Little Change In Stormy Vermont Weekend Outlook: Wind, Rain, Thunder

A gusty overcast early Saturday morning out on my
St. Albans, Vermont weather deck introduces 
another rather stormy weekend in the Green Mountain State.

 After a gorgeous Friday surely endorsed by the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, we're stuck in kind of a stormy weekend.  

Now, we get the not so nice weather. Overall, the forecast hasn't changed much since yesterday. Here's the rundown

SATURDAY

The storm system causing this and its warm and cold fronts are more typical of the type of thing we get in the spring, not summer, so the forces driving the weather are stronger than you'd expect in the summer. 

Summer patterns are pretty laggard and slow. Spring weather patterns tend to be more vibrant and changeable.

So it is with this one. The departing high pressure system that gave us our nice Friday and the storm causing all the bad weather in Canada are both strong for this time of year.

Which means the wind between the two is strong. It was already gusty in the Champlain Valley early this morning, and it will be a windy day across most of Vermont.

Lake Champlain and the surrounding valley will be windiest, with gusts over 40 mph. We could see wave heights go as high as four feet on the lake, so today is not the time for a nice excursion out here in a small boat or kayak. 

Even though showers had already arrived in parts of Vermont by dawn, it wasn't really humid out there. That will change fast as those south winds drive muggy air northward. 

The dew point, a measure of how humid it feels out there, were in the comfortable 50s this morning and will end up close to the awful upper 60s by late afternoon and evening. 

The increasing humidity will change the character of the showers, too. They'll go from widespread and fairly light during much of the day to perhaps more patchy and locally  heavier tonight. 

Though patchy, there should be lots of showers and possible storms around tonight. That brings in the risk of locally heavy rain. 

There's still a low, but not zero chance of local flash flooding overnight. Especially in the Adirondacks and in the mountains of central Vermont. The vast majority of us, though, will not have enough rain to cause any worries. 

The pre-dawn hours aren't usually the hour for strong storms, but one or two storms in this set up could be relatively gusty and accompanied by lightning and real gullywashers before sunup. Most of us won't see anything like that but a few of us might.

SUNDAY

The humidity will be awful when you get up tomorrow, but don't worry it won't last too long. A cold front will clear out the yuck toward evening.

As is usual, most thunderstorms with the front will actually focus a little ahead of it. Thunderstorms ahead of a cold front usually reach their peak intensity when the sun's heating is strongest, in the afternoon and evening. 

There's a marginal chance (dark green) of a couple 
severe storms in Vermont Sunday, but a 
better chance further east (in yellow).

The cold front timing is such that in Vermont, the best chance of storms is late morning and midday -m before they can get to their top strength. Still, a couple of them might be severe as they simultaneously move eastward through the state and get more intense.

A storm with damaging wind gusts could form anywhere in Vermont, but they probably will be few and far between in the northwest. The southeastern part of the state has a better chance of seeing severe storms. 

There were tornadoes reported in New England last Sunday and again Wednesday night in New England. We might do it again this Sunday, as there's a non-zero chance of a spinup in much of the region.

In Vermont, the chances are of a tornado look pretty much zero at this point, except perhaps in the far southeastern tip of the state. The best chances are further east. 

The cold front itself should move through later in the afternoon with its own batch of scattered showers and non-severe thunderstorms. 

Another burst of refreshing air should be in place by Monday before it starts to turn somewhat humid again during the week.