"Death Valley" Weather Hit Vermont Today. I've Never Seen Anything Like It

I left this thermometer in the sun against the west side
of my St. Albans, Vermont house and it ended up at 120 
degrees. The actual temperature (in the shade)
was still a record 97 degrees. 

Today will go down in history as one of the strangest and really, one of the more worrying weather days I've ever seen in Vermont. 

The high temperature in Burlington today was 98 according to preliminary data. That broke the old record high for the date of 93, set in 2002.

Yes, it's been that hot in Vermont before, but not that often. But the combination of heat and dryness is absolutely unprecedented as far as I can tell. 

At 3 p.m. in Burlington, it was 97 degrees. The dew point was a bone dry 46 degrees yielding a relative humidity of 17 percent. 

 That kind of heat/low humidity combination is something you see in places like Phoenix or Death Valley. 

For comparison, at noon local time Tuesday, it was 113 degrees, dew point 44 with a relative humidity of 10 percent at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, so you can sort of see the similarities.   The relative humidity in Phoenix was 22 percent, so it was "muggier" there than in Burlington. 

As you can imagine, crops in Vermont are stressed. The forest fire danger is sky high. Burn bans are in effect statewide. There was already a relatively small grass fire in Georgia, Vermont Monday. A fallen power line in Shrewsbury sparked another fire Tuesday, but that one was quickly contained, too. Another one-acre wildfire in Au Sable Forks, New York today was at last report mostly contained.  

Those were small fires, but showed the potential of what could happen. 

What we're going through now in Vermont is a classic example of weather whiplash - when conditions go from one extreme to another. When summer began, it was really, really wet in the Green Mountain State. As recently as July 10, damaging flash floods hit parts of the Northeast Kingdom.

Now, suddenly it's super dry.  These one extreme to another events are getting more frequent in the age of climate change. Get used to it. 

For all I know, we'll be talking about floods again in another month or two. Watch this space.

HOT DAYS ACCUMULATING

Today was also the 16th day this year it's gotten into the 90s in Burlington. This is only the tenth year of the past 140 or so in Burlington that has had that many days reaching 90 degrees or  more. 

Tomorrow, ahead of our desperately anticipated cold front, it will get much more humid. The increase in clouds will keep actual temperatures a little lower than they were today, but the higher humidity will make it feel worse than it was this afternoon. 

So, the heat advisory in the Champlain Valley has been extended to Wednesday evening. It might or might not reach 90 degrees in Burlington. It depends on how fast the clouds and showers arrive. 

That cold front still looks like it will set off some badly needed showers and thunderstorms. But typical of summer, they will be hit and miss. A few towns will receive nice downpours, other places will get a little rain. A few of us will get nothing at all.

Even those neighborhoods that have a brief torrential blast of rain won't be out of the woods. It will dry out quickly again amid low humidity Thursday into Saturday. Especially in northern Vermont. Southern areas might at least stay somewhat more humid, with a low risk of showers. 

Another cold front Sunday still looks like it might spark off more showers, but no heavy rain.  But it is looking like a bonafide spell of cooler than average August weather will come in early next week. Good news for those of you thought upper 90s temperatures were a little much for Vermont.