June In Vermont: Warm, Dry, But Humid, With A Historic Heat Wave

A very chill Henry the Weather Dog in St.Albans,
Vermont calculating in his head the June weather
statistics for Vermont. Being originally from
San Antonio, Texas, Henry was not as gobsmacked
by the record heat wave we experienced last week
as the rest of us Vermonters. 

 June is over, the votes are tallied and we find that Vermont had yet another warm month. 

As tallied in Burlington, the average temperature for June, 2025 came out to 70.3 degrees. That brings us to a tie with last year for the seventh warmest June on record in Burlington. 

The month features temperatures that usually leaned to the warm side, but never deviated much from normal until the historic heat wave of June 23-24. Those two days really skewed the month to the warm side. 

North Springfield, Vermont reached 103 degrees on June 23, making it the hottest June temperature ever reliably recorded anywhere in the Green Mountain State. All six New England states broke or tied their June records. 

I've already written a lot about that heat wave, so regular readers already get the idea. It was an absolutely bonkers couple of days in an otherwise pretty mellow month. 

Overall, northern Vermont was warmer relative to average than southern parts of state. Remember, we're now in a "new" normal due to climate change. "Normal" temperatures are hotter than they used to be. Even by that new metric, northern Vermont in June was 2.5 to 3.5 degrees above that new average.

Southern Vermont was only about 1.5 degrees warmer than this "new" average. 

For the first six months of this year. Burlington is running about 1.4 degrees warmer than the "new normal."  That's actually not as warm as recent years,  This year looks like it might break an incredible streak of climate record in Burlington,  Each of the past five years were among the top seven hottest on record in Burlington, 

Unless the second half of 2025 is incredibly warm, we might not make the top 10 list this year. 

RAINFALL

June has a wet reputation, especially in the past few decades. However, June, 2025 bucked the trend by being a dry month. Which is OK, since May was so wet. 

Burlington had just 1.99 inches of rain, a little less than half normal. It was the second driest June since 2000, and the 24th driest since 1884, when reliable records started. The rest of northern Vermont also couldn't muster even half of the month's normal rainfall. 

Southern Vermont did a little better, but precipitation was on the light side there, too. Even with the lighter rainfall, flash flooding on June 6 did cause some damage across parts of southeastern Vermont. 

We also continued Vermont's reputation for weekend rain. Last weekend in Burlington was the 28th weekend in a row with at least a little precipitation. That's getting close to the all time record of 30 consecutive weekends with rain or snow. 

Wildfire smoke made an unwelcome appearance once again in early June as Canadian wildfires raged.  The smoke mercifully tended to diminish - at least for now - later in the month. 

Severe thunderstorms often strike in June, but this year, there weren't many. An odd brief tornado did touch down across the pond in Beekmantown, New York on June 10. Otherwise, there was only a small smattering of storm damage reports in Vermont on June 19 and 24, but nothing widespread.

LOOKING AHEAD

It's always a big gamble trying to judge what the following month's weather will be.

At the end of May, forecasters said Vermont's June would be warm, so that was correct. It was a tossup as to whether June would be wet or dry. It ended up being dry. I can't call the rain forecast for June wrong, because there really wasn't a forecast. 

Long range forecasts have consistently indicated a hot July. That may well be.  But I've seen a few instances in which everybody claimed a particular month would be incredibly hot or incredibly cold only to find the opposite actually occurred. 

For the record, NOAA says the best chances for above normal temperatures in the United States in July are in the central Rocky Mountains, central Texas and the Northeast, including Vermont. NOAA's July precipitation forecast for Vermont leans slightly toward the wet side, but it's a pretty tentative forecast. 

We'll tell all about what really happened on August 1