Climate Change Might Make You Fat (With Asterisks)

New research indicates we consume more sugary 
drinks and food when it gets hotter. Essentially,
climate change could make us fat. 

A recent Washington Post article in effect said that climate change could make you fat.

They didn't really come out and say it like that, but the reporters cited research that says higher temperatures inspire more purchases of sugary drinks and ice cream. 

Since climate change is making a given day more likely to really heat up, chances are we'll increasingly gorge ourselves on Coca-Cola and Ben & Jerry's. 

Researchers studied 16 years of U.S, dietary habits between 2004 and 2019 found that as temperatures rise, consumption of sugary drinks and frozen desserts go up in tandem. 

Reports WaPo:

"Based on their understanding of the relationship between temperature and sugar, the researchers projected that under one of the worst-case scenarios for climate change, Americans could be expected to eat an extra three grams of sugar or so per day by 2095. The effort to stay hydrated and cool down could exacerbate the nation's risk of disease associated with excessive sugar consumption, the scientists said."

Except when it gets really hot. People eat and drink more sugary treats as the temperature climbs from the 50s all the way to the mid and upper 80s. 

More specifically, for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit increase in temperate, added sugar consumption in U.S. households goes up by 0.7 per person per day. The escalation accelerates between temperatures of 68 and 86 degrees, reports CNN. 

After that, the effect levels off. Once it gets into the 90s, it gets too hot to eat. We lose our appetites. Even if somebody waves an ice cream cone in front of us. 

As with almost everything else in America, there's a class and economic status slant to this story. WaPo again:

"The effect appeared to be the most pronounced among Americans with low income and educational levels, as well as among those in milder regions unacclimated to the heat. While the amount of extra sugar consumed is small - less than a gram per degree - the cumulative effect of all that added sugar due to rising temperatures may end up increasing the overall risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer."

Water should be the go-to in hot weather. But in many low income neighborhoods, it's hard to find tap water free of lead or dangerous chemicals. 

The researcher focused their work on the United States. Next up: Studying weather the same thing happens in Asia.  

Most Of Weekend Rain "Canceled" As Frustrating Vermont Drought Rolls On

Canada gifted us with a cold front Thursday and
all we got was a wind shift and a couple clouds. 

 Droughts might not necessarily be the most destructive weather disaster possible, but they are probably the most frustrating.  

I don't mean to dismiss the damage droughts inflict. Each one can cause millions, even billions of dollars in damage to crops, water infrastructure and more. 

In some parts of the world, droughts cause or contribute to famines which can kill thousands. Droughts are not to be messed with. 

Most weather disasters, though, have a pretty clear beginning and end. The hurricane, tornado or flood arrives and does its damage. When you're in it, you have a pretty good idea when it will be over. Then the storm indeed departs, leaving us humans to pick up the pieces. 

A drought sneaks up on you.  You don't realize you're in it until the crops start wilting, the well runs dry and the trees start turning brown. Worse, you have no idea when it will end.  Plus, there's usually no clean break from it.

I look at droughts the way I look at my experiences in airport terminals. Some people are afraid of flying. I'm not. My phobia is airport terminals. 

Airport terminals are where everything goes wrong. It usually takes the form of a slow cascade of escalating trouble. Like droughts. The worst part of airport terminals is you're there, and your flight gets delayed. They don't tell you how long the delay will last, why there's a delay or whether it will turn into a cancelation. 

You don't know whether you'll have to rebook with another airline, how long you will be there, whether you will actually get to your destination, or where you will sleep tonight. The uncertainty is what kills you. You actually feel better getting terrible, concrete news at the airport than you do when you are lingering with all those unanswered questions.

Not knowing what will happen is strangely better than learning your flight is canceled and the next available flight is three days from now. 

Droughts are the same way.  There's no real end date.  No information. There are moments of false hope. Maybe on a particular day during a drought it rains hard for awhile. But then it stops, and you return to endless days of blue skies and dry air. The drought worsens. 

Even when the rains really returns, it takes forever for the drought to actually end. It's hard to end a drought. Months of near average rainfall won't do it. You need months and months of above average rainfall. The chances of that happening are less than 50/50. 

OUR CURRENT EXPERIENCE

That's where we are in Vermont now. Each new forecast, each new day is another piece of frustration. It doesn't rain, again. A forecast that said rain was likely evaporates into a chance of scattered sprinkles. 

A cold front went through Vermont Thursday but you're forgiven if you didn't notice. Most cold fronts at least have a band of showers with them.  This one maybe had a couple puffy clouds. And a breeze that came from the north but didn't affect temperatures all that much. 

The only moisture we had was the patchy dense river valley fog we so often get during calm early mornings in September. The cold front meant temperatures this morning fell into the upper 30s to mid 40s by dawn. There might have been a patch or two of frost again in the very coldest hollows. 

Today is another sunny, dry one. It'll be a couple degrees cooler than yesterday but still pleasant. Except for the arid air that will keep worsening the drought. 

Speaking of worsening, the forecast has dried up too. The hoped for rain this weekend will not materialize. At least not to any great extent.

Earlier forecasts had a disturbance coming down from Canada and going right over us. That would have been good for maybe a quarter inch of rain. Not much, but it would have tided us over for a day or two.

Instead, the disturbance now looks like it will zip by to our north, leaving just a weak trough (basically a semi-cold front) to come through Saturday night. It will have very little rain along it. Plus, the air is so dry most of the small amount of rain coming with that little front will evaporate on its way down from the clouds. 

A few raindrops probably will make it to the ground, but they will basically amount to a trace. It might wet the dust down a tiny bit late Saturday or early Sunday. 

Then it's back to another long period of sunny, dry weather.  It feels strange to curse a string of sunny days in what used to be a perennially overcast Vermont. 

This drought is stubborn. It will actually get a little warmer next week, which is doubly bad. Dry, sunny weather will keep evaporating what little water we have left. When it gets warmer, evaporation rates increase. 

Expect at least some days next week to get up to near 80 degrees. 

Our next shot at rain still looks like it will come in around September 20. Long range forecasts continue to indicate that the weather system that would bring that rain looks unimpressive, so don't expect any kind of nice soaking. 

That would be too much to ask. 

Vermont is stuck in Terminal A of Drought International Airport, and the ticket agents are not telling us anything about whether we'll eventually be able to leave. They're not even offering a drink of water.  

Drought Keeps Intensifying In And Around Vermont; Getting Dangerous

A brown hayfield and brown sugar maple leaves in
the background Wednesday near Woodstock, Vermont
as drought continues to intensify. 

 I traveled back and forth between St. Albans in northwest Vermont, and Woodstock in the southeast on Wednesday. 

Our no longer so green Green Mountains scared me a bit. 

I know it's September and you normally see hints of fall colors in the landscape this time of year. But what I saw looked...... scorched. 

On many hillsides, the drought has prematurely turned leaves brown, as if exposed to a nearby fire. 

Underneath those trees, a slight breeze Wednesday afternoon brought down some of those desiccated leaves. Each one landed with a soft, faint dusty clatter on dirt roads, driveways, sidewalks and such. 

Each footstep on walking trails and paths stirred up a bit of dust.  We know the forest fire danger has been high for some time now.  But this drought is getting so intense, I'm beginning to worry about what will happen later this autumn when we get the strong, dry blasts of wind we always get later in September through November. 

We could see wildland fires like we've never seen before. 

Vermont is known for having "asbestos forests."  It's really hard to set them ablaze, at least normally. 

If our forests manage to catch fire, those blazes tend to be relatively small and are extinguished comparatively easily. Flames don't roar through the tree tops. They crackle close to the ground. 

Lots of brown, drought-stricken trees visible on 
this hillside near Quechee, Vermont Wednesday. 

Vermont forests are traditionally too moist, the humidity in the air is too high, and fallen logs and trees are too soggy to support much in the way of flames. 

We don't have those flammable conifers forests of the American West or the blow torch eucalyptus and palm trees that fuel California conflagrations. 

Now, though, climate change is changing the game here in Vermont, as it is virtually everywhere.

What was once almost unthinkable is turning possible. 

Extremes have gotten wild, and we blast from one extreme to the other. After two summers of destructive floods, we're now in a drought more intense than seen in decades, if ever. 

Our asbestos forests are turning into matchsticks. 

I worry that we'll have some super intense Vermont forest fires, the kind that roar through the tree tops like you see on the news when the western United States goes up in flames. I'm not saying that will happen.  I'm saying it's become an improbable possibility. 

It happened in New Jersey last year.  It's been known to happen in places like Maine, in the 1940s, and in Quebec.  We in Vermont might not be prepared for what might be coming, beyond the dry wells, water shortages, damaged crops and struggles with snow making in the ski industry. 

DROUGHT MONITOR NEWS 

The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor came out this morning as usual. It shows a still-worsening situation in Vermont, despite some rain last weekend. 

All of Vermont is in drought, of course. It's one of four states - the others being Washington, Utah and Arizona, - in which 100 percent of each state's territory is in at least moderate drought. 

Drought continues to deepen in Vermont, according
to this week's U.S. Drought Monitor.
The more vivid orange is severe drought,
the lighter orange is moderate drought. 

Severe drought has expanded in Vermont, now covering more than half of Vermont, compared to a third of the state last week.  

The severe drought designation covers a much broader section of central Vermont than last week, and also a good chunk of the Northeast Kingdom. 

A spot of extreme drought has cropped up in west central New Hampshire, right near the Vermont border, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. 

Under extreme drought conditions, stream flow is reduced to a thin trickle or stops altogether, many wells go dry, dairy farms struggle financially, crop losses mount and well drillers and water haulers have more business than they can handle. 

Based on weather forecast, I think parts of Vermont are heading for the extreme drought category in coming weeks, unless we are very pleasantly and very surprised by rainfall. 

THE FORECAST

The weather forecast continues to be discouraging and frightening for our region. In other words, the rain dances so far aren't working. 

In the short term, today and Friday will continue the dry weather. The forest fire danger is high for the rest of today, as has so often been the case lately. 

We'd feared the fire danger would be even scarier today, but winds will be somewhat lighter than expectations were a few days ago. Though the air will be dry, the humidity will be slightly higher than in recent days. Dew points will be in the 50s instead of the 40s. Slightly higher humidity nudges the fire risk downward.  

Also there might be some clouds in the sky this afternoon as a weak cold front comes through. That front might even kick off an isolated sprinkle in one or two spots, but don't hold your breath on that one. 

The air will turn dry and clear again tonight and Friday.  There might even be a frost risk again in the coldest hollows of the Northeast Kingdom around dawn Friday. 

Predictions have changed some for this weekend. A few days ago, we thought Saturday and Sunday would bring absolutely no rain,

Now, a little light rain does seem to be in the cards.  Any rain is wonderful, but the anticipated showers this weekend will only temporarily slow the pace at which the drought is deepening. 

There's still some questions as to how much rain we'll get, but most forecasts call for light amounts. A few places might not get anything at all. A small minority of computer-generated forecasts call for a good half inch, but most meteorologist are discounting that idea.

Instead, it looks like a package of weak disturbances will blow through, flinging showers here and there, especially Saturday night and Sunday.  Rainfall looks like it will be a quarter inch or less. Probably less.

After that, it's back to dry weather. To break or even bruise the drought a bit, we need frequent, soaking rains. A drenching storm once every three days or so would be ideal. That's not in the cards. 

Instead, strong, dry high pressure will probably park itself over northern New England again next week.  A weak coastal low might try to send moisture our way, but it will likely get shunted off to our south. 

It still looks like our next shot at rain would be around September 19 or 20. From this distance, early indications are that system would also be on the weak side. The overall weather pattern through the end of the month and quite possibly beyond continues to look sadly dry. 

Organizers Of New Website, Climate.us Hope To Replace Deleted, Politicized Government Climate Site

A new website, climate.us is being set up by 
to replace climate.gov the climate change 
information website all but destroyed by 
the Trump administration. Climate.us
plans to put up information erased from
the old web site, and add info. 

Before the Trump administration took over, the Climate.gov site was one of the most widely used places on the internet to find climate information. 

That site is now gutted. You can still access it, but most of the information has been removed or redirected to government websites more in line with Donald Trump's climate denial mindset.

Thanks to some volunteers, though, much of that missing information might be coming back. Welcome to climate.us

The website's mission statement says in part: "Our goal is to build an enduring, independent, and scientifically rigorous platform that the world can rely on for climate communication, education and engagement." 

Reports The Guardian:

"Now, a team of climate communications experts - including many members of the former climate.gov team - is working to resurrect its content into a new organization with an expanded mission.

Their effort's new website, climate.us, would not only offer public-facing interpretations of climate science, but could also begin got directly offer climate-related services, such as assisting local governments with mapping increased flooding risk due to climate change."

The climate.us web page is up, and its home page tells us the following:

"From climate.gov to the National Climate Assessment, climate information you can trust is being hidden, erased, and replaces with misinformation. We're not letting that happen. We're building Climate.us - independent, nonprofit and immune to politics. But we can't do it without you."

It is a non-profit, so they are asking us to donate. 

Climate.gov was a sort of clearinghouse for climate change information, helping the public interpret what the science meant for them. Now, under Trump, Climate.gov has essentially gone dark, redirecting users to a different NOAA website controlled by political appointees, Rebecca Lindsey told CNN. 

Lindsey is climate.gov's former managing editor. She was fired last winter along with other employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She is now among the group of former colleagues starting up climate.us. 

"The things that were most popular on climate.gov were things that basically just taught people about climate, both natural climate and climate change..... There is a need for content that helps people achieve basic climate literacy independent of an agency," Lindsey said. 

She went on with this good point: "This is information that the taxpayers already paid for... This administration is trying to hide it and take it away from us. It's an abuse of government. It's a waste of resources. People should be indignant. That's not the way the government should work."

The effort to establish climate.us is gaining support, including legal help and a short-term grant to help develop the overall vision for the website. 

Other organization are trying to preserve government data sets going dark because of the Trump administration. Climate.us is different because it plans to keep building on the old climate.gov content.  

No Atlantic Hurricanes Now At Peak Of Season: How Did We Get So Lucky?

Hurricane Erin is so far the only Atlantic hurricane
this year. We've entered a very odd period of no
tropical storms at what should be the
peak of hurricane season. 

Each year, on September 10, there is usually at least one tropical storm or hurricane somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.  

After all, today's date is the statistical peak of hurricane season. This year: Crickets.  

For a few days now, the main map on the National Hurricane Center map has stated. "Tropical activity is not expected during the next 7 days."

This is the first September 10 since 2016 without a tropical storm or hurricane. Only a handful of September 10s in the past half century without an Atlantic tropical storm.

This year, the last time there was a tropical storm was the day weak Tropical Storm Fernand died out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without hurting anyone. 

The fact there is no hurricane currently in the Atlantic to menace anyone is great news. We've had enough of that in recent years. But meteorologists are sort of scratching their heads as to why there are no tropical systems out there.

Water temperatures where hurricanes would form are well above average. Since hurricanes thrive on warm water, this should encourage these storms. Right now, it's not. 

The problem for hurricanes is probably a large area of stable, dry air over the Atlantic.  You usually get the dry air early in the season but the atmosphere gets more moist by September. So far, that really hasn't happened all that much. 

Hurricane Erin did take advantage of increased moisture last month, but it's gotten dry again. There were concerns a system in the eastern Atlantic could form into a tropical storm a few days ago. But it ran into that dry air and completely fell apart.

We are falling behind normal in a year that was expected to give us slightly more tropical storms and hurricanes than usual. Six named storms have formed this year, which is two fewer than average by September 9. And only one of them strengthened into a hurricane. 

This is the second year on a row there was almost no tropical storm activity near the peak of hurricane season. Last year, there were no named storms between August 13 and September 8, which was the first time since 1967 there was nothing in that period of time. 

Of course, things took a tragic turn afterwards, later in the season with Hurricanes Helene and Milton. 

As of yesterday, we've had 16 days in the Atlantic with no named storms. That looks like it might go to at least 23 days, as nothing is forecast through next Monday. 

There were also quiet periods during peak season in 2020 and 2022. That's leading to speculation that maybe climate change is messing with hurricanes in ways we hadn't realized. We do know that when hurricanes form, they've tended to get stronger as they've been supercharged by extra warm Atlantic waters.

But maybe climate change somehow reduces the number of storms that do form, at least near the peak of the season. We don't really know why.  

One theory is the lapse rate - how fast the air temperature falls as you gain altitude.  The thunderstorms that power developing tropical storms need a steep lapse rate, meaning the temperature decreases sharply with height. 

There generally isn't as big a difference than usual this year between surface temperatures and readings many thousands of feet overhead. Is climate change doing that?  Researchers probably want to look into it. 

\As Bob Henson and Jeff Masters write in Yale Climate Connections, a deep dip in the jet stream that's been contributing to drought here in Vermont would have helped steer tropical storms or hurricanes away from the U.S. over the past couple weeks had they formed. 

Now, the pattern is changing with a northward bulge in the jet stream expected to form over the eastern U.S. and western Atlantic Ocean. If a hurricane were to form over the next couple weeks, that pattern would make it a bit more likely for a tropical storm or hurricane to head toward the United States.

So we should hope the hurricane drought continues. 

Last year, as mentioned, the hurricane season perked up in dramatic fashion after the midseason lull. In 2022 the lull came a little later in the season, after devastating Hurricane Ian.  There were several tropical storms and a couple hurricanes after Ian, but those mostly formed late in the season - October and November. 

I guess all we can do this year is whatever is keeping hurricanes from forming in the Atlantic keeps it up. Then again, up here in drought-stricken Vermont, I wouldn't mind the heavy rainfall from a dying tropical storm.  

Trump's Department Of Energy Apparently Has Never Heard Of Batteries For Clean Energy

If you take Trump's Department of Energy at face
value, then they apparently are unaware of the
concept of batteries. 

 Let's check in with those electricity generating wizards at the U.S. Department of Energy, shall we?

They had this to say on X

"Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it's dark outside, and the wind is not blowing."

Hoo boy. 

Could it be that the fine Trumpian folks at DOE have never heard of this nifty gadget called a battery?

They're amazing! The sun's out, and the wind is blowing and all those solar panels and wind turbines charge up those nifty batteries. 

Then the sun goes down and the wind goes calm, and those batteries supply electricity until the wind blows and the sun shines again. 

Those DOE guys and gals should check those batteries out! 

I'm sure DOE loved the community post on the X pointing out batteries exist in the real world, if not in the MAGA atmosphere.

 The comments on that @Energy post are pretty withering, as you can imagine. The first comment I saw when I last looked at it came from Josh Morgerman (@icylcone) who wrote, "This is quite possibly the stupidest tweet I've ever seen from any government account, in any country, anywhere on Earth."

Can't argue with that! 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom as he does so much, couldn't resist the urge to troll DOE, and by its extension Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Newsom's staff posted the following on X: "We're excited for the Trump administration to learn about BATTERIES(we have them here in California and they've helped the Golden State shift to green, clean energy AND keep the lights on)."

Even Elon Musk weighed in, pointing out the availability of batteries. His response to the @Energy tweet was "Um....hello?"

Then again, a some named Emily on X (Emnode) wrote "It's crazy how much money Elon Musk spent to buy the United States government and leave us with a Department of Energy that doesn't know batteries exist."

By the way, people use electricity during the day,  believe it or not, so those solar panels come in handy on sunny days, with or without batteries.  And, believe it or not, the wind sometimes blows at night. 

Of course, we actually doubt the people at the Department of Energy are as stupid as they pretend to be.  (Quite an aspiration, pretending to be as stupid as Lauren Boebert).

We're picking on Wright and his department for stupidity, but they know what they're doing. I'm quite sure they are aware batteries exist. OK, I hope they really understand batteries exist. 

This ignorant posting is all about a larger Trump administration effort to spread misinformation. And to turn the public away from clean energy. 

After all, the official Trump position is that climate change is - against all evidence - a hoax and therefore clean energy is verboten. 

There's a percentage of Americans who don't understand solar and wind power and how they relate to batteries, so Wright is appealing to that base,

What the Department of Energy and its Secretary Wright and his Department of Energy is doing is blasting misinformation to convince people who don't have a lot of knowledge about clean energy.

For the rest of us, the misinformation is meant to make the rest of us mistrust solar and wind power. They hope enough to turn the majority of the public against it, so that climate changing fossil fuel will reign supreme. 

Wright, after all, is the former CEO of two former fossil fuel companies, specializing in shale gas and oil.   

 I don't have a problem with people questioning the efficacy of solar and wind power. As long as the questioning is based on reality and facts. Questioning anything when it's based on facts is a great way to make things better, no matter what you're talking about. 

But as climate change continues to take its worsening toll, we'd better be promoting and improving clean energy. Trump and his minions live in the 1950s, when we didn't know much about fossil fuel and how they contribute to climate change. 

Good changes happen as society learns more information.  The Trump administration, and people who work for him, are trying to take information away from the public. Because it benefits them, and to hell with everyone else.  

Even After A Rain, Drought Conditions Quickly Favor Return To Fire Danger

A pretty sky on a brilliant September day Monday
as seen from a hillside near Richmond, Vermont

You can tell we needed a lot more rain than what we got Friday and Saturday to dig ourselves out of the drought. 

One sunny, breezy, admittedly gorgeous Vermont Monday and it's already getting parched out there. 

The rain from Saturday soaked in a little, but only wetted the thinnest top layer of soil. That's already drying out. 

You can tell the rain did little good because river levels scarcely budged from their low levels. 

Rock bottom low Lake Champlain rose a whole 0.03 inches from late last week to a 93.38 feet yesterday, an incredibly low level. 

So, given this, we'll have to watch for occasional fire risk days when low humidity and breezy winds overlap for the rest of this autumn until we get some soaking rains. As leaves die and drop and weeds and vegetation turn brown and dormant, the fire risk will rise. 

We'd better pray for a soggy mid and late autumn

THE FORECAST/FIRE RISKS

They did get some frost in the very coldest hollows last night. There were some reports of low to mid 30s in the Northeast Kingdom. The always-cold spot Saranac Lake, New York in the Adirondacks was down to 29 degrees. It was 32 there yesterday, ending their always short growing season. This year, it was 97 days between the last spring freeze and the first one of the fall.

All the rest of us, of course, escaped anything like that. I'm grateful the wildfire smoke in the atmosphere has been pretty minimal around here lately.  It was nice to see that deep blue sky between the decorative clouds in the sky during the day Monday, 

The very low humidity will continue to dry out the landscape over the next few days. Today, the fire danger is high in southern Vermont and just moderate in northern Vermont, where better rains fell  Saturday.

We'll continue to have cool nights and warm sunny days today and tomorrow, (lows 40-52, highs well into the 70s) and plentiful sunshine. But we won't have much wind. So if a fire were to start, it wouldn't spread too fast. And the lingering but waning moisture from the weekend might also hinder the spread. 

THURSDAY DANGER

The potential problems come Thursday. By then, the fine fuels that can catch fire - dry grass, weeds and leaves) will have dried out completely after Saturday's rain. 

Meanwhile, the drought has gotten so bad that big things in the forests like big dead branches and fallen logs have really dried out.  It takes a long time for those objects to get dry enough to burn efficiently, but we've accomplished that this year.  Once they dry out, it takes a lot of rain to get them sort of too wet to burn once again.

If these big branches and logs do burn,  they can generate a lot of heat and can make fire behavior more dangerous than usual. And make it much more difficult to contain a forest fire.   

It's one reason why droughts are so dangerous 

The reason I bring this up when I'm talking about this coming Thursday is another cold front is coming. It will have no rain with it like most cold fronts do. But it will generate some gusty north winds. It won't be a gale, but the 25 mph gusts could spell trouble. 

That kind of wind is enough to make it easy for fires to start and spread quickly. With all that dry stuff in the woods we can really have some trouble.

Which is why we all have to be careful with fires. Especially on Thursday. If we don't start any blazes, then there's no problem. At least in terms of wildfires. 

The wind should quickly calm down late Thursday night, so at least the gusts won't last long. The next chance of somewhat windy weather is Saturday, when breezes will pick up from the south.

We do have a slight chance of light showers Sunday, but that's iffy. If it does rain, it will be very light - easily less than a tenth an inch. Which wouldn't do much good.  There's a good chance it might not rain at all. 

According to a lot of the forecasts I've seen, the next shot at any real rain in Vermont would come around September 20.  That's an awful long time to wait in a drought like this.

Don't Say "Climate": Northeast Climate Center To Close Under Trump Fears Of Science

The Northeast Regional Climate Center looks like
it will be another victim in the Trump war
on climate science 

The Northeast Regional Climate Adaptation Center in Amherst, Massachusetts will probably close by the end of the month because the Trump administration doesn't want anybody researching anything to do with climate change. 

The center is Public Enemy #1 in the eyes of the Trump people because it helps state and local partners formulate plants to adapt wildlife, water resources and land to climate change. 

"'This is just another way to stop science," said Bethany Bradley, the center's co-director and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where the research center is hosted.

As WBUR reports:  

"In mid-August, the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed the agency's ecosystems  research arm, which overseas these centers, to spend money only on federal employees' salaries, according to budget documents.  

Other spending, on activities like publishing articles, hiring post-doctoral researchers, or applying for operating funds, has stalled, Bradley said. Planned projects for the upcoming academic year were canceled. In a typical year, the center's budget ranges from $3 to $4 million."

The center runs out of money at the end of this month.  If the OMB spending freeze isn't lifted, the center will close and 20 or so jobs might go.

It's just another of many climate change resources evaporating under the gun of the Trump administration. This center in Amherst is one of nine regional hubs across the nations that helps site and local organizations formulate plans to adapt wildlife, water resources and land to the effects of climate change. The nine regional hubs have been supported by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Several other of the nine regional climate centers in the United States have already shut down or are about to under the spending freeze. 

MY RANT

What galls me the about these climate cutbacks from the Trump administration is the wording they use about these topics. Of course their wording is meant to anger "woke liberals" or whatever they call anybody who disagrees with them.

To MAGA, people who think climate change is a serious thing aren't just wrong or misguided.  They are the enemy. That's why the funding freeze described by the White House "guts a weaponized deep state" and that efforts to combat the effects of climate change are the "Green New Scam."

I suppose it's effective PR, especially if the target audience is willfully ignorant. And for the MAGA crowd,  it probably feels good inside to use language like that.   

You can have temper tantrums all you want, but nothing gets done. Which maybe is the point. Why do actual work when you can put on an impromptu, easy show instead? Mostly for likes and clicks on MAGA social media. 

Who cares if peoples livelihoods are at stake, right?  President Trump, you're 79 years old. Isn't it time to grow up?

First North Country Frost Advisories Of The Season Tonight

Summer is definitely over!

A chilly looking sunset Sunday evening over Georgia,
Vermont introduced us to a cool spell that brings a 
risk of frost tonight to the coldest hollows of 
northern Vermont, New York and New Hampshire.
The vast majority of us will avoid any frost.

A few places in and near Vermont might get a little frost tonight. Essex County, in the far northeast corner of the Green Mountain State is under a frost advisory overnight tonight through the hours around dawn Tuesday. 

So are the Adirondacks in New York. And Coos County in far northern New Hampshire. 

In those places, it could get down into the low to mid 30s in some place so sensitive plants there should be brought inside or covered. 

For the rest of us, don't worry. It will be the chilliest night so far this season region wide, but the tomatoes and such in your gardens should be safe for now. 

Most of us will bottom out between 38 and 45 degrees, with a few upper 40s to near 50 right along the shore of Lake Champlain. 

Frosts and even solid freezes in the cold spots is not at all unusual around here this time of year. The National Weather Service this morning put out a list of earliest and latest autumn frost dates in selected cities around here. 

The earliest 32 degree temperature in Burlington was on September 13, 1964.  Burlington won't come remotely close to breaking that record tonight. Their forecast low Tuesday morning is 45 degrees. 

Montpelier's earliest freeze on record was on August 31, 1965.  

Remarkably, at least to me, the earliest 32 degree reading on record in Rutland and Woodstock was on August 25, 1940, which seems incredibly early. I looked it up and that 1940 August cold spell was something. St. Johnsbury endured four consecutive mornings in the 30s from August 25-28 that year. 

It will probably get to 32 degrees early Tuesday morning over in Saranac Lake, New York. It was 34 degrees there this morning, and that mountain cold spot has had frosts every month of the year. 

You might think it odd we're talking about frost tonight on a day when afternoon temperatures will ve way up in the 60s.   But it will be perfect night for it to cool off. Light winds, clear skies and very dry air is the exact recipe you need for temperatures to plunge after sunset. 

THE WEEK AHEAD

After the showers of the past few days, it's back to drought. And generally cool, sunny weather for the foreseeable future. 

We felt the winds of autumn yesterday, for sure. The last in a series of cold fronts came through in the afternoon.  The accompanying light showers and stiff wind gusts brought temperatures down into the low 60s by mid afternoon. 

Strong, dry highs pressure is taking control, so the sun will shine brightly today through the rest of the week. 

After those 60s for high temperatures today, it will warm up a little with daytime highs in the low to mid 70s Tuesday and well into the 70s, with some upper 70s Wednesday and Thursday. Because of the dry air, nights will still be chilly - mostly in the 40s all week, with 50s in milder, broad valleys. 

Since the nights will be so cool, overall temperatures this week will come out a little cooler than average for this part of September. 

A new cold front should arrive Thursday or Thursday night to reinforce the autumnal air. I see maybe another frost risk for the cold hollows of the Northeast Kingdom and Adirondacks early Friday and Saturday mornings. It should start to warm up slightly next weekend. 

DROUGHT REASSERTS

Notice I haven't mentioned rain yet.  As I keep saying the drought goes on. And it will start to get worse again. Plenty of sunshine and rock bottom humidity will dry things out quickly. The only moisture we'll see until at least Saturday will be the patchy fog that usually forms in river valleys this time of year. 

We might or might not see a weak disturbance blast down from Quebec Saturday and that, I suppose, could give us a few light showers or sprinkles if it aims at us just right. 

But that pattern of one big, fat, dry high pressure system after another lumbering slowly across our region looks like it might pretty much continue all month. 

It looks like it might end up being a pretty dusty autumn. 

Dam Removals In Vermont Accelerate In The Age Of Climate Change

The old dam in West Rutland, Vermont before
demolition began this summer. The dam
was removed to improve stream ecology
and prevent flood damage. Old dams
in Vermont are coming under more 
and more scrutiny in the age of 
climate-change driven floods. 

 Back in high school, I briefly had the worst job I ever had.

There was a town reservoir in West Rutland, Vermont that was a municipal water supply. The reservoir was temporarily drained, and we had to muck out the algae and mud left behind to ensure future water quality. 

YUCK!

The town no longer uses that water supply. And I have to say West Rutland now has some of the best tasting tap water of any town I've tried. 

But the dam was still there. Or was. Work began earlier this summer to tear it down. Part of the reason is climate change, of course! 

The dam was growing more and more unsafe due to its age and the increasing severity of rain storms created in large part by that climate change. 

 As WPTZ reports:

"Officials said because of the dam's outdated infrastructure and old age, parts are breaking off during storms and changing the direction of the river. West Rutland Town Planner Mary Ann Roulette said the dam has caused major disruptions over the years. She revealed there as minor damage affecting nearby property this past July."

Karina Dailey, a restoration ecologist and chair of Vermont's dam task force said the West Rutland deconstructions  is one of several dam removal projects. Others are getting going in Newport, Ripton, Berkshire and Winooski. 

DAM SCRUTINY

Communities statewide are discussing removing dams, perhaps hundreds of them. Usually in the name of river health, and the fact removing these small dams can minimize flooding in climate-driven storms. 

 "The best resilience is to let these rivers function naturally," Dailey said. 

Sure, we're having a drought now, but it's only a matter of time before we start running into those super charged rainstorms again. 

It's interesting this is going on now as some Vermont dams were built almost a century ago after the cataclysmic Great Flood of 1927.  

Large flood control dams like Wrightsville, Waterbury and East Barre were built after that flood. Montpelier suffered extensive damage in the July, 2023 flood, but the Wrightsville Dam helped prevent the water from being even deeper. But that dam was almost overtopped in 2023, and that would have caused an even more cataclysmic inundation.

Still, those large dams did their jobs in 2023 and 2024 and did protect some property. It's the small dams that are causing problems. 

In the 2023 floods, five Vermont dams failed and 60 were overtopped. That event has put new urgency into efforts to remove old dams. 

As Vermont Public reported in a separate article, Vermont has more than 1,000 dams around the state. Many are overdue for repairs or are old and becoming dangerous. As those climate induced storms intensify, those dams become more unstable, and can collapse under heavy rains, worsening damage. 

Even if these old, unstable dams don't collapse during floods, they can create damage in heavy rain storms. 

"Dams not created specifically for flood protection are regularly full and do not provide storage capacity. And they frequently direct water outside the main channel at high velocities which causes bank erosion and impacts to communities,"  said Andrew Fisk, the northeast regional director for the environmental advocacy group American Rivers.

Which is precisely why that dam in West Rutland was removed, and many other dams in Vermont are on their way out. Or, dams like ones recently removed in Dover, and another in Ripton were taken out for ecological reasons. But those removals had the happy side effect of minimizing damage from future floods.

MONTPELIER

Flood-prone Montpelier is looking at removing old dams and has already started on one. 

The Pioneer Street Dam is about 1.3 miles upstream from downtown Montpelier. It's cracked, could collapse in a flood, and could redirect water toward homes and businesses even if it doesn't get smashed down in a future flood. 

Also this summer, right near the Pioneer Street Dam, deconstruction work started on a 19th century home that was on property that once belonged to Jacob Davis, the founding settler in Montpelier was deconstructed.

The property located at 5 Home Farm Way, about two miles upstream from Montpelier consists of a high style Greek Revival house with an attached barn and 19 acres of agricultural land. 

Bricks and planks from the home are being resold for new construction elsewhere. Removing the home and barns opens up new floodplain space, allowing water to spread out over fields before reaching Montpelier during torrential storms. 

Vermont usually tries to preserve historic buildings, but sometimes, there's a greater good that overrides that. "The highest and best use of a floodplain is to serve as a floodplain, said Ben Doyle, president of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, reports Vermont Public. 

Between the removal of the Pioneer Street Dam and the old house, the Winooski River will have more opportunity to spread out into floodplains during big storms before some of that water could reach downtown Montpelier. 

There are three other old mill dams upstream of Montpelier that should be removed, advocates said. They no longer serve the purpose they once did a century ago. They don't even hold back water. The space behind the dams are filled with silt. 

Time for them to go. 

Good Saturday Rains In Vermont To Be Followed By Renewed Drought

The dam site along the Lamoille River near
Cambridge, Vermont after the rain Saturday. As you
can see in the background, the water level 
in the river was still really low. A dry 
forecast means despite the rain, the Vermont
drought will continue and probably worsen.

Most of Vermont got a slight break from the drought Saturday with decent rains in most, but not all areas. 

Unfortunately, the rainy Saturday wasn't the start of a trend. We are now beginning a long dry spell which will nullify any help we got from the rain over the past couple of days. 

This drought is stubborn and will probably ultimately get worse than it was before the weather fronts came through. 

RAINFALL REPORTS

At least it did rain. Northwest Vermont was the big winner over the past three days. Burlington had 1.76 inches of rain since Thursday night.

My unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans collected 0.92 inches between late Friday night and Saturday evening. Our three-day total here in St. Albans was right around 2.2 inches.

That will tide the northwest over for a few days, which is nice. 

Other sections of northern Vermont got a little more rain than forecast on Saturday, which is again good. It was decent little drink but won't resolve the drought.  St. Johnsbury picked up about an inch of rain and Montpelier came in with 0.84 inches. 

Southern Vermont, which really needed the rain, had spotty results. Bennington and Springfield each reported about a paltry quarter inch of rain, which won't help much. Rutland had a fairly lame 0.3 inches. Lebanon, New Hampshire, which is right near White River Junction, Vermont reported about a half inch. 

SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS 

There were fears of damage from severe thunderstorms in southeast Vermont Saturday but I see no reports of any trouble in the Green Mountain State. But there were quite a few reports of tree damage and large hail in parts of New York's Hudson Valley south of Albany, much of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. 

A tornado touched down in Holden, Massachusetts, a little northwest of Worcester, causing damage but no injuries. 

DRY OUTLOOK

Now -  as expected  - the rain is shutting off. A small storm formed along the departing cold front and was dropping some decent rains across southern and eastern New England this morning. That rain was just barely clipping the southeast corner of Vermont down near Brattleboro with some sprinkles.

A few light showers might slightly dampen a few places in northern Vermont this afternoon, but that will amount to barely a trace, really. 

After today,  unless we get a pleasant surprise, it looks like we'll see no rain in Vermont until at least September 18 or 19.  Early indications are if it does rain then, it will be much less than impressive. 

Since we'd need more than an inch of rain a week for many weeks to get out of our drought, we're still pretty much screwed. The gains we made from the precipitation over the past few days will literally evaporate by the end of this week. From there, the already serious drought will keep deepening. 

I guess the only benefit of a drought is pleasant day to day weather. We'll have that for sure. Sunshine will brighten each day Monday through at least next Sunday. Temperatures over the next week or two at least will flip flop between a little cool for the season to slightly warm for the season. But there will be no extremes one way or the other. 

Highs today and tomorrow will only be in the 60s to maybe around 70 in the warm spots.  Lows for the next two or three nights will mostly be in the relatively chilly 40s.

The region may see its first autumn tangle with frost in the coldest hollows tomorrow night and early Tuesday. Temperatures in those cold spots could get well into the 30s, which actually isn't odd for this time of year. The National Weather Service in South Burlington is toying with the idea of issuing a frost advisory for the Adirondacks, but is waiting on more data before they decide to pull that trigger.

In any event, the vast majority of us are safe from any frost for now. 

Temperatures should warm well into the 70s and could even touch 80 in the hottest spots Wednesday before another big bubble of dry high pressure comes down from Canada. That cold front will not bring us any showers, unfortunately. 

It will cool us down into autumn mode for a few days at the end of the week (highs in the 60s, lows in the 40s, with 30s in the cold hollows).  

But as noted, the dry times will continue. I'm actually going so far as to actually pray for a wayward tropical storm to find its way to New England and northern New York, but there's nothing like that on the horizon.  

New England Is Overdue For A Hurricane. Spoiler: Not This Week!

From AccuWeather, paths of famous New England
hurricanes. Click on the map to make it bigger and
easier to read. New England is overdue for a
hurricane. The last one to strike the region
was Hurricane Bob in August, 1991.

 It's the peak of hurricane season, the time of year that makes places like Florida in particular extremely nervous. 

And Florida should be nervous, given the spate of horrible hurricanes they've had in recent years. They've actually been hit more frequently and harder than average since about 2017.

As awful as the hurricanes have been, at least Floridians now know the drill. They know how to prepare, when and how to evacuate and how to protect property to the extent they can. 

But hurricanes can and have hit every part of the U.S. coast from Brownsville, Texas to Eastport Maine. So yeah, we're at risk here in New England. 

However, we've been blessed by a hurricane drought. (Given the current rainfall drought, it's nice to talk about a drought that is actually beneficial)

The last time a hurricane made landfall in New England was Hurricane Bob in 1991.  It made landfall in  Rhode Island that year, causing $1.5 billion in damage at the time. That's equivalent to about $3.5 billion in today's dollars. 

The last Category 3 hurricane to hit New England's Carol on August 31, 1954,

Per AccuWeather: 

"Typically, every 15 to 20 years on average, a hurricane will strike New Jersey on northward into southern New England. A major hurricane - so that's Category 3 or higher - for the Northeast is every 60 to 70 years or so," AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva explained."

HURRICANE HISTORY 

The worst hurricane on record in New England was the Big One in 1938 which raced northwestward from Long Island and the central coast of Connecticut to west of Burlington.

Its strength and extremely rapid forward speed brought incredible winds and storm surges that killed upwards of 700 people, caused immense coastal destruction and toppled an estimated 10 percent of all the trees in New England. The Vermont maple sugar industry was devastated. 

If the Great Hurricane of 1938 came through today, it would cause as much as $10 billion in damage. 

There was a big spate of hurricanes and tropical storms between 1954 and 1960. Besides Carol, Hurricane Edna made landfall on Cape Cod on August 24. Hurricane Hazel made landfall on the South Carolina/North Carolina border in October of that year and raced to Toronto, Canada causing a lot of damage there. Hazel caused wind gusts of over 70 mph in western Vermont.

Hurricanes Connie and Diane in 1955 had fallen to below hurricane status by the time they got near New England, but they causes one of the worst floods on record in and around Connecticut. Then in 1960 Hurricane Donna swept through New England. 

Since then, there's not been much. The only other full-blown hurricane beside Bob to hit New England after Donna was Hurricane Gloria in 1985. 

NEW ENGLAND HURRICANE HOW-TO

As AccuWeather explains, the weather setup has to be a sort of Goldilocks situation, at least from the hurricane's perspective. A series of weather systems must line up perfectly to draw a hurricane to New England, which is why they're so rare.

First, you need a Bermuda High of just the right strength. Too weak and the hurricane passes northward harmlessly well off the East Coast. If the Bermuda High is too strong, the hurricane will head toward Florida or the Gulf Coast.

To get a New England hurricane, you also need a dip in the jet stream, ideally along the west slopes of the Appalachians or something very close to that. You also need a strong high pressure system in eastern Canada to block the storm from heading out to sea and directing it toward New England instead. 

Hurricanes also need warm water to survive. The water off the Northeast coast is not warm enough to support hurricanes. So a New England hurricane has to be racing northward to reach us so that it does not have time to weaken much over the colder water. 

EX-HURRICANES, RECENT CLOSE MISSES

As we well know in Vermont, it doesn't take a full-blown hurricane to cause huge problems for us. Hurricane Irene had been reduced to a tropical storm by the time it reached New England in August, 2011, but it caused one of the worst floods in Vermont history. 

Climate change is probably making ex-hurricanes more dangerous in Vermont and New England, and is increasing the chances an actually hurricane could hit us. 

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. So when the wet remnants of a hurricane reach us, they can dump more rain than they might have decades ago. For instance, the remnants of Beryl teamed up with a stalled weather front in July, 2024 to cause the severe flooding that month in Vermont. 

Climate change is heating the oceans off the East Coast.  If a hurricane encounters the perfect weather conditions needed to force it to a New England landfall, the water it passes over would be warmer than it was decades ago. That would slow the pace of the hurricane's weakening and could lead to a stronger storm striking the region. 

Warm ocean waters also seem to be leading to an increase in stronger hurricanes down in the tropics. So if a hurricane starts out stronger when it's, say, off the coast of Florida, chances are it would be stronger by the time it reaches New England. 

Hurricane Erin in August, which reached Category 5 strength out in the open Atlantic, is an example of this. The Bermuda High was weak enough to allow Erin to pass far off the East Coast, so the only effect it had on New England was rough surf and beach erosion. 

It does seem like tropical storms and former tropical storms are targeting New England lately. Besides the remnants of Beryl, we had the remnants of Hurricane Debby in August, 2024.  Debby caused some serious flooding in New York and Quebec, and some damaging winds here in Vermont. 

Tropical Storm Henri made landfall in Rhode Island in August, 2021, causing flooding, wind damage and power outages.  Tropical Storm Isaias passed right over Vermont in August, 2020, but its heavy rain came amid a drought, so flooding was minor and wind damage was minimal.

CURRENT SITUATION

The tropical Atlantic is oddly quiet today, especially since it is the peak of hurricane season. A disturbance in the central Atlantic Ocean has become much less likely to develop into a hurricane anytime soon. 

But things could get going anytime between now and November. If Vermont and the rest of New England avoids tropical trouble this year, great. But sooner or later, at least parts of the region will have a hurricane. It's only a matter of time. 

 

 

Vermont's Last Shot At Rain Diminishes, Severe Threat Southeast

Forecast rainfall for day. Most of Vermont only gets
 a third to a half inch, with more possible southeast
This will be the last appreciable rain for possibly
as long as two weeks or more, so the drought
will worsen again. 

As feared, meteorologists have backed off on the amount of badly needed rain we'll get today. Plus, the southeast corner of Vermont is at risk for severe storms. 

We'll take any rain we can get, and it will rain all over Vermont today. So that will very temporarily halt the drought's worsening trend. But after today, it's over.  The sky faucets shut off again and we go back to rainless skies. 

After today, almost no rain is anticipated for at least a week, save for some scattered sprinkles Sunday and again maybe Thursday. 

The forecast weather pattern is atrocious for drought relief possibly through the rest of the month. It features one dry, huge high pressure system after another coming through, with weak, moisture-starved cold fronts announcing each one. 

I hope the following is wrong, but it's possible (not definite!) that Vermont could receive only a half inch or less of rain through the rest of the month after today.  The already nasty drought would get much, much worse under that scenario. 

We'd better hope for some surprises coming up. Perhaps a dying tropical storm could pass by. Or one of those weak cold fronts could unexpectedly pick up some good moisture from the Atlantic Ocean of Gulf of Mexico. But so far I don't see it. 

Time to do rain dances, folks!

TODAY'S RAIN/SEVERE THREAT

In general, today's cold front will bring a third to three quarters of an inch of rain. 

The Northeast Kingdom appears to be the region most cheated by this round of rain. Or lack of it.  That region got mostly just 0.05 to 0.2 inches of rain early Friday. In today's round, only another third to a half inch of rain is expected. 

Northwest Vermont will probably receive even less rain today, maybe a third of an inch or a little under that. But the rain there Thursday night and early Friday was generous, dumping as much as 1.53 inches in Fairfax, 1.3 inches in St Albans and close to an inch elsewhere in the northern half of the Champlain Valley. 

Severe thunderstorms, maybe even a brief 
tornado are possible in the dark green and
especially yellow areas of this map today. 
Notice it clips southeast Vermont.

Plus, parts of northwest Vermont got some bonus showers overnight. Burlington had about a quarter inch around midnight and my unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans, collected 0.45 inches on top of the 1.3 inches from Thursday night. 

Once again, the rest of Vermont, which needs the rain more than the northwest corner of the state, missed out on last night's showers.  

The most rain today would fall over far southeast Vermont. That's good because they've missed out on a lot of the paltry rains we've gotten.  Places like Brattleboro and Springfield could see anywhere from 0.75 to an inch of rain if the downpours line up just right. 

Southeast Vermont could pay a price for those good rains in the form of severe thunderstorms. The rain in northwest Vermont overnight was the actual cold front, which has temporarily stalled around Vermont,

In the northwestern two thirds of the Green Mountain State, it will just be rain today, with perhaps a rumble of thunder in central Vermont.

However, in the humid air ahead of the front, a narrow risk zone of severe storms extends from New Jersey through central and southern New England and on into Maine and New Hampshire. This severe weather risk zone clips southern Vermont, south and east of a line from Manchester to White River Junction, with the greatest threat south and east of a line from Bennington to Springfield. 

The atmospheric dynamics are great, so a band of strong to possibly severe storms should come through those southeast regions this afternoon.  There's going to be some spin in the atmosphere, too, so that could generate a few supercell thunderstorms. Which introduces the low but not zero chance of a brief tornado or two down in extreme southeast Vermont, and in southern New Hampshire, southwestern Maine and northwest Massachusetts. 

The rough weather should be out of Vermont before evening. You'll notice temperatures dropping statewide this afternoon, so if you're going out, bring a hoodie along with the rain gear. 

Tomorrow should be cool and partly sunny, except mostly cloudy in the northern mountains. There could be some brief, light showers, especially in the northern Greens. 

"Dry Lightning" Sets Much Of The West On Fire

Much of the tiny town of Chinese Camp, California
was destroyed by a wildfire caused by a barrage
of "dry lightning" this wee. The town was 
a historic Gold Rush hamlet with many
Chinese immigrants. Pictured is one of
the destroyed historic buildings there. 

Lightning strikes this week greatly added to the already growing list of western wildfires, especially in California. 

In just one 24 hour period earlier this week, nearly 17,000 lightning strikes were recorded in California. Many of those were "dry lightning" which is lightning in storms that produce little or no rain. 

These are especially dangerous in the West, as it's the driest time of the year out there. 

Vegetation has been cooking in the summer sunshine in a season that almost never brings much rain. So, inevitably, a bunch of new wildfires started with the lightning. 

As of today, many continued to burn. 

The worst of it might have been a broad area near the San Francisco Bay area early Tuesday morning. 

Per USA Today:

"Between  midnight and 5:30 a.m. local time, nearly 4,800 lightning strikes were recorded, including in-cloud and cloud to ground lightning.  Lightning data shared by the National Weather Service showed that the lightning strikes were concentrated in areas between the inland East Bay and Central Valley." 

Not much rain accompanied the Bay Area thunderstorms.  The National Weather Service office in the Bay Area reported numerous fire starts. So far, the new fires have not consumed much acreage. 

Another lightning hotspot on Tuesday was in the central and southern Sierra Nevada foothills.  Daniel Swain, a University of California Los Angeles climate scientist, said at around noon local time that there were dozens of new lightning ignitions already reported mostly in the foothills with many more coming in by the minute. 

These new fires were in addition to several fires that had been burning for several days. Many of these fires were spreading amid hot, dry weather. 

The fires have already created some serious losses. As the Washington Post reports: 

"Several parts of Tuolumne County, including the town of Chinese Camp, were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday. Video footage shared by KCRA 3 News, a Sacramento broadcaster, showed destroyed homes and downed power lines in the town, a historic mining settlement once home to thousands of Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush." 

The fact there are already so many new fires, in addition to the pre-existing ones, makes it hard for firefighters to figure out which blazes to target, since they can't get to them all. That increases the chances that any of the fires could really get out of hand and race through a town or neighborhood when the winds pick up. 

To give you an idea how many fires are overwhelming responders, there's this:  The initial firefighters responding to a blaze usually give a particular wildfire a name based on things like nearby landmarks. So you get things like the Gifford Fire now burning in California, and the Dragon Bravo fire, which burned 106 buildings on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in early July and is still burning

So many lightning-started blazes cropped up Tuesday that CalFire just called the collection of blazes the TCU September Lightning Complex and are given individual new fires numbers, like the 6-5 Fire and the 2-7 Fire.  There's no time to come up with names. 

It also doesn't help that the weather pattern is keeping much of California and the Pacific Northwest unusually warm this week, and mostly dry. In the far northwestern part of California, vegetation is at near record dry levels for this time of year.

Several wildfires are also raging in British Columbia, Canada amid unprecedented September heat.  Ashcroft, British Columbia hit 105.4 degrees Fahrenheit Wednesday, the hottest September temperature on record for the entire nation of Canada. 

More dry lighting is going on today in parts of British Columbia, Oregon and Washington today and tomorrow, so there might be even more blazes to add to the long list of 'em currently burning. 

Meanwhile, the fires are producing widespread air quality alerts in large parts of Washington, Oregon, Idahos, Wyoming and western Montana.

It's starting to affect us here in Vermont again. I noticed a little smoke aloft today, after going at least two weeks with very little smoke in the air around here. 

Fires still burning in Canada, along with the growing number of fires in the western United States will keep spreading smoke across much of the nation, probably for the next several weeks. 

Attempts At A Little Drought Relief In Vermont, But Some Of It Falls Short

Droughts tend to be self-perpetuating, and we see that in what's going on in Vermont now. 

A nice amount of water in my St. Albans, Vermont rain
gauge this morning from last night's weather front,
but most of Vermont missed out again. The drought
will not go away anytime soon, even where 
there were a few downpours last night. 

A wet weather front approached us Thursday and Thursday night from New York and actually held together enough to give a corner of northwest Vermont a decent soaking.  

It still had enough oomph left to deposit a healthy 1.16 inches of rain in Burlington and a glorious 1.3 inches here in St. Albans. So not bad! Not enough to end the drought, but it did wet us down a bit

As the front moved further eastward into Vermont in continued to run into a buzzsaw of dry air over the dusty Green Mountain State .  The rains quickly evaporated.  

Part of the problem was the front was just running out of gas and the contrast in temperatures in front of and behind it fell apart. That helped reduce the amount of rising air that manufactures rain. Plus, the sun had set, so the instability in the air was waning, which reduced the amount of rainfall. 

If the air had been more humid before last night's weather system got here, the rain might have held together longer and covered more of Vermont.  And had the ground been wetter instead of parched that would have translated a little humidity to the air to help with process of making rain. 

 Most of eastern and southern Vermont, which needed the rain even more than areas west of the Greens, only received a few hundredths of an inch of rain last night.  Not really even enough to get things vaguely wet.

We do have another shot at receiving rain, but it will be no drought buster. 

Before we get there, we have another dry, sunny day to get through. The clouds were clearing this morning. Though the air won't be as arid as it was Thursday, the sunshine and breezes should resume the drying process in northwest Vermont and continue it in the east. 

The forecast has been consisted for a second cold front to drop a decent amount of rain tomorrow. Let's hope that forecast holds up. 

Even better, if the predictions are correct,   this next round of rain tomorrow will hit eastern Vermont the hardest. Still, those areas should receive only a half inch to at most an inch of rain.  Northwest Vermont should receive an additional third to a half inch of rain Saturday. 

Saturday's rains will help somewhat, as it will be a steady soaker,  But you need several of those for the rest of the fall, and so far, that doesn't look like it's in the cards. 

Next week looks dry once again, with only scattered light showers or sprinkles at most. The weather pattern through mid-September and probably well beyond that features a series of big fat, dry, slow moving high pressure systems coming from Canada.  

That means cool outbreaks, then warm ups as the sunny highs with low humidity sit right over us for a few days, sucking away what little moisture we have left. Then, new cold fronts with new outbreaks of chilly, dry air come in, rinse and repeat.

Except there's no rinse. The cold fronts that will introduce each new dry high pressure system will probably be moisture-starved, and provide very little wetting. That's very bad news. 

DROUGHT IN PERSPECTIVE

The gold standard for measuring droughts is the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, which has been in operation since 2000.

According to the Drought Monitor data, our current Vermont drought is the most intense since at least 2000.  I remember a similar drought in the late summer of 1999, but it wasn't as bad as this, and ended abruptly with a very wet September. Which won't happen this year. 

Vermont faced persistent drought in the 1960s, but it was a sort of long lasting, low-key affair in which precipitation was mostly below normal, but it never really entirely shut off, like it did this August. Back then, we had problems with dry wells, and iffy crop yields, but the trees weren't turning brown in the middle of August like they did this year. 

There was also a spring drought way back in 1903, when Burlington got only 1.63 inches of rain in April, and just a trace in May, which is the driest month on record. But the summer of 1903 was wet, so that drought eased. 

It's going to take a lot to get out of this one. Vermont State Climatologist Lesley-Ann Duping-Giroux was quoted by VTDigger than the state needs six to eight inches of rain throughout a month to pull itself out of this drought. And the rain would need to keep coming after that, 

We're going to need a lot of wet nor'easters, stalled weather fronts and other inclement weather later this fall, through the winter and next spring to recover from this.  

Vermont is already feeling the economic effects of this drought. Farmers are running out of water for livestock.  They have to buy expensive feed because they're not growing enough of their own because the drought stunted yields. 

The drought might dull Vermont's famed foliage season, which could cut into the revenue we get from the annual influx of leaf peepers. 

If this keeps up, the ski industry might be in trouble, since resorts use a lot of water to make snow. 

It's hard to pin a drought like this directly to climate change, but it's consistent with it.  With climate change, there's a lot of weather whiplash -  everybody goes from one extreme to another.  The summers of 2023 and 2024 in Vermont were disastrously wet, with extreme flooding and destruction. 

Suddenly this year, the rivers are dry, the lawns are brown and the wells are empty. The only consistent thing between these summers is it was unusually hot. 

The hot weather patterns of 2023 and 2024 were accompanied by high humidity and plenty of storm systems to wring out that excess moisture into flooding rain. The warmth and heat of 2025 has often been dry, and there's been precious few storms to wring out any water in the air to give us rain.