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| Temperature sign in downtown Burlington, Vermont on Monday says it all. |
Temperatures are near record highs, but we've seen that before. Climate change has us breaking high temperature records all the time, it seems.
This heat wave is different, though. Usually, summertime hot spells in New England are humid, oppressive, tropical. This time the air is desert dry. Monday somehow managed to turn out even a bit drier than dusty Sunday.
The temperature peaked at 96 degrees in Burlington Monday. Not a record high because it fell on the anniversary of the city's hottest reading ever, which was 101 degrees in 1944. Montpelier did reach a record high of 91 degrees. Plattsburgh, New York also had
Monday's dew point was in the mid-50s, reading to a relative humidity of just 27 percent. That's remarkably arid for an August hot spell. This extreme heat and dry combo will continue today. More on that further down, but I'm still agog at how fast we went from wet to parched.
I've seen Vermont get this dry in some past droughts, but not nearly this fast. Within just a few days, leaves on some of the trees along Interstate 89, the ones on thin soil above rock ledges, wilted like lettuce left on a hot stovetop.
Lawns turned from green to brown seemingly overnight. Even the weeds on parts of my property shriveled up and died.
I couldn't keep up with the watering on Monday. I'd notice some perennials wilting in the arid heat, the same ones I'd thoroughly soaked the day before. I'd water them, then move the sprinkler somewhere else. Those perennials I'd just watered early in the afternoon were thirsty again by sundown.
The only plant I have that seemed happy was a cactus in one dry, sandy corner of my gardens. Today will be another
RECORD HIGHS
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| Wilting goldenrods and parched ground in St. Albans, Vermont this morning amid our developing flash drought. |
Plattsburgh, New York also had record high of 91 degrees Monday.
I don't know for sure whether the summit of Mount Mansfield set a record high but it must have, having reached an incredible 86 degrees, pretty remarkable for a Vermont weather station at about 4,300 feet in elevation.
The summit of Mount Washington was 66 degrees at 3 p.m, - very hot for them.
The heat and drought if anything has been crushing in southeast Canada. Bathurst, in northern New Brunswick set their all time August record high on Sunday, only to have that record beaten Monday with a high of 99.5 degrees. It was 95 degrees in both Montreal and Ottawa.
In Nova Scotia, record highs included 99 at South Ingonish Harbor and 36.2 at Ingonish Beach. So much for a cool, refreshing vacation in the Canadian Maritimes!
Here in Vermont, more record highs will be broken today, as we'll have almost exactly the same weather as yesterday. The record high in Burlington today is 93 degrees, so we should get past that. A heat advisory is still in effect for the Champlain Valley, but really, it will be hot everywhere in the (slightly less) Green Mountain State today.
The rapid drying should continue. As you might imagine, the forest fire danger in Vermont is very high. That's also true across northern New York, northern New England, southern Quebec. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland remains very high and dangerous.
HEAT RELIEF, AND A LITTLE RAIN?
Tomorrow will be the day we're waiting for as that cold front is still expected to come through. It will be one more hot day, especially in southern Vermont, which will see the clouds and showers from the front later in the day. It will also be noticeably more humid for just one day.
It now looks like many of us will get some rain Wednesday. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington is thinking about 75 percent of Vermont will see some rain tomorrow.
Most of us won't get all that much, and whatever comes out of the sky won't solve our new drought problems. But at least we'll get a break.
Some unlucky towns won't get any rain at all, which is bad news. Some areas will see a nice if brief torrential downpour. In general, the northern Vermont will do a little better than the south. In the northern half, rainfall for most people (but not everybody) should be in the quarter to half inch range, with a few lucky devils seeing three quarters of an inch or so.
Southern Vermont should get somewhere between practically nothing and a quarter inch. With a few pinpoint spots seeing a little extra.
All this will help with the dry weather temporarily but will be no cure. As I keep saying, we need several day long, soaking rains, which are not in the cards for now.
A few of Wednesday's thunderstorms might be on the strong side, but the atmosphere doesn't look like it will support any widespread severe weather.
RETURN TO DRY
Thursday and Friday will give us a break from the heat, but the humidity will be at rock bottom again, so the drying will resume. It might be briefly warm to hot, but dry Saturday before another cold front arrives Sunday.
So far, that Sunday cold front does to look that impressive, so don't count on a lot of rain with that.
The weather pattern is looking like it will shift into a new configuration after this coming weekend. But it's not one that will help with the dry conditions. It's a change from previous forecasts that indicated it would stay very warm through the end of the month.
The latest extended forecasts favor mostly cool, maybe sometimes almost autumn like weather through the end of the month . But with an air flow from the northwest, weather systems might tend to be moisture-starved because the overall air flow would prevent deep moisture from moving up from the south.
The blast furnace heat will end after today but a drought looks like it might want to continue to develop and deepen.
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