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| A man wades through flood waters in Richmond, Vermont on July 11. I think we all want to forget the horrendous' rather of July, 2023. |
The month was scarily wet, humid, warm, smoky and we want to move on from it.
RAIN SWAMPS US
Maybe the most remarkable July weather stat comes from flood damaged Montpelier, which logged a whopping 12.06 inches of rain for the month.
I believe that's a record for the wettest month there. Though the weather station at the Knapp Airport did not exist at the time of the Great Vermont Flood of 1927.
It wasn't just Montpelier. Other towns, such as Plainfield and Woodstock, had more than a foot of rain during July. Normally, the month would have yielded just four inches of rain, give or take.
One weird exception to the record or near-record wet month was Burlington. The city was in a small, odd rainfall hole. The heaviest rain kept going around the city. Though I don't have official stats, I do know just a few miles away, in southern and northern Chittenden County, more rain fell during the month than in Burlington.
The official Burlington weather station at the airport measured 5.89 inches of rain. True, that's substantially above the normal of 4.06 inches. But July's rainfall wan't even in the top 10 wettest list for July.
Other major stations in and near Vermont had strikingly heavy rain, as the storms weren't limited to areas near Montpelier. Bennington, St. Johnsbury and Lebanon, New Hampshire, just across the river from White River Junction each had more than eight inches of rain in July, roughly double the average.
JULY HEAT
The month was also hot, in addition to being sopping wet.
July in Burlington was the seventh warmest on record, with a mean temperature of 74.4 degrees. There were no real temperature extremes. The hottest temperature for the month reached 93 degrees, and five days made it to 90, but that's not super out of the ordinary.
As we well know, though, the humidity through most of the month kept nighttime temperatures stuffy, and that contributed to Burlington hitting the top 10 warmest July list.
I guess we've had to get used to hot or stuffy Julys. In Burlington, four of the top seven warmest Julys have occurred since 2018.
It wasn't just the Green Mountain State that was very warm, with weird weather. I noticed the Washington Post this morning included Vermont in a long list of places that in the world that had disconcerting weather in July, partly due to climate change, apparently.
Antarctic sea ice is at record lows, while the North Atlantic Ocean is at record warmth. Persistent, record breaking heat waves hit parts of North America, Europe and Asia. July appears to be a shoo-in to be the globes hottest month on record.
WEIRDNESS
The skies over Vermont were not only obscured by storm clouds, but also by wildfire smoke from Canada. I counted at least 14 days in July with at least some smoky haze dimming the view.
Things did improve somewhat late in the final couple of days of July as Quebec fires temporarily diminished, but fires in central and western Canada are still lurking with bursts of smoke ready to move back over what should be our blue summer skies.
We even managed to have one tornado in Vermont in July. A twister swept through parts of Benson and Sudbury on July 13. It was a narrow, long tracked relatively weak tornado, being 20 yards wide, a path length of a little over 12 miles and top winds of 85 mph.
LOOKING AHEAD
Back here in Vermont, we're in a reprieve as August is getting off to a refreshing start. The coolest weather since mid-June has settled in. Many places in Vermont were in the 40s this morning and probably will be again tomorrow morning.
We are watching for the risk of some locally heavy rain Friday, but so far, that situation isn't looking quite as serious as some of the days we faced in July. The weather outlook for Vermont in August is kind of uncertain. It's starting cool, but we don't know whether it will stay that way.
In any event, August can't be as bad as July was, right? Right? Well, I hope so anyway.
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