Weird Weather Week Continue: Next Up: Narrow Bands Of Heavy Rain

Forecasts are consistently calling for a strange
north to south band of heavy rain somewhere near
Vermont this week. Most models, like the European
 depicted here, keep that heavy rain just to the 
west of Vermont. A tricky forecast that could
change, though. 

 A week or so of very strange June weather is continuing in and near Vermont this week with a very odd rain set up today and tomorrow. And possibly Thursday. 

It started Saturday with New England's June-uary, with snow and ice atop Mount Washington and frigid for June valley temperatures. Then came Sunday's sunny day wind storm, as we had a gloriously sunny day with winds strong enough to cause power failures. Next up: A strange, narrow, hard to predict band of torrential rains.  

This week might not be remembered for generations like big weather disasters. But for this weather geek, it's a bizarre stretch for sure. 

The set up is a north to south oriented stalling warm front in New York State.  Batches of rain are riding this front due south from Canada. Usually precipitation coming in from the north isn't very heavy, since the source region isn't exactly super tropical and wet. After all, why do you think the ginger ale brand is Canada Dry?

However, the air to the west of the warm front is part of that extremely hot, extremely humid air mass that has been torturing sections of the Midwest lately. The disturbance blasting southward along the front will be grabbing some of that wet, hot air and squeezing out lots of rain. 

The band of rain will be narrow. If there's any flood risk, it would be along a narrow 25 to at most 50 mile wide zone.  Best guess right now is the highest risk of heavy rain goes from the northern St. Lawrence Valley, down through parts of the Adirondacks, the Hudson Valley of New York and southwestern New England. 

That would leave Vermont mostly free of any potential flood threat.  Western Vermont will probably get some showers.    It's questionable whether eastern Vermont sees any rain at all from this. 

This is tricky, though, as it wouldn't take much to shift the rain band a little west, or a little to the east. 

A slight shift would radically change the forecast in any given spot.  As an illustration of how big the expected precipitation gradient will be here's this. The National Weather Service in South Burlington has St. Albans receiving just 0.08 inches of rain by Wednesday morning, while Plattsburgh, New York, just 20 miles away as the crow flies, gets nearly half an inch.  The central Adirondacks, just a short distance west of Plattsburgh, are in line for the potentially heaviest rain. 

I could clearly view this whole thing setting up from my perch in St. Albans early this morning.  The sun shone brightly from the east for a bit, but there were clouds directly overhead and I can see a good batch of rain falling to my west over the Adirondacks. 

Again note these forecasts are subject to change.

Things taper off for a time Wednesday. Then on Thursday, meteorologists think this stalled weather front in New York will interact with a storm off the New England coast to perhaps set up another very narrow band of heavy rain somewhere over eastern New York or perhaps western Vermont. Maybe. 

Weather forecasting is generally a little easier in the summer than in the winter. Not this week!