ANOTHER Flood Watch In Vermont Friday After Brief, Welcome Break From Rain And Humidity

 I bet a lot of you slept better last night than  you have in weeks. It was a nice interlude between the seemingly constant flood watches and humidity we've been under.  

Deep blue skies over St. Albans, Vermont last evening
signaled a temporary break from the humidity we've
endured for weeks now. However, a new flood
watch looms Friday. 

A flood watch is coming back, however.  That's inevitable, I guess. But after that newest flood watch, there might be some cause for real optimism. More on that in a bit. 

MUCH BETTER SLEEPING

Temperatures fell into the 50s across most of Vermont by early this morning. Perennial cold  spot Saranac Lake, New York actually got down to 44 degrees.     Nights like that are common around here during July, or at least used to be.  This year, though, the humidity has kept us from having a comfortable sleeping night until now,

How long has it been? Well, Burlington got down to at least 60 degrees, which is the "coldest" night since June 23, which was 28 days ago

The dew point, a rough measurement of how comfortable or uncomfortable the humidity is, plunged into the 50s across Vermont Wednesday afternoon, and stayed that way overnight. 

Anything under 60 is considered pretty comfortable. Dew points in the 50s are pretty normal in a Vermont summer, but not this year. But the interlude led to a nice sleeping night Wednesday evening into this Thursday morning. 

I hope  you enjoyed it, because at least of a little while, it's going to be bac, to our regularly scheduled flood watches and humidity. 

TODAY

Another nice day, allowing rivers to recede more, which is obviously a good thing. That dew point might start to creep up later today, but not by much.  It will still feel kind of pleasant out there, and it will be a couple degrees warmer than yesterday.

You'll notice the humidity going back in overnight. 

FRIDAY

Yep, another flood watch. With any luck, we'll end up like we did Tuesday, with just widely scattered incidents.

One reason we're in a flood watch Friday to begin with is another disturbance is slowing down as it approaches and moves through our area Friday and into Saturday. When this happens, lines of showers and storms slow down as well, prolonging what should be a 15 minute downpour into something that lasts an hour or more. 

There's your flash flood, at least in a few locations. 

You know the drill by now. Most of us will get rained on Friday in the reintroduced humid air. A fair number of us will get a downpour or two. And a few unlucky souls will get too much rain too fast, setting up another local flash flood. 

Once again, we don't know in advance who gets the chore of flood cleanup this time.  Whoever it is will be dealing with it in the afternoon and into the evening, when the risk of these downpours peaks. 

Things start to settle down Friday night, but the rain doesn't really end

SATURDAY

Hurray! More showers. It'll be a little cooler, too. The Saturday version will be hit and miss and almost certainly will not lead to more flash flood issues, which leads us to.....

REASONS FOR HOPE!

The weather pattern is shifting a bit, and that could really work in Vermont's favor.  As the National Weather Service in South Burlington explains it, we've been stuck with an upper level low centered up near Hudson or James Bay for weeks now.

That has steered disturbances up its eastern flank.  Those disturbances scoop up tons of moisture as they bead toward the northeast into our neck of the woods. We get dumped on. Repeatedly. The so-called Greenland Block, which I've mentioned earlier, prevents these storms from quickly departing. They linger, and keep dumping more downpours. 

For the first time in weeks, extended forecasts, this one
for around August 1, call for near normal rainfall
over Vermont, not above normal. 

That Hudson Bay low is finally starting to fall apart. It'll probably get replaced by another fairly quickly. But the key is the second upper low seems like it wants to set up shop a little further west in Canada than the first one. 

That'll leave us out of the hard core zone of very wet, very dangerous disturbances. Oh, sure, we'll still have cold fronts and little storm systems coming through under the new regime. But those are much more likely to be the usual summer thunderstorms or relatively brief showery periods. 

I noticed for the first time in a month, extended forecasts more than a week down the road give us near normal precipitation, instead of above normal rainfall.

I can't guarantee everything will be perfect for the rest of the summer. But I'm glad Ma Nature seems to be in the mood to relent a little.