Not-So-Scary Vermont Halloween Forecast, But Past Years Served Up Some Frights

I guess this will do for a Halloween illustration. Gloomy,
misty, stormy and dark with a tilting tree ready to
pounce on passersby, or block the escape route
from the Haunted Mansion. Spoiler: Halloween weather
in Vermont this evening will be anything but scary 

 It's Halloween, and all the kiddies want to get as much loot as possible as they spook our neighborhoods trick or treating.   

If the weather is good, it makes this "task" easier.

I'm happy to report that this Halloween will feature Vermont weather that is decidedly better than the weather on most Halloweens.

Temperatures this evening will be somewhere in the 50s, which is definitely on the warm side for this time of year. It might rain a tiny bit, but probably after 11 p.m., when most kids are already in a candy coma. 

The days around Halloween have often stirred up some historically scary weather in much of the nation in recent decades, but aside from one notable exception in 2019, Vermont Halloweens have been more treat that trick. 

More on that in a moment. 

Here in the Green Mountain State, trick or treaters usually face evening weather with temperatures in the 40s.  It's an unsettled time of year, with spooky Ma Nature often stirring the pot with rain and sometimes even snow.

Overnight lows don't usually conjure up the spirit of how chilly or warm it is during peak trick or treating hours. So I go with daytime highs, as the temperature will probably be just a bit lower than the high temperature that day.

The most wintry Halloween was in 1913, when the high temperature that day was 32 degrees. A close second is 1975, when readings stayed in the low to mid 30s all day, with persistent snow flurries. 

The snowiest Halloween was in 1993. Burlington had 1.3 inches of snow that day. It was part of a wild early seasons snow that started Halloween evening and continued into November 1 and deposited nine inches of snow on Burlington.

I remember that snowy Halloween evening as I was on the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington having a snowball fight with a nun, a prostitute, Frankenstein, Michael Jackson and Kurt Cobain. 

Yeah, one of my more bizarro experiences. 

SCARY HALLOWEEN, 2019

The warmest Halloween was in 2019, when the high temperature was 71 degrees. Sounds great, right? Nope! It was probably the most frightening Halloween on record in Vermont. At least in terms of weather. 

A storm that 2019 Halloween also spread torrential rains into Vermont, causing a disastrous flood, especially along and north of Route 2.

Burlington had a whopping 3.3 inches of rain, mostly during the evening of October 31. Rainfall totals were as high as 5.26 inches in East Berkshire. 

Urban flooding started the night, and that quickly translated to stream and river flooding. Eight area rivers reached moderate to major flood stage, with the Missisquoi at North Troy hitting a record high crest. 

Extensive flooding was seen along the Missisquoi, Lamoille, Winooski rivers in Vermont and Ausable River in New York. 

More than 300 Vermont homes suffered flood damage and public infrastructure losses due to the flooding amounted to $5 million. 

The back side of the storm featured damaging winds that caused widespread damage across much of Vermont. More than 120,000 homes and businesses lost power, including my own. 

I've owned my house since 2007 and this was the only time I've had to file an insurance claim due to storm damage. Definitely a scary Halloween in 2019.

Other epic storms have slapped the Northeast around Halloween in recent decades.  Ma Nature knows how to turn up the fright. 

PERFECT STORM, HALLOWEEN 1991

Late October, 1991 brought the famous "Perfect Storm" to the Northeast. The storm inspired the book and movie about the sinking of the Andrea Gail, in which six fishermen lost their lives.

The Perfect Storm stayed offshore, but was so strong that it caused coastal destruction from the Canadian Maritimes to Florida. A total of 13 people died, and hundreds of homes and other buildings along the coast were damaged or destroyed.

The man who would later become my husband ignored evacuation warnings and stayed during the storm at a beach front home in Matunuck, Rhode Island.  Stacked concrete blocks, measuring four feet by four feet, protected the home, or so he thought.

Jeff somehow slept through the storm. He woke up to find the Perfect Storm had swept away or sank these heavy concrete blocks. They'd disappeared.  That's the power of that storm.  

Meanwhile,  in that 1991 Halloween season, well to the west, a historic blizzard would bury Minnesota and other areas in record amounts of snow. Here in Vermont, we escaped both storms. It was just seasonably breezy and chilly here. 

SUPERSTORM SANDY, 2012

A little before Halloween, 2012, Superstorm Sandy, off the Mid-Atlantic Coast, made its now infamous left hook and slammed into the Jersey shore on October 29, causing one of the worst disasters on record in that region. 

The storm caused 285 deaths, with 125 of those in the United States. Storm surges in New Jersey and New York were up to 14 feet above normal low tide. Thousands of homes were destroyed or severely damaged

The storm flooded 17 percent of New York City's land mass and inundated many subway tunnels. It took eight years to fully repair that damage.

The huge size of Sandy allowed it to cause wind damage as far west as Michigan and Wisconsin and as far north as Ontario and Quebec. 

Here in Vermont, damage was limited to fallen trees and power lines. Up to 35,000 Vermont homes and businesses lost power. Route 9 west of Brattleboro was closed for a time due to fallen trees.  A spook but a kill for the Green Mountain State.

Given the history of frightening storms around Halloween, we should all enjoy the treat of benign weather this year.