So Nice To See It Rain In Vermont. Will It Help Drought Any?

It was nice to see a little rain in St. Albans, Vermont
early this morning, but we are hoping for a lot
more later today and tonight. If we're lucky, we
could get a half inch of rain but that won't 
resolve the building drought. 

 It was raining here in St. Albans, Vermont this morning as I wrote this, 

The rain wasn't coming down particularly hard, but for once, everything outside was wet, which was a glorious thing to see after spending the past few weeks crunching my way across my brown, sun-roasted lawn. 

The rain here pretty much ended by 9:30 a.m., and we only received 0.1 inches of rain, so nothing impressive. 

It hasn't rained everywhere in Vermont yet, but almost all of us stand a good chance of seeing at least a little rain between now and Monday night.  The wet weather is awesome to see, but unfortunately I still stand by my assertion that this won't come close to getting us out of a drought. 

Of course we'll take any kind of rain we can get, so I won't criticize any raindrops that do find their way landing on Vermont soil. 

The first band of rain with an approaching cold front entered northwest Vermont this morning and was slowly edging southeastward.  As of 9 p.m. it was roughly on a line from Jay Peak to Burlington, 

This initial line of showers will probably tend to fade out as it heads toward southern Vermont. It looks like southern Vermont might not get anything during the day today. 

 There will probably be a lull in the rain for all of us during the midday and afternoon. There is a chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms during this time, but many of us will miss out. 

A more concentrated area of showers and storms looks like it will come into northwestern Vermont  very late this afternoon or this evening.   Those should eventually slowly crawl east overnight. 

It still looks like a weak, semi-tropical looking storm will zip northward from North Carolina and pretty far off the coast of New England tonight and tomorrow. It's too bad it's not going to hit us directly, because it will have some nice downpours with it. 

But that storm - as mentioned yesterday - should slow down our cold front so that rain lingers mostly over central and eastern Vermont for a time late tonight and through a good part of Monday. That's when eastern Vermont will get the bulk of the rain. 

ASSESSING THE RAIN

Rainfall totals will vary quite a bit, as some towns will be hit with downpours from embedded thunderstorms and others will miss out. The National Weather Service thinks some places might get less than a quarter inch of rain while some fortunate devils see an inch.

It'll be the luck of the draw for all of us. 

If we have to guess, in general, northern and central Vermont should get a half inch of rain, give or take. It looks like far southeastern Vermont might miss out on most of the rain. Places like Brattleboro might see barely more than a trace of rain,  which really won't help at all.

Where it does rain, it's a temporary lifeline. Gardens and crops get a nice little drink to hold them over for a few days.  But this won't be the kind of soaking rain we need to get our ground water back up so wells keep running. Lakes and rivers will continue to run quite low.

That's especially true since very little rain will fall this week after we get through tomorrow. Some light showers are possible daily, especially Thursday when a reinforcing cold front come through. But that rain will amount to only somewhere between a trace and a tenth of an inch. 

In between those light showers, breezes and breaks of sun will start drying us out again. It looks like the next chance of decent rains will come around September 2 or 3, but even that doesn't look impressive in long range forecasts.,

A lot can happen between now and the week after Labor Day, so we can sit and hope that whatever comes along in early September gains some strength.