Vermont's "Normal" April Weather Was Actually Quite Warm By Historical Standards, Climate Change Rules

A mild April in Vermont got the spring flower season
off to a fairly early start, as seen here 
in St. Albans in photo taken April 20. 

 At first glance, April's temperatures seemed pretty close to average.

Burlington reported a mean temperature of 47.0 degrees for the month, which is regarded as just 1.4 degrees above "normal." 

But once again, we're running into the "new normal."   

"Normal" is the average temperatures from 1990 to 2020, when climate change had already altered the temperatures in Vermont and in so many other places.

Historically, April was colder. If April, 2025 had happened a few decades ago, we'd be remarking about how warm it was.  In fact, in Burlington, by my count, April 2025 was the 14th warmest on record out of the past 125 years or so. 

Statewide, it was pretty much the same. Most places were a little over a degree warmer than the new average.

It's also striking how comparatively warm April nights have gotten. It used to routinely get down into the teens and even upper single numbers in Burlington during the first half of the month.  That's rare now.

This year, the coldest it got was 22 degrees on April 2. In the past 20 years, it's only gotten into the teens once in Burlington during April. That was back in 2016. 

In the previous two decades, 1984 to 2004, it got into the teens during April on eight occasions. In an even earlier era, all but one April from 1962 to 1978 got into the teens, and three of those were in the single numbers.

Winter is definitely ending earlier than it used to in Vermont. 

RAINFALL/SNOWFALL/STORMS

The amount of rain Vermont saw in April was kinda unremarkable.  Far southwest Vermont and the Champlain Valley was a bit on the wet side, while the rest of the state was a half inch or so on the dry side. 

Not much snow fell, either, except in the highest elevations of the northern Green Mountains. Most valley locations had an inch or less of snow. Burlington clocked in with just 0.4 inches, compared to a normal of 4.1 inches. 

Another thing I noticed about April, 2025 in Vermont was how "boring" the weather was. 

That's a good thing!

It seemed that every day in April the headlines were filled with some weather horror from somewhere in the United States - marauding tornadoes, epic floods, terrifying wildfires and bombardments of giant hail.

Here in Vermont, just frequent April showers interspersed with a few sunny, pleasant days to set the stage for the inevitable May flowers. We had no giant storms, no floods to speak of, no devastation, no disaster areas. Which, given Vermont's recent weather history, is a big gift.

There was some pretty good snow squalls in northern Vermont on April 8 and some late season snow in parts of the state on April 27 and some thunderstorms on April 3 and 29, but nothing major. 

April was windy, though, in keeping with what has been an oddly windy year. During April, winds gusted past 30 mph in Burlington on 18 days and to at least 40 mph on seven days. We had eight consecutive days mid month in which winds blew to at least 30 mph. 

MAY OUTLOOK

As always, it's hard to tease out what the next month will look like. 

A month ago, I did say that at least the first half of April would be on the cool side. And it was, sort, of coming out close to long term averages. The second half of April was quite mild, though. 

The first part of May is looking even more iffy than usual. An upper level low is expected to roam somewhere near the East Coast for the first several days of the month.  Depending on where it sets up, Vermont could see lots of showers, or lots of warm sunshine.  If the low sets up close by, it'll be wet. If it's further down the coast or off the eastern seaboard, warm and dry. 

Take your pick. 

For the record, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center leans toward a warmer than normal May for most of the eastern two-thirds of the United States, including here in Vermont. They give us equal chances of above or below normal temperatures. 

With any luck at all, May weather in Vermont will be as mellow as April was.