Wild Day Northern Vermont/New York; South Says Huh? What's Next

Water absolutely gushes from a culvert beneath my
St. Albans, Vermont driveway after a strange day of
thunderstorms, downpours and chilly temperatures. 

 It's been a pretty eventful weather day in Vermont north of Route 2, but those of you in southern Vermont are probably wondering what all the fuss is about. 

In the north, we've had occasional lightning and thunder all day, bursts of heavy rain and in a few locations, freezing rain.

Of course the lightning and thunder is odd, as we usually associate that with warm weather. But temperatures have been in the mid-30s to low 40s for most of northern Vermont all day. 

Also, the thunder has been persistent. I started hearing it a little after 10 a.m. today and we had occasional thunder and lighting at least through 5 p.m. 

That's very weird, too. You usually don't see six or seven hours of nearly continuous thunderstorms. Most of the time, thundery weather lasts no more than a couple hours in any given location. Or, you see two or three thunderstorms in a day, but periods of quiet weather intervene between the storms. 

The heaviest downpours have so far not really hit reporting stations, and my rain gauge isn't out yet. But I'd have to guess I'm closing in on an inch, given the persistence of the afternoon downpours. 

In far northern New York, it's been even weirder. Massena, New York and relatively nearby Ottawa, Canada had freezing rain and thunderstorms pretty much all day. There is some tree damage and local power outages due to the weight of the ice in these areas.

Meanwhile, Buffalo, New York was in the mid-70s early this afternoon. Go figure. 

Going into tonight, it looks like bursts of heavy rain and probably scattered thunderstorms will continue into the evening in northern Vermont. But a trend is about to begin that would taper things off to lighter showers later on.   

I don't see any flash flood watches or similar alerts. But I do see some potential for at least some isolated areas of minor flooding this evening as the occasional downpours continue. 

Since rain in central and southern Vermont looks like it will be lighter, I don't see any real risk of flooding. 

We still have a winter weather advisory in eastern Vermont, basically north of White River. Pockets of freezing rain continue in that area, even if many spots have crept above freezing. This state of affairs will continue for a few hours yet. 

Things will even out and stabilize tomorrow. The weird storm's cold front will come through mostly in the morning, with some relatively light showers. Chilly air behind the cold front won't rush in, but rather gradually bleed in. So it's get into the 50s to around 60 Thursday before temperatures slowly start subsiding in the mid to late afternoon.

We'll have  a couple chilly but not extreme days Friday and Saturday.  The signals from long range forecasts issued today are even stronger than they were for a long stretch of warm and mostly dry weather. That will sort of start Sunday, then really get going in earnest Monday and beyond. 

I won't be the least bit surprised if temperatures in many parts of Vermont get into the 70s later next week.