Bumpy Weather Today For Vermont: Strong Storms, Smoke And Humidity

Lighting crackles over my St. Albans, Vermont
house Wednesday evening. We'll do it again today
with scattered storms, mostly east and locally
strong, and also a batch of wildfire 
smoke to make it all the more stressful. 

 Wednesday was a sometimes noisy preview of what Vermont can expect today. 

There was a little smoke in the air, it was a bit humid, and some thunderstorms really made themselves felt in a few spots.  

Today in the Green Mountain State, we'll crank that up with thicker smoke, more numerous and possibly more intense storms in a few spots than yesterday, and higher humidity than on Wednesday. 

Wednesday's storms mostly put on a show in northern Vermont, especially the Champlain Valley. A couple  were borderline severe, with quarter sized hail reported in Georgia and penny sized hail in St. Albans Bay. 

At my place on the eastern side of St. Albans, just outside the edges of that initial severe, I had two lightning-filled storms. The second was stronger, with gusts to about 35 mph and a few pea-sized hail stones. 

Wednesday's storms were interesting too. I watched all afternoon as a cluster of storms slowly headed south from Quebec, passing by Montreal in the late afternoon and descending into Franklin County toward 6:30 or 7.  

They remained pretty intense after crossing the border into Vermont until entering Chittenden County, where they started to quickly fall apart. But then, even though we'd lost the sun that would maintain instability, new storms formed super quickly in Franklin County and headed south. 

A cold pool of air aloft over northwest Vermont was able to keep the storms going.  The lightning show was pretty impressive.

Today, Quebec will be gifting us with more storms than yesterday and a big gulp of smoke. Thanks, Canada! 

TODAY

We've still got an upper level low pressure off to our northeast that's keeping a flow from the north aloft. Meanwhile, near the surface, higher humidity is coming in from the south. 

Another spoke of energy from that upper low to our east will come south today, and the combination will set us up again for more storms.

There were already a couple spot showers in the Northeast Kingdom as of 7:30 a.m today, and those will increase as the day goes on. 

This piece of energy is stronger than last evening's and will come in this afternoon, right at peak heating. That sets us up for more pretty rambunctious storms. We're under a level one marginal risk for severe storms today, says NOAA's Storm Prediction Center. That means we'll at least have some isolated incidents of damaging winds and hail.

The storms this afternoon will be most concentrated along and east of the Green Mountains, especially in the Northeast Kingdom.  I know, I know, flood fears, after the summer the Kingdom has had. .It doesn't look like today's storms will have rain intense enough to cause any real, new water damage, which is good. 

Even though the storms will be most concentrated in the NEK, they could pop up in hit or miss fashion just about anywhere this afternoon and evening, and a handful could be briefly strong just about anywhere. 

Smoke

That north flow is also grabbing a batch of thicker smoke from Canadian fires and will bring it south into Vermont today. Much of the smoke will be aloft, but some of the smoke will be near the surface as well by this afternoon. Air quality was good in the Green Mountain State this morning, but will probably deteriorate some this afternoon. 

In any event, you will see an increase in haze and you night smell something like a campfire where someone added little garbage into the flames. 

If you have issues that affect your lungs, it might be wise to stay indoors with air conditioning today.  One note: Sometimes, smoke can suppress thunderstorms a bit. I don't know whether that will have any effect on the storms today. 

OUTLOOK

Friday will be calmer: Just mostly sunny through some smoky haze, warm and humid. There might be some isolated showers and storms over the mountains during the afternoon and evening, but they will be very few and far between if they form at all.

A very slow moving storm that I referred to yesterday as coming in from the Great Lakes will give us an unsettled, humid weekend.  Showers are possible both Saturday and Sunday, but more likely Sunday. A few of them could be heavy rainers. That state of affairs will continue on Monday before things slowly begin to improve.