One More Round Of Storm/Flood Threats In Vermont Before "Fair Weather" Takes Hold

As we approach the end of summer, forests begin to 
look tired. And you see splashes of fall color
from trees that aren't particularly healthy. 

 We've entered into what I call the tired phase of a Vermont summer. 

It still gets humid, but most of the time, anyway, we stop seeing the kind of heat waves we get earlier in the summer. Those towering clouds that produce thunderstorms often don't seem as enthusiastic as the big billowing updrafts of July and August. 

Forests and gardens look like they've had enough too.  A few sugar maples that aren't in good shape are already starting to show fall colors. The green on some of the hillsides looks a little faded. Look closely, and some of the leaves look a little crinkled and gray around the edges.

Chances are, your garden looks weary, too. Those perky ever so neat rows of new plants in May and June are now look like an unmade bed after a night of, ahem, activity. You've already scoured through them harvesting, and you probably have partly given up on weeding. It shows. It's near the end of summer after all.

Perennial beds are a mess, too. They're still pretty, but they also feature spent day lilies, gnarly hollyhocks, the fades mess of long-wilted spring flowers and those weeds. 

Of course, Vermont's summer of 2023 is kind of one to forget. We know all about the repeated storm and flood threats, a few of which didn't cause problems, but most did. 

True to form as this tired summer drags on, we have another threat today. Not a big one by this year's standards, but one to watch anyway. Then we get into the next phase of our waning summer, "fair weather." More on that in a bit. 

TODAY

Part of the problem is that the ground remains amazingly wet. For the most part, the last wet day we had, Wednesday, shouldn't have been that big a deal.   Generally a half inch to an inch fell, with some spot amounts at or a little above 1.5 inches. 

That normally would not cause much of a reaction at all. But its so wet that even that paltry amount, spread over an entire day, got brooks and streams running fast. Eventually, even the main stem rivers were running high. Not flooding, but high. I noticed surf was really up on the Winooski River Thursday morning. 

Some light showers Thursday evening ahead of
this morning's drenchers triggered this rainbow
over St. Albans, Vermont. 

 A band of rain, some of it heavy, was plodding eastward through Vermont this morning. 

Since it's been so wet, there could be just enough of a downpour in one or two spots to create some local flash flooding issues. If that happens, it won't be widespread at all, and won't last long. Still, it's best to keep an eye out. 

Even though this morning's storms mostly aren't severe, there's enough spin in the atmosphere that there's still a very low, but not zero chance that some storms could spin up a brief tornado, generally south of Route 2.

However, as I looked at radar images the morning, the strongest storms were down in Connecticut, heading toward Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. I think there's a bit of a better risk of high winds or a quick spin up down that way. 

More scattered showers and storms will fire up this afternoon. We'll also have to watch those in case there's one or two instances of damaging winds or high water. However, the risk of all that is low.  Be weather aware, but this falls well short of panic mode. 

WEEKEND

Saturday will be the first in what will amount to several fall preview days. The storm system causing today's weather will be to our north. We'll have cool northwest breezes, plenty of clouds, especially over the mountains, and scattered light showers.

Those showers should be most persistent in the mountains and close to the Canadian border. They might last into the night. 

Sunday still looks nice, with clearing skies leading to at least a partly sunny comfortably warm afternoon. 

"FAIR WEATHER"

The weather pattern across the United States is amplified. That means that, at least for this time of year, there's lots of big dips and bulges in the path of the jet stream overhead.

A big dip in the jet stream is steering Hurricane Hilary toward California, as I mentioned Thursday. 

Meanwhile, there's a big northward bulge over the middle of the nation That's  heat ridge, and I expect a fair number of record highs over the next week or so over much of the Plains and Midwest.

On the front side of that ridge, the air will be blasting southeastward toward another dip in the jet stream off the New England coast.

 This will create very traditional "fair weather" in Vermont.  That's the kind of hybrid summer/autumn weather you often get in the Green Mountain State in the final days of August in early September. It's the time of year when county and state fairs are making the rounds. 

Afternoons are warm enough, usually in the 70s, so it still feels like summer as you stroll down the fair Midway.  But as the sun sets, you'll need a jacket or sweater to ward off the evening chill during the Grandstand Show. 

As the climate has changed, "fair weather" in Vermont has seemed to shift into mid-September, when most of the fairs are actually over. But this year appears to be a throwback into tradition.  So it's a little nostalgic really.  

And since "fair weather" features no extremes, that will be a nice break from the kind of summer we've had, too.