Stepping Down Unevenly Into Cooler Vermont/New England Weather Pattern. Drought Continues

A hazy sun sets over St. Albans, Vermont Wednesday.
It was the last time until next spring the sun set at or 
later than 8 p.m. True to the season, cooler 
weather is due by next week. 

 If you don't like hot weather, the good news is you probably won't see anything like the heat we've seen in the past few days until next summer.  

It's getting toward the back half of August. Things will start to cool. We'll probably have more hot weather, but nothing like the mid and even upper 90s we saw this week. 

WEDNESDAY EXPLAINED

The beginning of the end of the heat came yesterday with the arrival of showers and thunderstorms. 

I got a little smug yesterday morning with my surprise and delight over some early morning showers here in St. Albans, Vermont but the joke was on me.  

That was pretty much it for me with the rain. St. Albans received 0.23 inches, with nothing coming down after noon. 

The showers in far northwest Vermont kept the skies cloudy and cooler much of the day and stabilized the atmosphere. It only got to 87 degrees in Burlington and 81 in Highgate. So no new showers developed during the day much north of Route 2.

Elsewhere in Vermont, Wednesday was another hot one. St. Johnsbury set a record high for the date with 95 degrees. Springfield made it to 94 degrees. Montpelier got to 90, missing the record high for the date by just one degree. 

Unlike in far northern Vermont, the heat allowed widespread showers and storms to develop, though most places had unimpressive amounts of rain. Burlington had about a third of an inch, which ended an unprecedented dry spell for August. It was the first time on record the first 12 days of the month were rain free. 

Elsewhere yesterday,  Montpelier managed to see a quarter inch of rain, and Springfield a half inch. St. Johnsbury could only muster 0.15 inches. 

Wednesday also proved you can get a flood alert in a drought. 

An area around Londonderry, Bellows Falls, Windham and some other communities in southeast Vermont were socked by storms that dumped up to around three inches of rain in a short period of time. The National Weather Service issued a flood advisory for that area for a time late Wednesday afternoon.

DROUGHT REMAINS

Wednesday's rain was not nearly enough to quench our thirst, and mostly dry weather looms.  But at least there's a little precipitation in the forecast.

Today is starting out muggy.  One weak cold front came through, another boundary temporarily stalled in northern New York. Neither front was enough to push the humidity that built up yesterday out.

A third cold front today will do the job. This last front is weak, and will produce at most isolated showers. But it will flush the humidity out. You'll notice the change in the air this afternoon. The decrease in humidity will be nice, but it will come with some wildfire smoke again. Can't escape that! 

The drier air means you'll sleep better tonight.  Dry air allows temperatures at night to cool rapidly, especially if skies are clear. That'll be the case, so expect lows to drop into the comfortable 50s.

Friday will also be a nice summer day with sunshine and highs hitting the low 80s. After a fairly comfortable Friday night, a brief squirt of hot, dry air will work in Saturday. Some of us could get to 90 again. The humidity will stay low, so the drying ground and fire danger will continue. 

The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor is released every Thursday. I'll file a report in this blog thingy after it comes out later today. It will be interesting to see how much worse things got in Vermont after what I'm calling Vermont's Death Valley Week. That hot, arid air was something!

"FAIR WEATHER" COMING

Next week, right on schedule we'll enter what I call "Fair Weather." Not "fair" as in fair skies, though we'll probably have plenty of that. But in Vermont, "Fair Weather" is the not quite summer, not quite fall type weather you at least used to see in late August and the opening days of September. 

That's when most of the county and local fairs come through the Green Mountain State.  Traditionally, the weather during these events is cooler than what you endure in high summer, but warmer than the crisp air you'd expect once we really get into fall.

Due to climate change, "Fair Weather" has not been happening as much in late August in the past decade or two.  Instead, it's been staying hot. So this year might be a nice throwback to tradition. 

A cold front Sunday will throw some showers our way, but it won't rain all day.  Next week will feature highs mostly in the low 70s north to mid and upper 70s Champlain Valley and south. Lows will get into the upper 40s, low 50s, that kind of neighborhood.

It's hard to tease out exactly what each day next week will be like this far in advance.  Weak disturbances could generate a little rain on one or two days, but the dry northwest flow will probably prevent any of the real soakers we need.

But I think we're now past the truly hot part of summer.