Southern, Eastern Vermont Mostly Cheated Out Of Needed Rain

If you didn't get a decent downpour last night, you're
basically out of luck. Very little new rain is expected
in and around Vermont through Tuesday. 

There's an old Bob Seger song called Night Moves, and I lived just a tiny sliver of that song around 2 a.m. 

"I woke last night to the sound of thunder/How far off I sat and wondered."

I didn't get to the next line about humming a song from 1962, because a lightning strike hit practically right outside my house. BANG!!!! got us wide awake. 

It was immediately clear the lightning strike didn't cause noticeable damage to the house. So I smiled. Broadly. Because the next sound I heard was the roar of a downpour on the roof.

Rain! So grateful for it in our dry, dry dusty August.

The amount of rain we got turned out to be decent. A got a report out of Georgia, Vermont of an inch of rain, with the message "Praise be!"  Yeah, no kidding!  

My unofficial rain gauge here in St. Albans reads 0.75 inches of rain from that storm. Burlington got a half inch.  

Northwest Vermont lucked out because our slow moving cold front had temporarily sharpened up overnight. 

Before that, the front had stalled in New York State yesterday, and I watched, sadly, as thunderstorms popped up over the Adirondacks, then faded as they outran the cold front. From my St. Albans, Vermont vantage point, I could see those cloud towers go up with their downpours. Then I would say goodbye to them as they went up into Quebec or just faded away.  

The atmospheric dynamics that supported those loud predawn thunderstorms faded again toward dawn, so the line of storms did, too.  As of 8 a.m. this morning, the now-lame line of showers was right over the crest of the Green Mountains, tossing down a few pathetic rain drops.

Eastern and southern Vermont got little to no rain, which is very bad. 

TODAY

The cold front was still in western Vermont this morning and it was only crawling east. That  offers up a chance for a little rain in central and eastern parts of the state today. As the atmosphere heats up, showers and a couple thunderstorms should re-develop and/or revive a bit in central and eastern Vermont with that front.

But those showers will be hit and miss.   But they will be hit and miss, and many places along and east of the Green Mountains, and south of Route 4 won't see all that much rain. A few places will get lucky and receive maybe a half inch of rain. But that might be the exception. 

The far southeastern corner of Vermont stands the best chance of unfortunately seeing no rain at all.  . The drought, unfortunately will deepen there.  It's getting serious. 

A few light showers were lingering in western Vermont and eastern New York this morning but they weren't amounting to much. 

The cooler air was lagging behind the cold front, and will start to push in later this afternoon. That could trigger a few more bonus showers over northern Vermont toward late afternoon. 

OUTLOOK

After today, we'll only have a few light showers for the next 10 days or so. A few sprinkles could develop over the hills tomorrow, but that won't make a difference.

The air will remain cool all week. The reinforcing cold front we've been talking about on Thursday is now looking slightly wetter than it did in previous forecasts. But if forecasts holds, it will yield probably just a tenth an inch of rain for most of us. Not enough to help much. 

Strong high pressure should then stall over our area next weekend and early next week, and that will continue to keep the rain at bay.  

The drought will roll on.