Long Stretch Of Vermont Humidity, Rain Risk And Occasional Smoke Loom

Ever notice in those zillions of pharmaceutical ads on TV, whatever the illness the pill is suppose to cure is alway, always described as "moderate to severe"?   

Uncertain skies over St. Albans, Vermont this morning
but at least there's patches of blue sky.  The blue
sky will fade behind wildfire smoke again by 
tomorrow, and at least moderate humidity will remain.

I guess that's how we can describe the humidity levels in Vermont for the past few days and for the foreseeable future. Some days will be quite humid. Other days, we'll get a break and it'll be only moderately humid.

Long gone are those dry, low humidity days of early to mid June!

The humidity is a little better this morning, but I think it will creep up this afternoon as a weak weather front from the west pools moisture.

That moisture will feed yet another day of showers and storms, some of them with locally heavy rain.  Like it's been in the past few days, it'll be hit and miss. Some spots will get torrential downpours, others will escape with sprinkles. 

Since it's been raining so much in some spots, once again we have the risk of some local flooding, especially on places where it has rained hard lately.  

A local flash flood could hit anywhere, but the best chances of any problems seem like they would be in a central and perhaps southern Vermont, especially near the Green Mountains south of Camels Hump. 

That weak front will bring somewhat lower humidity tomorrow and Friday. This won't be any kind of big rush of cool, clean, dry air from Canada. 

Two problems with that fantasy: For one, the air mass won't change that much. It will still be kinda sticky.  More importantly, the air coming from Canada is not clean these days. 

The wildfire smoke northern Vermont choked on Sunday moved westward. A huge area of the Great Lakes and Midwest had unhealthy, even dangerous air from the smoke the past couple of days. Chicago had the worst air quality of any major city in the world Tuesday because of the Canadian smoke. That smoke from Canada has spread as far as Portugal and Spain. 

With a bit of a shift in the wind to the west and northwest tomorrow, the smoke will be back in Vermont. Lots of fires are still burning in central and northern Quebec, causing more and more smoke to pump into the atmosphere. 

I don't know whether the smoke will be as bad as it was in northern Vermont Sunday.  But the air quality will probably be on the yucky side starting tonight and lasting into at least Friday.  Unlike on Sunday, the smoke will cover all of Vermont and New England, not just areas near the Canadian border.

On top of all that, another surge of humid, showery weather, with those locally heavy downpours looks like they'll make a return for the upcoming weekend. 

Looking ahead to next week, I don't see any big changes:  No huge heat waves, but lingering humidity, and risks of showers and/or Canadian smoke. 

I would definitely rate this as suboptimal summer weather.   If this keeps up too long, I'll get a moderate to severe migraine.