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| A gorgeous day begins this Sunday morning in my yard in St. Albans, Vermont. Enjoy today, as more troublesome, potentially locally dangerous weather looms in the Green Mountain State. |
It's the type of conditions that allow you to do anything enjoyable outdoors, keeps the tourists happy, thus spreading glee through Chamber of Commerce offices throughout the Green Mountain State.
What's not to love? Sunshine, low humidity, a cool start leading to a warm afternoon in the upper 70s. I'll take it.
It's a reprieve, as more weather trouble is on the horizon. It's the Summer of '23 after all. Things can't stay good for more than a day or two.
This next system is kind of a weird one for this time of year.
THE SET UP
Locally strong and severe thunderstorms are par for the course in most of the United States in August. But well organized storm large scale storm systems are quite rare. They're usually creatures of later in the fall, winter and spring.
But, voila! We have a developing, organized storm now getting its act together near Chicago, It will eventually go right overhead in Vermont or close to it by Tuesday. Yeah, it's that kind of year. I have suspicions that the new El Nino global weather and ocean pattern might be influencing this.
Since it's summer, a storm like this can muster plenty of energy in the atmosphere to create a wide outbreak of severe weather and torrential rains.
Sure enough, a huge area of the U.S. is under the gun for violent thunderstorms and some tornadoes. The action today will be a large area of the Midwest, Tennessee Valley and southwestern Appalachians.
Monday, pretty much all of the eastern United States except New England looks like its in for powerful damaging thunderstorms and possibly a rare August tornado outbreak.
So we get lucky up here and miss out on the action right?
Nope!
VERMONT WORRIES
At this point, it doesn't look like we'll have too many severe thunderstorms with high winds, though some scattered ones could come on Tuesday.
Our issue, as usual, is flooding.
This vigorous storm will push a warm front through on Monday. Showers will break out and continue into Monday night as the air turns more and more humid. Gusty south winds in western Vermont and Lake Champlain will probably be a problem for boaters.
I'm not that worried about flooding Monday and Monday night. I don't think there will be quite enough rain to cause too many concerns
But like so many previous storms, the stuff Monday is a pre-soak, to ensure the ground is nice and saturated for anticipated heavy rainers on Tuesday.
With that dynamic storm system overhead or nearby on Tuesday, and that storm having sucked in incredibly humid air into the region, we can expect more downpours then.
As has been the case with almost all flood episodes this summer, many of us will just see a rainy day. Meanwhile, a few spots in Vermont might endure flash flooding, washouts and mud slides. Details of timing and exact location of the worst rains on Tuesday are TBA.
Forecasts will be adjusted, and the expected risk level of flooding will increase or decrease depending on the details leading up to the event.
Unlike the most recent flash flood events in the past couple of weeks, there actually could be enough rain with this to make main stem rivers approach flood stage. I highly, highly doubt Montpelier will drown again, but we'll have to watch for the possibility of lowland flooding along rivers like the Otter Creek Winooski, Lamoille.
I don't know whether or not those rivers will get near flood stage, but they won't get nearly as high as they did during the catastrophic flooding back on July 10-11.
As always, watch this space for forecast updates. Frankly, I'm sick of writing about flash flood threats and you're probably tired of reading about them.
But, unfortunately, a baby's gotta do what a baby's gotta do, so to speak. Better to give you a head's up than ignore it.
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