Northern New England/Canada Fire Danger Today; Still Hanging On Potential Rain Forecast Sunday/Monday

A hollyhock blossom basks in the sun and awaits 
forecasted rain Saturday morning in St. Albans, Vermont,

It hasn't rained here in northern Vermont since Sunday or since Tuesday down south. Both rainfalls were pathetically light. 

Since then, we've had lots of sun, and rock bottom humidity. Very nice, but not great for our developing drought. 

Today, the wind is picking up. There's definitely a risk of brush fires today. 

The drought in New England is most intense in Maine closest to the coast.

 The National Weather Service office in Caribou, Maine, is warning residents there of "potential for uncontrolled fire spread across the Downeast, Bangor Region and Central Highlands today."

Southeast Canada is on guard for fires, too. Unlike here in New England, places like New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland have already experienced large, damaging brush and forest fires. 

In New Brunswick, fire activity has decreased in recent days, which is awesome news, but they are on guard up there. In Nova Scotia, winds from offshore Hurricane Erin helped fan a large wildfire near West Dalhousie that has consumed about 32 square kilometers, or about 20 square miles. 

Here in Vermont, the forest fire danger remains high today, as the humidity remains arid, the sun continues to blaze and winds pick up. 

Luckily, it still looks like the fire danger will be tamped down starting tomorrow, though that might well be temporary. The drought will continue, but at least some rains will interrupt its worsening trend.   

RAINY BREAK 

This morning's National Weather Service rainfall
prediction map shows more than a half inch of
rain through Monday in most of Vermont. Rainfall
forecasts like this are subject to change. 

The increasing wind today is the first signs of the welcome rains.  It's also another sign summer is waning.  Summertime cold fronts don't generate much wind, except within strong or severe thunderstorms.  

Once you get into autumn, the parent storms with cold fronts start to get stronger, so the wind increases. 

That wind will peak tonight, with some places gusting as high as 35 mph.  That's obviously not especially dangerous, but you might want to unfurl those umbrellas over your deck tables before you go to bed tonight. 

The wind will not have had a chance to get too strong today, gusting to maybe 25 mph. Those breezes combined with low humidity will actually feel good even though temperatures get well into the 80s. 

Sunday will feel more humid, and there will be a rising chance of showers and thunderstorms through the day. Not everyone will get all that wet Sunday. Some places, especially south and east, might have to wait until Sunday night to start seeing some decent rains as the cold front starts moving into the region. 

Although a few of Sunday's storms might get a little rambunctious, meteorologists don't expect much in the way of severe weather. 

It looks like an interesting little storm will get going near the North Carolina coast and head quickly northeastward off of New England toward southeast Canada Monday. This might be sort of a semi-tropical system.  Up in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, this little storm looks like it could drop a lot of badly needed rain, which is great news for them.

Even though this storm won't directly affect Vermont, I'm mentioning it because it could give us a bit of an assist. 

National Weather Service meteorologists think this storm might slow down the cold front over Vermont Monday and boost it with a little extra moisture. That would prolong the rain we're getting and add to the overall totals. 

You can see that in the rain forecast from late Saturday through Monday. Northern New York looks like it will be a little too far west to benefit from that front slowing down on Monday. Some places out there might not even see a quarter inch of rain out of this,   

Vermont would get a little more, with many places seeing a half inch to an inch of rain. At least as something doesn't go wrong with the forecast and we get cheated out of rain again. I'm not going to rejoice until I see water in my rain gauge. 

The rainfall totals is will be highly variable again, because of the expected scattered thunderstorms. Some Vermont towns might miss out and receive less than a half inch of rain, while other places could get bonus storms that would bring rainfall totals to as much as 1.5 inches. 

RAIN SHUTS OFF

If the current schedule holds, most of the rain Monday would come early in the day with perhaps a bit of clearing later. 

Unfortunately, the predicted rain Sunday and Monday seems to be a one-off and not a change in the weather pattern toward something soggier.

It'll be a cool week with air coming down from Canada.  The ginger ale is called Canada Dry for a reason. There's not much atmospheric moisture up there. Weak disturbances in the air flow might touch off some light showers. 

That could be especially true on Thursday, as a lot of the computer models swing a reinforcing cold front through here. Basically just count on sprinklers.  Most of us will seen a tenth of an inch of rain or less next week after Monday. 

The cooler than average air will probably last until next weekend. At that point, it could start to warm up a bit, but persistent high pressure nearby would keep wet weather fronts away for awhile.   

We're not going to easily shake out of our dry weather pattern heading into autumn. It might be time to start hoping for the remnants of old tropical storms to come through in September and early October, followed by a series of nor'easter later in the autumn and into the winter. 

Yes, you saw it here first. I'm actually hoping for bad weather.