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| Altocumulus clouds cover the sky over St. Albans, Vermont last evening. I tend to associate these clouds with autumn, which is in keeping with my thinking that summer is over. |
My ruling is the most subjective of them all, but it's plain our hot, wet, humid summer is behind us.
That's not to say we won't have any more warm or even hot weather. Or humid spells. We probably will. But the season has turned.
This feeling that summer is over almost always used to hit in mid to late August. In recent years, it seems like we have to wait until early or even mid-September for the bulk of summer to be over.
And it's still possible we could have a long stretch of mid-summer like weather as the calendar turns to September.
But the weather lately has checked all the boxes for calling an end to summer.
There are so many signs. One is the spots of fall color you see here and there in the otherwise still green landscape of Vermont. That's typical of late August, but there does seem to be a bit more of that color than I usually see this time of year. That could just be my imagination or impression, who knows.
Even the warm spells have an autumn feel.
Tuesday evening a brief surge of warm, humid air was making its way into Vermont. In full summer, it doesn't take much to bring such weather into the Green Mountain State, so spells of muggy weather don't have much wind when they arrive at our doorstep in, say, July.
But Tuesday evening, as I sat in my outdoor tub enjoying the cool water, I watched the trees sway in a gusty south winds. It's starting to take more force to drive toasty air into Vermont.
Cold fronts have lately been bringing cooler and cooler air to the Green Mountain State. The opening salvo was those three days that never got out of the 60s for highs last week. It got down to 51 degrees in Burlington this morning. That's not particularly chilly for this time of year, but it was still the coolest morning since June 28.
The forecast has more cool weather on our agenda. After a brief squirt of somewhat higher humidity Saturday and parts of Sunday, Labor Day promises to be a classic crisp Vermont autumn day with sunshine and highs only reaching the 60s.
Even the type of cloud cover we're seeing lately screams autumn. Last evening, we had a beautiful display of altocumulus clouds, which look like a series of small cotton balls covering the sky. I associate this type of cloud with autumn, because it seems I see them most frequently in September or October.
The sounds outdoors have changed, too. I'm hearing far fewer songbirds and plenty more crickets, which is a classic autumn song list, if you will.
Of course, there are more scientific and less subjective definitions of autumn than my own "feelings" about it.
Astronomical autumn begins at 8:43 a.m. EDT on September 22.
Meteorological autumn, which is an easy way for climatologists and others to assess a season's weather, starts September 1 and lasts through November 30.
Summer, at least measured in Burlington, Vermont, looks like it will be among the top five warmest. We were headed toward warmest summer on record, but the last ten days or so of cooler weather looks like it will keep 2020 in the top spot.
And, if Burlington gets at least 0.58 inches of rain during the expected showers on Saturday, it will become the city's tenth wettest summer on record.
Long range forecasts suggest we'll have a warm, and possibly wet autumn here in Vermont. Long range forecasts aren't always accurate, but those hot predictions ahead of this summer proved accurate. And autumns have definitely trended warmer in recent years across Vermont.
Seven of the top 10 warmest autumns in Burlington have happened since 2011. So, though summer might be over in my opinion, bouts of summer-like weather still seems to be on the horizon for awhile yet.
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