Beneficial Rains In A Corner Of Vermont, But Dry Conditions Carry On Elsewhere In State

The swirl in the clouds in this satellite photo 
clearly indicates an upper level low centered
just about over Montreal Saturday afternoon.
This arrangement sent bands of welcome
showers into northern Vermont, but
breaks of sun kept southern areas dry. 

Well, some of us got some badly needed rain, anyway.

We had a nice, rainy couple days in far northern Vermont, and I think that actually must have dented the building drought in that part of the state. 

The cold upper low that was parked near Montreal Saturday gave northern Vermont an extra dose of decent rains.  We were only expecting a few hundredths of an inch of rain. We got a quarter inch up north. A small bonus for once!   

That upper low kept us cold, but it was worth the price because of the rain. 

The high temperature Saturday in Burlington was just  64 degrees - which is normal for about October 4, and about 15 degrees chillier than normal for the end of August. Southern areas like Springfield, which got some sun, made it to a reasonable 73 degrees

Over the past week, the northern Champlain Valley did the best of anybody with rain.   Burlington had only 0.4 inches of rain during the month through August 23. But then, in the past week, another 1.26 inches of rain poured down on Burlington. 

That's not a huge amount, but for a change it was more or less normal for a week. Here in St. Albans, we've had 1.4 inches in the past week. So my garden plants have definitely perked up.  

Elsewhere, in Vermont, the latest chance at drought relief over the past couple of days was a bit of a whiff, especially in southern Vermont. Very little rain fell down in that neck of the woods. The area around Springfield has had only a trace of rain in the past week  

Burlington will not have one of its driest Augusts on record due to rain in the past week, but other Vermont communities definitely will.   Montpelier has had only 0.62 inches of rain so far this month. St. Johnsbury just 0.94 inches.

FORECAST

It was chilly this morning, but now that skies have cleared up statewide, the sun will go right to work today. Everybody will be well into the 70s by mid afternoon. A nice day to do anything outdoors, for sure. 

Labor Day looks nice, too. We might have some extra clouds in the afternoon, but it will still be warm and partly sunny after another chilly early morning. Continued low humidity should keep things quite comfortable. 

We do have another shot at some decent rain - maybe - at the end of the week.

Before we get there, we have a slight change to what had been a wall to wall sunshine forecast that would have lasted until Wednesday evening

A weak disturbance on Tuesday might kick off a few showers. Not many, and probably most places will stay dry. But those scattered showers might dampen a few places, especially over the mountains. 

Even though it will be seasonably warm all week, the overall weather pattern still features odd early cold blasts coming into the eastern half of the U.S.

The next such chilly outbreak is nippier than the last, and promises frost in northern Minnesota and maybe even snowflakes up near Lake Superior.

Since the core of the cold blast is coming down into the western Great Lakes, that opens up the possibility of a nice flow of humid air coming up from the south ahead of a cold front that will be approaching us Thursday and Friday. 

If things work out right, that could give us a decent dump of rain here in Vermont. 

A lot of things might still go wrong. Perhaps the core of the heaviest rain might pass just to our west. Or the cold front could speed up, and whisk its way through here without having a chance to dump much rain. 

We'll need to wait  until we get closer to the event to see what's really going on. 

But if we get lucky, that end of week cold front just might wet the entire state down, not just a few places. We'll keep an eye on it.