Surprise Soaker Puts Eastern New England Into Flood Cross Hairs Again; Vermont Wet But Safe

Jackson the weather dog takes measurements of the 
cool, damp and dreary conditions outside his
St. Albans, Vermont house today then........

 So much for the very light sprinkles of rain that had been on the calendar for today.

Instead, a soaking rain is on for today in Vermont, and heavy rain and possible renewed flooding is on the table for New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and eastern Massachusetts. 

The culprit is a sort of nor'easter type storm that has decided to hook up with a system coming in from the west.  The European computer models began hinting at this a couple days ago, and now pretty much all the models are on board. 

The latest forecast takes the developing storm northward from off the Virginia coast and sends it due north to around Cape Cod this evening and Maine tonight.  This path is parallel but to the west of post-Hurricane Lee a couple days ago.

Winds will not be a factor with this new storm, but rain will. Especially in the eastern half of Maine, which suffered from torrential rains and flooding during Lee on Saturday.  

If this were winter, we'd have a perfect set up for a nice snowstorm in Vermont. Instead, we'll have the first rainy, cool, dreary day of the autumn.  The season of humid days with scattered showers and thunderstorms is mostly ended.

Todays clouds and rain mean temperatures will be cooler than they've been since May. We should only make into the low 60s today, with a few mid 60s in the "warmest" spots.

......decides the conditions are not for him and wants to
go indoors and not deal with a wet September day.

 Normally, we start to get those rainy, raw-ish days about now, so there you go. They'll become increasingly likely as we head into October and November. Change of seasons, you know. 

Now that it's clear this storm will move along the coast and not offshore, predicted rainfall across Vermont has increased a lot. Instead of a  quarter inch or less that was in the forecast a couple days ago, most of the Green Mountain State should see more than an inch of rain by tomorrow morning. 

Since there won't really be embedded torrential downpours and the weather pattern has been drier lately, we don't have to worry about flooding, at least in Vermont. 

It looks like there might be a sharp cut off in rainfall amounts somewhere near the Champlain Valley or far eastern New York.  Depending upon the exact track of this storm, there's a chance the Champlain Valley could see a little less rain than the rest of the state. There's even a lesser but real chance that region could get much less than an inch. The Champlain Valley is kinda on the fence. 

Early morning rain in the Champlain Valley has tapered off, but will continue in the eastern half of Vermont through the day.  Forecasters expect the rain to shift back westward into the Champlain Valley later today. 

Tomorrow also isn't looking as nice as earlier thought. You know how after a nor'easter in the winter,  you get lots of lingering clouds and quite a few snow showers in northern Vermont and the mountains?

Well, that's the setup we have tomorrow, but of course it's going to be way, way too warm for snow. So tomorrow will be cool and breezy and showery, especially north of Route 2 and through the central and northern Green Mountains. 

On the bright side, we're still expecting gorgeous weather starting Wednesday and lasting into the weekend as strong high pressure is likely to stall overhead or nearby.