Wildfire Smoke And Record Heat Loom In Vermont This Week

One of the large wildfires burning in Nova Scotia on Monday.

 Ahh, yesterday, Memorial Day, was much better than Sunday in Vermont weather, at least in my opinion. 

Both days featured wall to wall sunshine, but as expected, Monday was quite a bit cooler.  Highs made into the 70s instead of the upper 80s, and a breeze kept the dry air refreshing. That near constant wildfire smoke up in the atmosphere from Canadian wildfires was at a minimum, too.

So much for that. It's back to possible smoke and definite heat for the upcoming week. 

Today won't be so bad, as temperatures climb into the low 80s amid more sunshine and dry air.

The weather pattern is frankly wonky, so things won't be acting the way they should during the middle of the week. We normally expect weather systems to move generally west to east in our neck of the woods. 

But this being a weird spring, we can't have that!  So, we face the risk of smoke coming in from the east, and record heat moving north to south from, yes, chilly Canada of all places. 

SMOKE

First, the smoke risk. It's not as definitely in the forecast as the heat, but it's still pretty likely.  As you might have heard on the news, there's some terrible wildfires in New Brunswick and especially Nova Scotia, Canada. 

Two large wildfires are burning in Nova Scotia. One, west of Halifax, has forced the evacuation of 16,000 people and damaged or destroyed at least 200 homes and other structures so far. 

Another, larger fire was burning in the a less heavily populated area near the southern tip of Nova Scotia. 

Large smoke plume seen on satellite photos
on Monday coming off of Nova Scotia. The smoke
eventually turned east toward New England.

At last report both fires were still out of control. A third large fire also reportedly broke out in Nova Scotia Monday. 

Amid a normal weather pattern, all that smoke from Nova Scotia would head eastward out into the open Atlantic.

Instead, there's warm high pressure over southeastern Canada. That's creating east winds on the southern edge of that high pressure to propel the smoke eventually toward New England. 

It looks like it will hit southern New England today, then slowly curl northward into northern New England, including Vermont later tonight and tomorrow. 

For most of this month, the smoke we've seen from even bigger fires up in Alberta, Canada have been high aloft. It created hazy skies, but no real air pollution problems from us down here on the ground. 

The Nova Scotia smoke will be closer to the ground, so you might actually smell smoke and we could see some air quality problems. The smoke looks like it will be more dense in southern New England and dissipate somewhat once it gets here. 

The smoke will tend to clear out at least somewhat by afternoon, which leads us to the heat wave.

RECORD HOT?

Temperatures should soar to the upper 80s Wednesday afternoon. Both the ground and the air are very dry, so that tends to make hot spells over-perform. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a few more 90 degree readings than currently forecast. The record high tomorrow in Burlington is 91 degrees, so we'll come close. 

Thursday looks to be the hottest day. The record high on Thursday in Burlington is 90 degrees, set in 2011 and tied in 2013.  The National Weather Service office in South Burlington gives us about a 90 percent chance of breaking that record.  

Friday looks hot, too, with an expected high near 90 degrees.

As mentioned, this is a weird hot spell. The hottest air has built up inside a persistent stubborn, strong heat ridge in southern Canada. The core of the hottest air will ride the northern edge of this ridge, then come down on us from Ontario and Quebec. This, of course, is normally where our cold spells come from.

Also, unlike a "normal" heat wave, the air will be quite dry, which will help exacerbate the building drought conditions we're experiencing. 

Go figure. A cold front later Friday should touch off some showers and thunderstorms. But they will be kind of scattered, and not last long in any given area. So we won't get much needed rain out of this. 

By the way, it's not just Nova Scotia that is at risk for more forest fires. There's a high fire danger in Vermont all week due to the dry heat we're experiencing.  So be careful with any flames, please!