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| Satellite view of what will become Tropical Storm Debby as it was just starting to organize near Cuba on Friday. It poses a threat to Florida in the coming days. |
It was still above 70 degrees at dawn today in Burlington, the fifth consecutive morning of such stuffy conditions.
People aren't getting much relief from Lake Champlain, either. We've had so many warm, muggy days and nights that the water temperature is hovering around a record high of 80 degrees.
If the lake were an ocean, that would be warm enough to sustain a tropical storm or hurricane.
No tropical storms here in Vermont. Scattered tropical showers over the next couple of days, maybe, but no tropical storms or hurricanes.
Not so in Florida, which is under the gun from what I am for now calling Wannabe Debby. It's a tropical depression that was just south of Cuba this morning. It's organizing into what forecasters widely expect to become a full-fledged tropical storm by later today or tonight, and then they would name it Debby.
It's expected to move generally northward, past Cuba and into the very warm waters of the eastern Gulf of Mexico. That will allow this thing to strengthen pretty efficiently and become a tropical storm or even possibly a Category 1 hurricane by the time it reaches northwestern Florida, probably on Monday.
That'll open up swaths of Florida to coastal storm surges, wind and especially inland flooding.
Wannabe Debby will probably slow down its forward motion as it passes through the southeastern United States early next week. That'll prolong the rain and intensify any flooding that goes on.
It's also unclear what will become of Wannabe Debby once it reaches the Southeast. A trough of low pressure - the same one that promises to eventually clear out the ugly humidity in Vermont, could lift it northeastward, eventually passing just off the New England coast (probably, hopefully, too far east to give Vermont much trouble with rain)
Or, the trough of low pressure could entirely miss Wannabe Debby, leaving it behind to meander aimlessly somewhere near the Southeast coast. We'll just wait and see on that one.
VERMONT EFFECTS
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| Damage from a microburst in Colchester Vermont that occurred this past Tuesday. There could be isolated damaging microbursts in Vermont Sunday, but those instances should be few and far between |
For now, we're stuck with the humid, icky weather through Monday morning at least. There was some spotty rain around this morning, but it didn't amount to much.
As usual in this kind of weather, some scattered showers and thunderstorms will develop this afternoon. They will be relatively few and far between, but of course any that do develop could stir up some locally torrential downpours.
Sunday has a better chance of scattered storms, but again, not everybody will get 'em. Coverage of storms should be greater than it will be today. There could be some isolated microbursts from some of these storms. Those can cause small swaths of pretty serious wind damage, like what happened in Colchester this past Tuesday.
The vast majority of us won't see anything like that, but a couple small spots might.
Isolated instances of flash flooding are again possible, too, but it shouldn't be anything widespread.
That long-awaited cold front should slowly limp through Vermont Monday with more showers. It's still looking like we'll finally be into the much cooler, drier air by Tuesday and that would continue through the week.
I have to wonder, though, whether Wannabe Debby will allow that front to progress very far south and east. If that Wannabe Debby hangs up that front, rain could linger off and on, especially in southern Vermont, during much of next week.
For now, though, the forecasts say we'll have at least a fair amount of sun, especially north, to accompany those long awaited cooler days.
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