Another Top 10 Warmest September Just Ended In Vermont

The last day of September in Vermont was like many days
during the month: Dry, warm with wildfire haze in the air, as
you can see from this view Saturday from St.
Albans hill 

 Following a trend over nearly the past decade, Vermont - at least as measured up in Burlington - just had one of its warmest Septembers on record. 

September, 2023 is tied with 1961 as fourth warmest, with a mean temperature of 65.4 degrees.

Due to ties, there's actually seven Septembers in the top five list of warmest in Burlington, where records go back to  the 1880s.  Six of those seven have all happened in the past eight years. 

The number 1 spot goes to 2015. Number 2 is 2018.  There's a tie for third place between 2016 and 2017.  This year is tied with 1961 for fourth place, And the fifth place finisher on the warmest September list is 2021. 

 September was consistently warm through the entire month, and across the entire state of Vermont. A heat wave between September 4 and 8 boosted temperatures into the 90s and broke some record highs on those dates. 

Nights were warm, too.  Pretty much nobody in Vermont had any frost in September, which is unusual. Montpelier, which often sees rather cool nights, never got below 40 degrees in September In the Banana Belt Champlain Valley, the coolest it ever got in Burlington was 45 degrees. It's been know to reach the upper 20s in some years even there. 

A welcome change visited Vermont in September: The relentless rains diminished. It was still on the wet side in the first half of the month, but the faucet largely shut off during the second half of the month. In fact most places north of Route 2 saw no rain after September 19.

The result was a dry-ish month. Burlington had just under three inches of rain, which was about 0.76 inches below normal. Montpelier was shy of normal by about a third of an inch, and Rutland was more than an inch on the dry side.

One thing that unfortunately did linger was the ever-present wildfire smoke from those fires raging in Canada. We never really had a super unhealthful air quality day, but the air in September often fell short of pristine. 

By my count, Vermont had at least 16 days with at least some haze or smoke aloft. Each of the past nine days have either had smoke aloft, haze on the ground or both. See video at the bottom of this post.

This state of affairs will continue at least a few more days. October will start dry and very warm, with some record highs anticipated midweek.  Smoke and haze will unfortunately linger, too. 

It looks like some rain, then cooler, fresher air coming in toward the end of the week and next weekend. I even see preliminary signs that we might have a spell of harshly colder weather at mid-month, which would actually bring us frosts and, yes, snow flurries. Stay tuned, we'll see if that happens!  

Video: The last day of September featured warm temperatures, changing fall foliage and lots of haze from Canadian wildfire smoke. Some views in northwestern Vermont. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.