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| Its peony season in St. Albans, Vermont. We'll see how badly the flowers flop down under pressure from heavy rain and wind later today. |
There were other isolated storms, too. But in general, storms had trouble getting their act together. Despite the humidity you probably felt down here on the ground, there were dry layers up above that tested the ability for storms to really get going.
Most people did not get much rain Wednesday. An exception was an area around Middlebury and Vergennes that received about 1.3 inches of rain from storms early in the day.
A few spots in Franklin and northern Chittenden County saw up to a half inch of rain. For most of the rest of us, it was anywhere from nothing to a tenth of an inch.
The storms really did fire up over into New Hampshire. There, storms fired up much more efficiently. Some of their storms had gusty, locally damaging winds, small hail and two lightning caused home fires.
MARYLAND TWISTERS
At least we weren't Maryland. Sometimes, a warm front will help create enough veering winds in the atmosphere to spin up rotating supercell thunderstorms and tornadoes.
Most meteorologists didn't expect too much to develop around Maryland and had just a low chance of severe storms. Meteorologist Matthew Cappucci being an exception. He noted a potential risk a good 12 hours before they happen4d.
A supercell ended up producing tornadoes in Darnestown, Poolesville, Gaithersburg, Olney, Columbia and Baltimore, Maryland, according to the Washington Post. At least five people were hurt and several houses suffered substantial damage. It was the most extensive Maryland tornado outbreak in years.
Other tornadoes with this system were reported in Michigan and West Virginia
WHAT ABOUT US?
The warm front that helped create the Maryland tornadoes kept heading north and will end up somewhere in central or southern New England today. However, it appears it's mostly lost its ability to contribute to tornado weather.
A cold front is coming in from the west, and humid air has streamed into our area. The end result in Vermont will be definite rain sometimes today. Some of us will see some pretty heavy downpours, and maybe one or two of us will end up with a strong thunderstorm.
Radar images showed some rain trying to move toward Vermont from New York early this morning but that rain band is kind of unimpressive and won't amount to much, really.
The chances of rain will rise through the early afternoon and by late afternoon we'll start to see some heavier downpours and that will continue into the evening. While we're waiting for the rain, we'll endure a muggy, cloudy day. The clouds will keep temperatures lower than the past few days, but it will still feel kind of icky out there with the humidity,
There's a marginal, low level risk of a severe storm just to our west, but I don't think it will be anything widespread locally. You can always get surprises, but so far I'm not too worried about that. I'll provide an update if anything changes.
The National Weather Service still includes Vermont in a region listed as having a marginal risk for flash flooding later today. But because it's been dry recently, and the storms and downpours don't really look like they'll stall around here, I'm optimistic there won't really be much trouble in that regard.
Still, it's worth it to stay tuned for surprises. It's always possible some local area could get caught in a train of downpours. If that were to happen, there probably would be some high water in a couple spots. Just like with the severe storm risk, I'll do an update if there's any big time changes in the rain forecast.
The bottom line is we could use the rain, so I still think this system will do us much more good than harm.
BEYOND TONIGHT
An upper level low that is the parent of this wet cold front will park itself nearby Friday through probably at least Monday. That means a good chance of showers daily. It won't rain all the time, and the rain that does come shouldn't be particularly heavy. We're just in for a sort of cool, and definitely damp stretch.
This cool stretch isn't all that cool. Overall, daytime temperatures over the weekend will just be a little cooler than norma, (mid and upper 60s) and nights will be close to average (50s).
There's already signs summer warmth will return next week, but the jury is still way out on just how warm it will get and how long that warmth might last.
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