A Few Odd Warm Twists In Vermont's Gorgeous Autumn Weather Streak

Can't resist more photos of Mount Mansfield covered in
white Wednesday with autumn foliage in the valley
below. Snow is rapidly melting up there mow as
warmer air moves in. 

 We're still in the midst of a stretch of perfect autumn weather in Vermont, and I've extended the gorgeous weather warning that I unofficially issued through Sunday has now been extended to Tuesday. 

The snow on the mountain summits is rapidly melting, so the snoliage will fade, but the autumn colors remain, especially in warmer valleys.  The autumn leaves are once again lingering later in the season than they once did a few decades ago. 

One of the reasons why the snow is disappearing so fast up on the tops of the mountains is a temperature inversion. That happens at night very often this time of year.  This morning's was a doozy. 

The overall air mass is fairly warm, but clear skies and light winds allow any heat to dissipate off into space, and what cold air there is drains into the valleys. 

These inversions can sometimes create a low overcast, but the air is so dry we don't have to worry about that.  Some fog formed in the river valleys, as is usual for this time of year, but that burned off not long after sunrise. 

The weird thing is, it was damn warm up on the summits before dawn today. While pretty much everybody in Vermont away from the Champlain Valley had yet another frost/freeze this morning, it was beach weather up high.

Whiteface Mountain, New York, which had 15 inches of snow in the past week, was sitting at 50 degrees at around 2 a.m.  Mount Washington, New Hampshire, known of its extreme cold and even more extreme wind speeds, was sitting at 48 degrees at 5 a.m. with winds howling at a whopping speed of (checks notes) just 6 mph. 

I don't have any good observations for Vermont's Green Mountain summits early this morning, but I know it's warm up there.

With sunrise, the inversion mixed out and we'll go back to the normal routine of valleys being warmer than the mountains. By Saturday afternoon, most weather stations in Vermont were pretty uniformly in the mid and upper 60s.

By late afternoon, Mount Washington was still in the mid-40s with winds of 32 mph.  Very mild for them, but at least it was less topsy-turvy than this morning.

THAT WARM AIR

And warm it will be. 

One more snoliage shot from Wednesday as seen
in Underhill, Vermont. 

The big, fat high pressure system giving us this great weather is repositioning itself to allow balmy air to flow up from the southwest. 

Today and tomorrow should reach well into the 60s, maybe touch 70 in a few spots.  Nights will be turning warmer, too.  So after tonight, when frost might well form in some valleys again, we're done with that for a few days.  

The warmth will intensify early next week, as many places will get into the 70s. Maybe even mid and upper 70s. That gets pretty close to record highs for this time of year.

The record highs in Burlington Monday through Wednesday are 76, 81 and 78 degrees.  We'll watch and see how close we come.

Speaking of 70 degree weather, the National Weather Service in South Burlington says we might at least tie the record for most days in a single year that reached 70 degrees. In 2021, we had 144 days that got to at least 70.

So far this year, we're up to 140 such days. We could easily score four more 70 degree days in this stretch.

Burlington this year has also tied the record for most days that reached 80 degrees. We're even with 2016, which had 85 such days. There's a very low, but not zero chance we could break this record early next week. 

These records are just another manifestation of how warm 2024 has been so far.  Through yesterday, we're still on pace for the warmest year on record, as measured at the airport in South Burlington. 

If this year ends up being in the top ten warmest, which seems very likely, it will be the fifth consecutive year that will be in the top ten warmest list as measured in the Burlington area.