Another Well-Behaved Cold Front Behind Us, Now More Showers

A rainy evening Thursday in St. Albans, Vermont.

UPDATE: 1:30 P.M FRIDAY

Some of the thunderstorms that are popping up around the region on this Friday are a bit more rambunctious that I first thought they might get.

None of them will be extreme, but a few pop up storms here and there could contain wind gusts to 40 mph, some small hail and downpours that won't last long.

It's really unpredictable when, where and how they'll hit this afternoon. That's because a storm will fire up, briefly become strong with those gusty winds and hail stones, then just as quickly fall apart, only to be replaced by new storms a short distance away.

One storm near Plattsburgh earlier looked for a short time like it was capable for 40 mph winds and penny sized hail, but it quickly weakened. That's an example of what we're dealing with today. 

It's truly a hit or miss sort of day. 

There are enough showers and storms around so that most of us will see additional measurable rain today, on top of what fell last evening. Amounts today will be super variable, ranging from a few hundreds of an inch to a half inch or more. A few places will see no rain at all especially south. 

The storms are too small and too fast moving to dump enough rain to set up any real flooding issues, so that's good. 

Today's storms will tend to diminish this evening as the sun's heating wanes and the air stabilizes.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

 It's early in the season, but so far Vermont has been very good at avoiding the kind of severe thunderstorms and even tornadoes that have been plaguing most of the nation this spring. 

Since we started getting thunderstorms on schedule in April, there were only a smattering of damage reports in Vermont from storms on May 21. And that was confined mostly to Franklin County, Vermont. 

Thursday evening's cold front and its heavy showers and rumbles of thunder passed by rather uneventfully. 

Almost all of us saw some heavy downpours, and that was about it. Many places, including Burlington, Montpelier and  St. Johnsbury, got a decent inch of rain out of the storms. 

It was another case of a storm system causing much more good than harm in the Green Mountain State. 

As of this morning, there's no reports of any wind damage from severe storms, and no reports of flooding. Once again, we're all good.  

Of course, this is early in the season. There's still plenty of time to deal with severe weather. 

In Vermont, generally speaking, severe weather season - such as it is in this neck of the woods - goes from about mid-May to early September, with an approximate peak from late June to mid-August. The other shoe might drop eventually. 

Last night's cold front ended a sort of impressive warm spell. Each of the first six days of June reached into the 80s, with one day hitting 90.  That's pretty good for early June, when you're more likely to have cooler highs in the 60s and 70s. The summer warmth more often than not comes at the end of the month.

The forecasts that we've been touting have remained consistent, and we're still getting that cool, showery regime we talked about. The chances of it getting to 80 degrees in Burlington and most of the rest of Vermont are very low today, and nil Friday through Sunday. 

Instead, we're looking at those highs in the 60s and low 70s through the period.

This morning has started off deceptively sunny in Vermont, but the air is pretty unstable, and there's a disturbance coming in from the west, so the sky will fill in with clouds and showers will form this afternoon. Some of the stronger showers might have a rumble of thunder, but we won't have any severe storms. Not even close. 

There's still signs we'll warm back up into the 80s later next week, but the computer models are once again not getting along with each other. They completely disagree with what will happen. For instance, the American models tend to have a small storm with a batch of showers coming through Wednesday. The European has no signs of any kind of storm, small or not on Wednesday.

So I guess for now, we'll just say that later next week, it will rain unless it doesn't. That's the best we can do.