Recent Vermont Turn To Cool Autumn Weather Is Actually Still Rather Warm

Late afternoon sun cuts through some still-green trees
after a mild rain shower Wednesday in St. Albans,
Vermont. It really has been another warm autumn so far.

 The weather has been cooler and unsettled in Vermont since Sunday, ever since last week's record breaking heat wave ended.  Or at least it seems that way.  

It's been mostly cloudy, breezy, with showers around all week, and that state of affairs will continue today and tomorrow. . Highs for most of us have been in the 50s to around 60, and lows have been mostly in the 40s.

It might feel a little nippy to you. But the truth is this week so far has been pretty close to average - actually a bit on the warm side - for this time of year  in Vermont.  And that's the hotter "new average." 

By the National Weather Service standards, "normal" is the average of what we've experienced over the past 30 years. But as I've repeatedly pointed out (I know! You're sick of it!)  The past 30 years have been decidedly warmer than the 20th century average.

That means if we had this exact week two or three generations ago, we would have regarded it as a warm spell. 

The striking thing about this autumn's weather is what hasn't happened yet.

It's getting into mid-October and there hasn't been a widespread frost or freeze in Vermont. Oh sure, a few colder mountain valleys have gotten a touch of frost, but that's what you'd expect in mid-September, not the middle part of October. 

In the Banana Belt Champlain Valley, the coldest it's got through Thursday so far this autumn in Burlington is 45 degrees. We should have had several mornings in the 30s by now. 

The normal low now is 43 degrees. It finally ever so briefly got colder early Friday morning when skies cleared. Burlington got down to 39 degrees. That's still pretty warm for the coldest for this point in the season. .  

High temperatures are bizarre, too. For the first time this autumn the temperature in Burlington failed to get as high as 60 degrees on Wednesday.  (I originally said it didn't get to 60 on Monday, but it turned out we snuck a 60 in briefly that afternoon).

I couldn't find a later first sub-60 high temperature in Burlington's records. Even during the very toasty falls we had in recent years. 

I'm also not aware of any snow falling in Vermont so far this month. Usually, the mountain tops should have been dusted at least once or twice by now. 

With climate change, cold spells are becoming less frequent and less intense. At least in general. We can still have sharp turns toward record cold, but they are now less frequent. For instance, it has been a very warm year, but we did have brief record cold snaps in mid-May and early February. But they were an exception to a warm 2023 so far. 

This year is an example of how climate change has tipped the odds toward warmth. So far this year, Burlington has had nine record highs and only one record low. 

Since we're so far into fall, we can expect a continued general cooling trend (maybe!) as the month continues. But I still see no signs of true freezing cold.  It looks like temperatures over the next few days will remain more or less the same as they've been lately. 

Sunday and maybe Monday will be a bit cooler than recently, as highs stay in the upper 40s to mid 50s.  There are signs of a few days of warmer temperatures once again later in the week.  

So we'll blissfully wait longer for the arrival of winter-ish air.  I see uncertain signs of a semi-wintry blast at the end of this moth  that would make it feel more like November,   but that's iffy. 

Winter will come, but much like recent years, it's not in a hurry to arrive.