Videos Of The Recent Record Vermont Heat, And the Oddly Vigorous Storms They Produced

People enjoy record November warmth on Burlington, Vermont's
waterfront on November 5, 2022.

 As I noted in a previous post, the record November heat wave we just had, and the storms that ended it, were some of the most bizarre weather I've ever seen in Vermont. So I had to do videos.  

The videos aren't all that professional, I confess, but I like to have and share a visual record of what kind of unique weather situations we've been through. Plus some not so unique ones. 

This time, we did have a one of a kind weekend in Vermont, that's for sure. 

The first video is just the pretty clouds the warm weather brought, and people in Burlington, Vermont enjoying their last chance at shorts and t-shirt weather until next spring.

To view the nice weather video, click on this link, or if it's visible on your device, click on the image below to watch on YouTube:

I think the second video is more interesting. It shows the developing storms we had over northwestern Vermont this past Sunday. They were fueled by the record warm temperatures. And, they were fueled, importantly, by moisture and high dew points that have to be some sort of record for November. 

The storms weren't necessarily severe, but they were strong. Most of the visuals in this video were taken in Richmond and South Burlington. However, further north, in Franklin County where I live, several waves of downpours swept through.  A few places, like my place in St. Albans, and in Milton, received a little over two inches of rain. 

The most interesting part of this video is about 1:42 minutes in, where what appears to be a funnel cloud briefly forms over Lake Champlain. I'm not 100 percent sure it was a funnel, but it might have been.

Ethan Moriarty, (@EMoriartyWX on Twitter) who among many other things, is a storm chaser based in western Massachusetts helped me out with this. He suspects what I saw might be a cold air funnel 

Cold air funnels form under showers or relatively weak thunderstorms where the air aloft is especially cold.  These funnels don't usually touch down and tend not to be dangerous. On rare occasions, they do hit the ground and cause some damage.  

 

 I don't think the air at higher levels of the atmosphere over western Vermont was especially cold for November when the possible funnel formed. But the upper air was certainly colder than it would be in the middle of summer. Meanwhile, surface temperatures were summer-like, so the contrast might have been enough to generate a cold air funnel.  

Yes, I know I've been obsessed with this cloud formation during
storms amid record heat over Lake Champlain, Vermont.
That might be a "cold air funnel"

Additionally,,  strong winds blowing from the south up the Champlain Valley might have briefly interacted with winds from another direction beneath or near the heavy shower, causing just enough spin to produce a funnel.. 

Again, from my vantage point, it wasn't clear this thing was spinning or not. It was distant, and rain was partially obscuring the cloud formation. 

In any event, the rest of the weird clouds you see in the storms are either scud which is just scraps of fog being pulled into the storms, or shelf clouds, which mark the front of cool air outflow from showers and storms. 

It looks like some more semi-exciting weather is coming to Vermont in the form of Tropical Storm Nicole remnants Friday night, but that probably won't be as photogenic as Sunday's storms.

Click on this link for the video, if your device doesn't show the image of the video below. Otherwise, click on the image if it's there for you: