June Heat Avoiding Vermont This Year, For A Change

Unlike in recent torrid Junes, this more mild June has left
my nice big hosta near my St. Albans, Vermont shed without
any brown leaves from heat scald. 

 When I was a kid growing up in Vermont, I used to love June weather. 

We'd still have spells of cool, springlike weather, mixed with warm, but not super hot summer like days. Oh sure, it would get to 90 degrees in June from time to time, but those hot spells were usually short, and didn't happen every year. 

The real hot weather would usually wait until July and August.

With climate change, the hot weather in recent years moved into June as well. Temperatures in the mid-90s were almost unheard of in Vermont during June. Lately, it's been happening with increasing frequency, sometimes early in the month when it's usually coolest.

For instance, in Burlington, it was 95 degrees on June 11, 2017. In June, 2020, we had a six consecutive days in the 90s, with two of those topping out at 96 degrees. Last year, it was in the mid 90s on June 6 and 7. You get the idea.

The last time we had a June without a 90 degree reading was in 2015.

This year, though, we seem to have - so far at least - reverted back to the June weather of the dinosaur age,  when I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s. True, we had some record heat in mid-May, but since then, it's been rather temperate. 

So far, temperatures have been pretty close to normal for June.  The hottest day so far this month only made it to 83 degrees. And no real heat wave is in sight. 

It's nice to not to see heat scald on the hosta leaves in my gardens for a change. And I'm not constantly dragging hoses around to rescue parched plants this June.  

That's not to mean there's no heat in the U.S. this June. Record high temperatures have been reported over the past few days in the Southwest. Brutal, record triple-digit heat is forecast from Texas to the Carolinas in the coming days. 

Some of that heat will try to make a run at us here in Vermont later this upcoming week, but the worst of it will probably get cut off at the pass by additional cold fronts. At this point, it looks like we could make it well into the 80s with some relatively high humidity toward Thursday and Friday, but it probably won't be anything extreme. 

Then, the dip in the jet stream will re-assert itself.  Long range forecasts are iffy, but for now, the third week of June, 2022 looks like it could be actually a little cooler than average. 

All this isn't to say we won't have a hot summer. Who knows? Maybe the final days of June this year will once again enter the mid-90s sweepstakes. It's too soon to tell. 

Even if this June turns out to be on the cool side, we could still have a torrid July and August. Long range forecasts issued during the spring called for a hot summer in our neck of the woods. Could still happen.

But for now, I'll enjoy our "old fashioned" June cool.