, especially in the north, won't get any real good rains, so that's bad.
The scattered here and there showers and storms will be slow moving today, and the humid air means we could get some torrential downpours in a few scattered spots today. Despite the dry conditions, this could lead to minor washouts on gravel driveways and roads and some ponding of water in just a few spots. So watch out for that
Other than the downpours and the lightning with any storms, there won't be any severe weather.
That cold front is still scheduled to come through tomorrow, with not much fanfare. It'll still be warmish north, hot south before the cool air can work i.
You'll notice a change in the air developing as the day wears on, with it getting less and less humid. Starting Wednesday night and Thursday, we're still getting an extended stretch of comfortable weather, lasting well into next week.
No more 90s for awhile around here.
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