Vermont (Mostly) Dodges Another Storm Bullet As Big Hailers Strike New England/New York

You gotta watch those thunderstorms that come in straight from the north. 

A thunderstorm near Sheldon, Vermont earlier this summer.
Severe storms and lots of hail hit parts of 
central and southern New England Monday but
the region is nearing the end of its summer
severe storm season. 

Often the weather systems that cause storms to move north to south can create more havoc than the traditional west to east moving thunderstorms we often see in the summer. 

Given the cold air aloft, Monday's storms were impressive hailers, covering the ground with tons of quarter sized or bigger stones in several communities in central and southern New England, and in parts of the southern Adirondacks and upper Hudson Valley of New York. 

Some of this hail was big enough, and powerful enough to probably keep insurance adjusters busy the rest of the week. 

We in Vermont largely sat out this icy storminess, though far southern Vermont had some moments. Parts of southeastern Vermont was under a flash flood warning for a time. Video on social media showed lots of half inch diameter hail,  pouring down on a property near Readsboro, Vermont. 

Half inch diameter hail was also reported at Woodford State Park, east of Bennington. 

Elsewhere, things did get out of hand. Video from somewhere in Essex County, New York - that's the large county in the southeastern Adirondacks on the other side of Lake Champlain from Addison County Vermont - showed inches of hail covering the ground with obvious damage to plants, and reports of damage to cars and trees blown down by wind. 

Another social media photo showed so much hail on a road in Hancock, New Hampshire (east of Keene) that it could have used a snow plow. 

The storms extended all the way down to Bourne, Massachusetts on Cape Cod which was hit by large hail and flooding. 

Northern Vermont entirely escaped the storms. Some scattered storms rolled southward along and east of the Green Mountains during the day but nothing severe hit up there. The Champlain Valley actually had a lovely day.

Before dawn, though, isolated storms dumped up to two inches of rain over the Lake Champlain Islands, and caused briefly strong winds in Georgia. 

LOOKING AHEAD

Things are much calmer today as that weather system has departed.  We'll have one more sunny, warm summer day today before the next cold front sweeps through late tonight and tomorrow morning. 

Nothing scary with this next front except for maybe brief heavy downpours in spot. 

Cooler, drier weather follows. These increasingly cool gushes of air as we approach September is a sign that  Vermont and New England's rough summer severe thunderstorm season is beginning to wind down. 

We can still see severe thunderstorms for the next few weeks, of course. But as we head into autumn, it gets harder and harder to see the very warm to hot, humid air that can be fuel for strong thunderstorms. 

As the cold fronts come in, you're going to be less and less likely to see strong thunderstorms ahead of them and more likely to see just a period of rain instead. 

Given the flooding we had in Vermont, and the severe storms and tornadoes that repeatedly raked New York and New England this summer, it really is probably good riddance to those intense summer storms.