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| Here we go again. Smoke and haze obscure the view of the Champlain Valley from St. Albans Hill on Saturday. You can barely make out Lake Champlain in the distance. |
But a weird twist in the weather pattern has changed the forecast for early in the week. More on that in a bit.
The smoke from western wildfires is now covering much of North America - they're that bad.
We will have to put up with smoke off and on for weeks, probably. The fires aren't so much in Quebec like last year, so they're not as close to Vermont as they were in 2023.
Which means we will likely escape the thick smoke that choked us a few times last year.
Air quality, though isn't perfect. The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation rated the air quality yesterday and this morning as "moderate." Which means the air is not clean and fresh, but is falling short of being really dangerous.
Plus the deep blue skies we all like have been replaced by sort of greyish slate blue. At least the sunrises and sunsets mixed with the smoke are pretty.
"STORM" CHANGES FORECAST
Now, here's the odd twist to the forecast.
For days, we've been touting Monday as the hottest day in an upcoming stretch of very warm weather. It was supposed to be almost a slam dunk for at least a few Vermont towns getting up to 90 degrees.
Instead a weird little storm has gotten going pretty far off the Mid-Atlantic coast. As it moves north, it's expected to take a hard left turn and go pretty much westward into southeastern New England tonight.
It is an odd little bugger, not only because of its non-traditional path. It's definitely not a tropical storm, as it's carrying a coolish pool of air aloft with it. But has a few sort of subtropical characteristics thrown in because it's feeding off warm Gulf Stream waters that are even warmer than normal.
Overall, it's sort of a way out of season nor'easter.
Luckily, it's not strong, so it won't really cause much trouble. The New England sea coast will have to deal with showers and scattered downpours, some gusty winds and rip currents, which of course are dangerous to beachgoers.
As it moves into interior New England Monday, it will throw clouds across Vermont, and maybe some light showers south and east.
The storm will essentially act as a cold front of sorts coming in from the southeast. Cold fronts almost always come at us from the west and north, so this is another odd aspect to Monday's weather.
The clouds and slightly cooler maritime air will keep southeastern Vermont in the low 80s at best Monday. Further away from this thing in northwestern Vermont, it just puts a lot of questions into the forecast for high temperatures.
If the storm over-performs with clouds, we stay in the low 80s up by Burlington and that neck of the woods. If the clouds are thinner, we could see upper 80s. Ninety degree weather looks much less likely than it did, though.
One nice thing about this weird storm is that it will temporarily bring in some of that ocean air, which lacks the wildfire smoke that's been coming at us for a couple days.
BEYOND THAT
On Tuesday, the remnants of our weird little storm will head north through Vermont and out into Quebec, spreading some hit and miss showers and possible thunderstorms along the way. Nothing too scary, though. Tuesday will start a long stretch of muggy summer weather.
Another disturbance - a much more traditional, rather weak, normal type of summer system - comes in Wednesday with a batch of showers and storms. Wednesday at this point looks like it'll be the day with the most activity.
There could even be one or two strong to severe storms, but most of us will escape that. With the humidity building, some torrential rainfall is possible in spots, but again nothing widespread and not a huge flood risk.
Beyond that, very warm, oppressively humid weather Thursday through Saturday starts off August. There's the ever-present chance of afternoon and evening hit and miss showers and storms during the period.
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