An Interesting, Surprisingly Stormy Vermont Weather Saturday Pushes Us Further Into Spring

Saturday's relatively humid weather and showers here
in St. Albans, Vermont has really pushed the 
daffodils to bloom enthusiastically. 

 Saturday's weather in Vermont proved more interesting than I - and many weather forecasters - thought it would be. 

Nothing bad happened, of course, which is always nice. Usually "interesting" weather spells trouble. 

But all Saturday's activity did is give some of us a needed wet down, and entertain weather geeks like me. And the rather humid air really pushed the spring season forward very nicely. 

The interesting aspect of Saturday was the persistent showers and a few thunderstorms, plus a temperature contrast that developed in New England. 

Showers and scattered thunderstorms were expected early in the day and that part of the forecast was accurate.

Those showers were expected to become widely scattered hit and miss things, with many of us getting nothing by afternoon.

But they persisted. Some areas still got relatively little rain, whiles other got unexpectedly drenched.

We had a preview of a summer danger:  Training storms. That's when one storm after another goes over the same spot. I always described them like a bunch of boxcars on a train traveling down the tracks. 

Training storms often lead to local, but sometimes severe flash floods. Nothing of the sort happened Saturday, but we did get a mini-preview of the phenomenon.  Training showers passed from the central Adirondacks into the middle Champlain Valley and on into central Vermont. 

Burlington, which had been expecting less than a quarter inch of rain Saturday, wound up with a decent 0.8 inches.  It's early in the season, so these training showers (with a little bit of embedded thunder)  weren't all that intense, so their effects were pretty benign.

Although humid air made it all the way through Vermont, the expected warmth didn't.  The showers kept the high temperature down to 66 in Burlington and 68 in Montpelier. Mild for the season, but nothing extraordinary. 

The mild, rather damp weather made spring advance tremendously. On Friday, a handful of scattered daffodils were blooming in my yard. By the end of the day Saturday, I was practically drowning in those happy yellow spring blooms. Not that I'm complaining!

Northern Vermont just barely missed out in the first truly summertime temperature of the season.  Down in Bennington and Springfield, Vermont, it got to 79 degrees. In southern New England it was as toasty as 89 degrees in Windsor Locks, Connecticut . 

Don't worry, we'll have our summer weather eventually. 

NEXT UP

A sharp but rather dry cold front blustered through last night, and its back to chilly weather today. It'll be pretty gusty, with north winds gusting to over 30 to 35 mph at times, so hang on to your Easter Bonnet! Strongest winds will be east of the Green Mountains. 

But the clouds you saw this morning will erode into blue skies, as temperatures stay cool.  That sets us up for probably the coldest night we'll see until next autumn.  Everybody gets a freeze tonight. If you put out early plants to harden them off for the season, bring 'em in. 

Although your perennials out there are popping up nicely, I'd say at least 95 percent of them should be fine despite tonight's chill.  Early perennials are pretty tough. The only disheartening piece of tonight's freeze is if your magnolia is blooming, you're probably going to wind up with brown, dead flowers from the tonight's freeze. 

By the way, the National Weather Service office in Burlington is not issuing frost and freeze alerts for tonight because the growing season hasn't really officially started yet. 

The upcoming week in Vermont is looking pretty tame and pleasant enough, at least in terms of weather. As far as the rest of the world's news, all bets are off, as we're already well aware.  

Temperatures in the Green Mountain State each day should be near normal or a little on the warm side, but nothing extreme. In the valleys, most days should top 60 degrees, and tonight's freeze should be the last one for at least a week. 

Especially for those who didn't get much rain yesterday, the news isn't great because I'm not expecting much rain at all over the next seven days. Some light rain looks like it will come through tomorrow night, but that'll only amount to a quarter inch of precipitation at most. 

There might be some scattered showers Tuesday.  After that, the next chance of rain comes Friday or Saturday. So far, that end of week wet weather does not look all that impressive.