Northern Vermont Gets Wake Up Call Announcing Start Of Thunderstorm Season

Daylight before dawn. Screen grab of video as lightning
lit everything up in St. Albans, Vermont around
5:30 a.m today. 

 It's about that time of year when we start seeing thunderstorms, and northern Vermont got a wake up call regarding that early this Sunday morning. 

A nice big cluster of thunderstorms move from southern Ontario and Quebec crossed the international border into New York and Vermont early this morning at dawn.  The storms were by no means severe.

But they did produce impressively frequent lightning, downpours and small hail.  

Here in St. Albans, there was lightning and thunder for more than two hours beginning at roughly 5 a.m.  The strongest storm here dumped a pretty good amount of pea sized hail mixed with a downpour at around at around 5:45 a.m. 

The National Weather Service office in South Burlington issued a couple of special weather statements alerting people to the possibility of hail up to the size of dimes. 

Those of you who saw lightning this morning might have noticed the thunder sounded a little weird at times. 

The storms were elevated above a temperature inversion. That means there was a layer of the atmosphere that warmed a little with height, instead of cooling like you'd normally see. The inversion formed sort of a lid over us. That lid bounced around the sound waves from the thunder, giving them this deep rolling, at times almost crackling sound. 

Screen grab from lightningmaps.org shows plenty
of stakes across northern Vermont, southern Quebec
and northeastern New York around 6 a.m. today.

In any event, the batch of storms moved south and gradually weakened as the morning went on.

After a bit of a break from the rain and lightning, latter this morning we have more convective showers and maybe another couple of rumbles of thunder in the plan for this afternoon. The sun's heating will help create some instability with will work with a cold front coming in from the north. 

The result will be hit and miss showers this afternoon. Especially in the northern half of Vermont

Today's thunder was just a taste. Going forward through May and into the summer, you'll see forecasts of thunderstorms pop up more and more frequently. Eventually, we'll have a few bouts with potentially severe thunderstorms. Nothing like that is coming in the immediate future, though. 

In other words, let's get ready to rumble. 

UPCOMING WEEK

The work week will start cooler than forecasts issued a few days ago indicated. Cool high pressure from Canada will keep highs Monday in the upper 50s north of Route 2 to the low and mid 60s down to Route 4, and upper 60s in low elevations far south. 

That's close to normal, or a smidge below normal north for this time of year.

Another weather disturbance in a series brings more cool temperatures and showers Tuesday.  Wednesday and Thursday are looking somewhat drier and warmer before more showers arrive late in the week.  

After that, it's beginning to look like we might get into one those typical but vaguely annoying persistent May weather patterns featuring relatively cool temperatures, frequent clouds and an ever-present risk of light showers.