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| Skies clear out in Vermont last evening, as this sort of autumnal looking photo taken near sunset in St. Albans shows. We woke up to cool, clear dawn this morning setting up three more sunny, dry days. |
There's usually not much a temperature range during a Green Mountain State summer, but you still almost always find readings a little cooler to the north, and a little warmer in southern valleys.
Not on Wednesday! The range was big and backwards. At 2 p.m. Wednesday, the temperature was 74 degrees in Highgate, up near the Canadian border.
At the same time it was just 58 degrees in Bennington. Which is damn chilly for an August afternoon in Vermont.
The reason for all this was the distribution of clouds and sun. As expected, a nice soaking rain missed us, going by to the south.But the clouds from that rainy patch blotted out the sun in far southern Vermont. So it stayed nippy for folks within easy reach of Route 9.
Up north, further from that little weather system in Highgate, the sun was able to break out, allowing temperatures to reach the 70s.
This is the second time in a week that we had strange temperatures in Vermont. On Sunday, it was the opposite of yesterday. A sharp southward moving cold front had simultaneous afternoon temperatures in the upper 50s in northern border towns like Highgate, and in the mid-80s in places like Bennington and Brattleboro.
That was quite an unusual event for August.
We also had our Death Valley heat wave on August 9-12 that brought 90+ degree heat and desert-like low humidity. That was again, a practically unheard of event in a Vermont August, as heat waves here tend to be quite humid.
A big part of the reason for the odd temperatures, and the relative big ups and downs we're experiencing and expecting is the jet stream has been wavier than usual for late summer. There's bigger northward bulges than we usually see, and deeper dips. This state of affairs should continue for awhile yet.
This arrangement might even eventually provide us with some needed rain.
DRY FOR NOW, BUT HOPE?
That rain that missed us even disappointed far southern Vermont, which stood a chance of a decent soaking. One forecast I saw for Bennington called for 0.81 inches of rain. Instead, they received only about half that.
Go just a short distance north and rain really tapered off. Springfield and Rutland both managed just 0.07 inches. North of that....nothing.
No rain is coming today, tomorrow and Friday. Instead we have a warming trend that will bring us plenty of sunshine and temperatures warming back up to normal summer levels,
The humidity will stay low, so we get to enjoy a trio of really nice, comfortable late summer days. The Captain Obvious downside is our drought will keep getting worse.
However, if we're lucky, that wavy jet stream might give us just a little drought relief toward Sunday and Monday.
Another unusually deep dip in the jet stream is coming for the eastern U.S. At first, the axis of the southward dip will be a little to our west. That will slow down a cold front coming at us and allow moist air to stream north toward New England,
If that happens, we could get some pretty soaking showers and maybe thunderstorms Sunday and Monday. Early guesses on precipitation don't exactly look overwhelming, maybe a half inch to as much as an inch if everything works out right. We'll take what we can get. But the way our luck is running, it's still possible the bulk of the rain could go off to our west or to our east.
We'll have to check out updated forecasts in the coming days as the cold front approaches.
Whatever happens, it won't be enough to cure our incoming drought. That dip in the jet stream will keep us pretty darn cool for late August through much of next week. The cool air might generate some light showers from time to time, but not give us the repeated soakings we need.
Extended forecasts - which I admit are a little less accurate than forecasts for the next couple days - keep us generally on the cool, and unfortunately dry side into the opening days of September.
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