Vermont Weather Week: Gorgeous! But Flash Drought Worries Increase

My gardens in St. Albans, Vermont are thirsty and getting
thirstier in this remarkably intense dry stretch,
but at least my cactus looks happy. 

Exactly as forecast, this Memorial Day weekend in Vermont  has brought us gorgeous weather. 

I don't think I've seen a single cloud since Thursday.  (A narrow band of broken clouds came through last night, but I slept through that).  

Sunday brought us the warmest temperatures of the year so far. Burlington got to 89 degrees, just three degrees off the record high set in 1978. A few spot 90 degree readings showed up in the lower Connecticut River Valley. 

When the air is super dry, it can warm up fast in the strong late May sun, so that's why temperatures over-performed Sunday.  The relative humidity was in the low teens in many areas, which is as low as it can possibly get in this neck of the woods, really.  . 

The hot sun and dry air are really drying things out fast.  I'm spending lots of time irrigating my gardens, and it's still a bit of a dust bowl. At least the cactus I have is happy. 

THE WEATHER SET-UP

For sun lovers, if you liked Sunday, you'll pretty much love the rest of the week. For those of you worried about it getting too dry, this won't be your week. 

We've been stuck in a pattern since mid-May at least of a series of dry high pressure systems propelled southward from northeastern Canada. We've had a series of so-called "back door" cold  fronts come through. 

Back door cold fronts are called that because they come in from the north and northeast, rather than from the west or northwest like they usually do.

These back door cold fronts are moisture-starved, so we get little or no rain with them. One of the high pressure systems gave us that destructive freeze mid-month. Another cold one brought more frost last Thursday. 

The back door cold fronts keep coming, but now, the bulk of the cold air is passing by well to our east and northeast, so it's not getting chilly. But staying dry. 

 THE DETAILS

That narrow band of broken clouds I mentioned that came through overnight was yet another "back door" cold front. 

Visible satellite photo from Sunday afternoon shows
clear skies throughout New England except northern
Maine. That narrow band of clouds from the tip
of Maine into southern Quebec is the dry back door
cold front that eventually came through last night. 

It will much colder today than Sunday, but that's not saying much.  Instead of being in the 85 to 90 degree range, most of us will hold in the 70s. A few hot spots might break 80.

The air will remain bone dry.  Dry air allows temperatures to rise rapidly during the day, but also allows those reading to crash at night. Tomorrow morning. the coldest hollows will probably be down to about 35 degrees, a lot of us will be in the 40s and the banana belt towns will hold near 50.

Warm and dry weather returns Tuesday afternoon with highs in the low 80s. 

Wednesday and Thursday, and possibly Friday is when the heat will really turn on.  Places like Burlington, which have come this close to reaching 90 without getting there this spring, have a very good shot of finally getting that hot. 

Unlike the typical 90 degree weather in Vermont, which tends to be humid, the air will remain quite dry during this hot spell. 

Another back door cold front will come through later Friday, but again it will be starving for moisture. It might generate a few hit and miss showers and thunderstorms, but no real drenching. 

At this point, next weekend is looking generally sunny, very dry, and a bit cooler, but by no means chilly

DRY WORRIES

The U.S. Drought Monitor doesn't yet have any part of Vermont in a too-dry or drought category, mostly because ground water is still in pretty good shape after a fairly wet start to the year. 

But the top several inches of soil has dried out big time, so we might be headed toward a drought, given the lack of rain we've had and the dry forecast. Burlington, for instance, has had only 0.64 inches of rain since May 4. We should have had roughly three inches of rain during the time.   With no rain this week, the dust will keep collecting. 

If this keeps up, the hay crop for feed in Vermont might end up being not great. So far, so good, but it had better rain after this week. (Long range forecasts are iffy on that prospect).

Another issue is forest fire danger. Trees have leafed out, so the risk isn't as bad as it was in April, when all the dead stuff from last year was drying out. Still, the fire danger in Vermont is moderate to high today, and that state of affairs should continue all week.

This fire danger is a regional problem in New England and southeastern Quebec. On Sunday, large wildfires broke out in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. 

These are big-time, western-style fires. Thousands of homes were evacuated Sunday northwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia and some of those homes were destroyed by the flames. As on this morning, that fire is still raging.

We don't expect anything like that here in Vermont, but still, please be extra careful with your camp fires, cigarettes and burn piles.