Vermont's Season Of Thunderstorms Has Arrived, Nothing Intense In The Offing, Though

A supercell thunderstorm near Sheldon, Vermont on 
May 4, 2018.  Severe thunderstorms are rare this
early in the spring across Vermont, but we've entered
the season where we'll see garden variety storms'
more and more often. Some thunder is possible
in northern Vermont tonight. 

 Last evening, tornadoes and gorilla hail menaced large sections of eastern Nebraska and Iowa as yet another spring weather system rolled through. 

That same weather system is coming our way, but you can relax. We in Vermont will be seeing no tornadoes, and no bombardments of hail..

In northern Vermont, at least, this system could send some rumbling thunderstorms through in the middle of the night, waking us up toward midnight tonight or a little after. 

As we hear the word "snow" less and less in the weather forecasts, we're hear the word "thunder" more and more often as we head through the spring. 

We already had our first round of thunderstorms of the season back on April 3.  But as the atmosphere warms with the season, it'll be more and more primed for thunder and lightning if any weather disturbance  happens to be coming through. 

Thunderstorms need warm, moist air to survive and thrive. Of course, that kind of air is sorely lacking around here during the winter.  But that type of humid air gains strength starting about now. 

The warmer and more humid the air, in general, the more likely you are to have a thunderstorm.  If the air above is cool, the warm, wet air can billow upward, forming the towering clouds that produce thunder and lighting.

In tonight's case, a warm front will push a batch of relatively balmy, humid-ish air in, causing that wave of showers and possible thunderstorms. Because of the trajectory of the weather system coming in, the storms are most likely near and north of the Canadian border. 

On Saturday, we'll be in that warm air so many of us will see temperatures reaching at least 70 degrees. A weak weather front might touch off a few widely scattered showers or storms during the day, but if they form, they will be very few and far between. 

More thunder is possible toward Monday or Tuesday, but we are not sure on that yet.

SEVERE STORMS COME LATER

While thunderstorms are getting more common in Vermont starting about now, severe storms are pretty rare until you get into late spring and especially summer.  Storms packing damaging winds, large hail and flash floods are most likely in Vermont from around Memorial Day to late August. 

Of course, under the right conditions, severe storms can happen earlier in the spring, too. One notable incident was on March 26, 2021 when an EF-1 tornado in Middlebury packing winds of up to 110 mph severely damaged one home, caused lighter damage to a few others and injured two people. 

It was the earliest in the season tornado on record.

Another storm system on May 4, 2018,  prompted tornado watches and some supercell thunderstorms that caused areas of serious wind damage in parts of the Green Mountain State. Hundreds of trees blew down in and around Shelburne in one of those storms. 

A rotating supercell over far northern Vermont that day prompted worries about a tornado, but the Green Mountains disrupted the circulation enough to prevent anything from touching down.