A Few Storm Surprises Again In Vermont Wednesday As We Get Into "Summer Lite"

Leaves on the trees are growing toward full summer
green, while spring blooms continue to keep the 
landscape pretty in Vermont 

 For the second day in a row, a few spots in Vermont defied forecasts of a blah weather day Wednesday and produced some surprises.  

While most of the state just has light showers, if that, the Northeast Kingdom suffered a bit of a deluge, and a flood warning needed to be issues last night for part of that area.

The culprit was the that same stalled weather front that caused the interesting and photogenic storms in northern Vermont on Tuesday.

Yesterday, southern Vermont just had a fairly steady, light dull, rain. 

The front slowly worked its way north during the day. But before it did so, sunshine was able to heat far northern Vermont and destabilize the air. The result was some persistent showers and thunderstorms in the Northeast Kingdom.

They weren't severe, but they had some pretty good downpours that lasted the better part of the afternoon and evening. The result was enough rain to raise flooding fears on small streams and creeks up that way, and along the east branch of the Passumpsic River. 

I don't have any confirmed reports of flooding up that way, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few spots had high water. 

For some reason, far northwest Vermont, which was under pretty much the same weather regime as the Northeast Kingdom, ended up having a nice, rather sunny day for most of Wednesday before clouds covered the sky in the late afternoon. It ended up raining at night, but there wasn't much. Only a trace was registered in Burlington. 

The heavy rain picked up again north of the front in northern New York, where a local flood warning was also issued. 

The moisture from the rains yesterday and last night formed some patchy dense fog overnight. Be careful on the roads early today as there might be some dense patches of murk. Any fog should disappear by mid-morning. 

NO NEW NIGHTMARE

Wednesday's flood warnings do not mark the start of a nightmare flood summer, like last year. At least for now if not the entire summer. 

Any showers that form today should be light, or at least non-threatening.  Not all that much rain is in the forecast through Tuesday. Several of those days might well be rain-free. We're not looking for a parade of deluges.

Extended forecasts through two weeks sort of lean toward above normal rainfall, but that prediction is not cast in stone and so far, there's no signs of deluges. At least not here in Vermont. 

We have entered what I call  "Summer Lite" though. Temperatures the past couple of days have entered summer-like territory, even though it's not full on summer heat. Nights have been especially mild, with the type of overnight lows you'd expect in the summer. 

It will actually get a little warmer over the next few days, with spots reaching the low 80s  Sunday through Wednesday.

That's not to say summer has firmly arrived. There's still time for chilly temperatures and even frost. Saturday, for instance, is the anniversary of that awful, destructive freeze we had last year. (Forecast lows this Saturday morning are in the 50s, so history won't repeat itself). 

Meanwhile, make sure the shorts and t-shirts are ready, you're need them.