Warm, Dry Vermont September. Nights Particularly Warm

Fall colors and roiling clouds yesterday near Fairfield, Vermont
closed out a warm, dry month of September in Vermont.
 

September in Vermont continued the general climate trend of 2021 by being warm and dry, with nights especially warm.  

In Burlington, the average temperature for the month was 64.6 degrees. Under the warmer "new normal" charts that came out this year, that's just 1.9 degrees above this "new normal."

That makes it sound like September was just a slightly warm month, but au contraire! 

It was the fifth hottest September on record. September, 2015 holds the record for hottest September.  Also, five of the top six hottest Septembers have been since 2015, so you can see a trend there. 

Had we still been under the "old normal" that had been in place until this year, September, 2021 would have been a full 5.2 degrees warmer than average.

Nights were particularly warm in Burlington this September.   We had one of the highest "low" temperatures for the month, as the coolest it got on any night was 45 degrees.  Only five nights this September managed to get below 50 degrees.

 Historically, we've had numerous Julys with nights that cold, but not so much in recent years. Most Septembers in Burlington get into the 30s, and many of them have seen frost. Not this year. 

Elsewhere in Vermont, the month was warm as well.  Montpelier clocked in with a September mean temperature that was 3.7 degrees above normal.  St. Johnsbury was two degrees milder than average.

Unfortunately for northern Vermont, which needs the rain, September was yet another dry month.  Burlington had 3.06 inches of rain, which is more than half an inch below normal. Montpelier was three quarters of an inch on the dry side, and St. Johnsbury came up more than an inch short in the rain department. 

According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, issued yesterday, drought conditions continue to linger along the Canadian border and it's abnormally dry north of Route 2.

With it being so warm in September, there was obviously no snow, but there was ice to report.  Small hail fell in storms on September 6 and 8, and chilly showers produced more pea sized hail in St. Albans yesterday. 

As always, it's hard to predict weather for an entire upcoming month.  October will start with near to slightly above normal temperatures.  Some needed rain is in the forecast for the first few days of the month, but there won't be anything earth-shattering in that department. 

For what it's worth, long range forecasts into the middle of October call for continued warmer than normal temperatures and below normal rainfall in our area.