Vermont's Fate Rest Of Week: Smoke, Heat, Then Storms And (Obviously!) A Rainy Saturday

Visible satellite photo of the Northeast U.S. and part of
southeast Canada at around 4 p.m, Tuesday That hazy
wispy stuff you see stretching from Quebec
through New York and western Vermont and down
off the Mid-Atlantic coast is smoke from 
Canadian forest fires.

A variety pack of weather awaits Vermont during the next few days, but spoiler: You know what Saturday's going to bring!  If you've lived through Saturdays in Vermont this year, you know the wet drill. 

Before that, we have a bunch of stuff to consider

SMOKE

Smoke from Canadian wildfires blew into Vermont as expected Tuesday, or more accurately, over Vermont.

Most of the smoke that turns the sky a sad bluish, yellowish gray and made the sunshine copper colored was high overhead, where we don't breathe.

Some smoke has made it down to the valleys where we live, but not much. Air quality in Vermont was still considered good this morning, though flirting with "moderate" in the north. 

Moderate means the air is still relatively clean, but there's enough stuff like particulates to bother people who are especially sensitive to pollution. 

The smokiness seems to be peaking this morning in Vermont. It looks like it will thin out a little mid to late afternoon, but not entirely go away. It'll still be hazy all day. 

HEAT

Today will be the hottest day of the year so far. You wouldn't think so in eastern Vermont early this morning, as temperatures there were in the 40s. But the Champlain Valley was in the 60s at dawn, and it'll go up sharply from there,

Pretty much everybody will be in the 80s this afternoon.  A few of the hottest spots might touch 90, though the smoke might dim the sun just enough to make us fall short. The National Weather Service is going with a 90 degree high in Burlington today, which would be the first such reading of the year. 

Humidity should be tolerable most of the day, but start to rise this evening. It'll be the first truly muggy night of the summer tonight, with most of us just getting down into the 60s. 

It'll be almost as hot tomorrow, with highs in the 80s, maybe near 90 again this time in the southeastern Vermont valleys. It will be more humid than today, so it will feel worse. And of course, summertime humidity often leads to.....

THUNDERSTORMS

An approaching weak cold front pushing into the heat and humidity will be enough to touch off some showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening. This will be a hit and miss, winners and losers sort of situation. 

Most of us have about a 50/50 shot at seeing an afternoon thunderstorm. Some of us will get absolutely nothing, others will get pretty blasted. Others will have close misses or experience the edges of showers and storms. 

Given the heat and humidity, a couple storms might turn out to be strong to severe. A small minority of Vermont towns could get hit by damaging winds, small hail and torrential downpours. 

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center currently  has all of Vermont and surrounding areas in a marginal risk of severe storms on Thursday. That's a level one out of five alert tiers, and means there could be isolated instances of severe storms.

Only a few areas will see torrential downpours, and the storms will be moving right along instead of lingering over a particular spot, so the chances of flash flooding seem pretty low to me right now.

If things come together more than we think now, there could be slightly more numerous possibly strong storms on Thursday than currently forecast, but we'll wait for updates tomorrow morning.

FRIDAY

That weak cold front will limp into Vermont and stall over us or nearby.  Not sure exactly where yet, but we'll still have a chance of showers, Especially near where the front hangs up.  It'll be a little cooler, too, but still a bit on the warm side. We're calling in mid 70s to around 80 for now.

SATURDAY

It looks like we'll make it Vermont's 11th Saturday in a row with rain.  The entire state has a really good chance of seeing raindrops. It's now a question of whether it will be light and scattered or heavy, Even maybe heavy enough for a flood risk 

Before you panic, we don't even know whether it will rain torrentially anywhere,  That stalled front will be around....somewhere. 

A small storm will ride southwest to northeast along the front, which should produce the band of heavier rain. But the computer models as of this morning were all over the place with exactly where that might be. The area of downpours could be focused near Montreal, Or near New York City. Or someplace in between.

Since Vermont is - duh! between Montreal and New York, that does open the possibility that part of the Green Mountain State could see some torrents on Saturday. I guess we'll have to stay tuned to see where this goes.