Hurricane Sam Really Impresses; Rapid Vermont Clearing After Rains

Clearing up super fast behind a slow  moving cold front
passing through Vermont this morning. 

 I'm watching the weather for the next few days from a temporary new perch in Yankton, South Dakota as I attend a family wedding. 

Conditions are clear sailing here, and I'm still watching the more interesting weather back home in Vermont.

A couple of really rapid things are going on in the weather today. One is completely benign, but interesting and affecting Vermont; the other is very dangerous, but no immediate threat to anyone.

The odd thing about Vermont weather today is the rapid changes in conditions are being caused by a very slow moving cold front. 

That front staggered into western Vermont in the wee hours of this morning, bringing a fairly soaking rain as expected.  Plattsburgh, just across the pond in New York got blasted by 1.4 inches of rain. Burlington got a decent three quarters of an inch.  It was  closer to a half inch around Montpelier. 

As of 9 a.m. today, that band of rain had only barely made it to the Northeast Kingdom,  and was pretty much over in the Champlain Valley. 

You know how skies ofter clear gradually in Vermont after a rainstorm ends. Not this time.  As of 10 a.m. there was a very sharp line over the Champlain Valley between thick overcast and practically clear skies.  That sharp clearing will slowly trudge east, in tandem with that cold front and rain. 

It won't be completely clear today.  Skies will be partly cloudy, and there still could be a few scattered, brief light showers popping up in the air behind this front.

I'm sure you're noticing another radical change with this weather front.  Humidity was still high as of late morning in eastern Vermont, as the front hasn't come through there yet, but that stickiness will ebb this afternoon. 

All this is a huge difference from Thursday. Temperatures soared to near record highs Thursday, and the humidity was up there, too. 

In Burlington, the high Thursday was 86 degrees, just one degree shy of the record set way back in 1895.  The low for the day was a toasty 72 degrees, adding to what has been a near record number this year of days that failed to get below 70 degrees. 

This is also unusually late for such a warm night.  It's probably safe to say that Thursday will be the warmest day until next May at least.

It'll stay on the relatively cool side through midweek at least.  It won't be frigid for the season, just coolish. Something we always see this time of year. 

HURRICANE SAM IMPRESSES

Hurricane Sam exploding into a powerhouse storm 
in the open Atlantic Ocean today. 

What was just a wannabe tropical storm yesterday morning is now Hurricane Sam way out in the Atlantic Ocean.

This storm really blossomed fast and is expected to  continue doing so. Top winds were 75 mph this morning and are expected to roar up to 130 mph or more within two days. 

This is a really fast pace for strengthening, and reflects a trend we've seen in hurricanes in recent years. Going from nothingburgers to monsters in just a very few days.   

There  has been a remarkable trend in rapidly intensifying hurricanes in the past three or four decades, researchers have concluded. The actual number of storms each year doesn't show a super clear trend, the busy seasons last year and this  year notwithstanding.

However, more and more of the hurricanes that do form turn into fast growing monsters.  Climate change seems to be behind this phenomenon. 

Rapidly growing hurricanes are a real danger if that process happens just prior to landfall, as they then hit areas not prepared for such a heavy blow. Think Michael in the Florida Panhandle in 2018 and Laura in Louisiana last year if you want examples. 

Luckily, Hurricane Sam is exploding into a power house of a storm nowhere close to land, so it can be safely monitored. At least for the moment. 

Hurricane Sam is no immediate threat to anybody's coastline, but it could at least sideswipe the northern Leeward Islands by the middle of next week.

Most current forecasts have Sam recurving northward and missing the United States late next week or next weekend.  Most forecasts, but not all.   

A meandering upper level low pressure system is expected to linger near the Mid-Atlantic states and steer Sam away from the U.S.  But if that upper low is weaker than expected, or in a different spot than forecast, then Sam could be a U.S. threat. Time will tell.