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| A small shower that formed east of St Albans, Vermont in the humid Saturday evening air created this pretty sky after a very rainy morning and muggy afternoon. |
At least the weather didn't cause trouble or anything particularly noticeably bad for everyone. Still it was an odd day.
As Saturday continued, I saw one of the steepest single-day increases in humidity I've ever seen.
A little before dawn in Burlington, dry air had been pulled down from aloft. The gave the city a dew point of 40 degrees, which is very, very low for June. By 5 p.m. the dew point was 65 degrees, which is pretty muggy.
This led to a typical summer evening with a humid mix of clouds and sun and some pop up showers and storms here ad there.
Earlier, in the morning, there was quite a maldistribution of rainfall, too. Showers and thunderstorms kept flowing across Vermont, north of Route 2. But they largely missed most other places.
Here in St. Albans, my unofficial rain gauge caught a storm total of 1.1 inches Friday night and Saturday morning, a really solid rainfall. Meanwhile, Burlington, just south of the rain band, captured a paltry 0.05 inches. Impressively low, considering some forecast several days ahead of Saturday's system were forecasting more than two inches of rain for Burlington.
Still, Burlington did have measurable rain Saturday. There have been 100 days with measurable precipitation so far this year in Burlington, which is the most to date of any year in records dating back to 1884.
Rainfall so far this year in Burlington is actually running close to normal. It's just the precipitation has been oddly frequent.
This all leaves us with a far northern Vermont, and southern Vermont with decent soil moisture, and some dry conditions across central Vermont. Odd "winner and loser" type rain situations often happen in a Vermont summer. Hopefully that will even out soon.
TODAY
Skies have been slow to clear this morning, so it might be awhile for some of us to actually enjoy some sunshine. It'll get there, eventually. The atmosphere is playing with us again, just as it did yesterday. This time, an inversion has formed, with a layer of warm air above cool air.
That trapped some moisture in the lower atmosphere, hence the cloud. The strong late June sunshine is at work mixing the air up, which should disperse the clouds this afternoon. It should still get sunny this afternoon in most places, with highs near 80, a decent amount sun (we hope!) and comfortable humidity.
LOOKING AHEAD TO THE FOURTH
Monday still looks hot, but at least the humidity will only be moderately high. Warmer valleys could easily make it to 90 degrees again, but the dew point should be in the 60s. That's kinda muggy, but not terrible. Not like last week's heat.
A cold front of sorts Tuesday will probably spread some showers and thunderstorms across Vermont. There's a low chance some of them will be strong. Since Tuesday will become terribly humid, some storms might dump some torrential downpours. We'll keep an eye on that. I doubt Tuesday will bring us widespread scariness, but the situation is still worth keeping an eye on.
I call Tuesday's system a cold front of sorts because the air behind it won't be any cooler, really, Just drier. Wednesday could be quite a warm day with readings well into the 80s.
It does look like another front with cooler air and even colder air aloft should come through Thursday with its own packet of non-severe showers and storms.
If this all plays out as expected, the Fourth of July could end up being pretty nice. It'll probably be cool for the season, with highs only in the 70s. I imagine we'd see a fair amount of sun, but that chilly air aloft might clutter the afternoon sky with some so-called fair weather clouds.
I never understood how they can be called fair weather clouds on days when they make the sky mostly cloudy but what do I know? That said, I think we might end up with a good amount of sun on the Fourth.
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