August In Vermont Was Super Dry (Most Places) And Otherwise Kind Of Weather Weird

Very low water levels in the Missisquoi River in 
Enosburgh Falls due to what in many parts of
Vermont were a record or near record dry August. 

You're not going to be the least bit surprised at the following fact now that August is over.

That month was exceptionally, in some cases record dry in Vermont. Montpelier only managed 0.62 inches of rain in August. 

In most Augusts, that amount would fall in a single, hour-long thunderstorm. Normal rainfall for August is 3.81.   

Rutland was even worse, with a preliminary total of just 0.48 inches, against a normal of nearly four inches.s St. Johnsbury only had a bit under an inch of rain.

There were some slight exceptions to the August extreme dryness rule. Burlington had 1.66 inches of rain, which is below normal by 1.88 inches, thanks to a fairly wet final week of the month. This ends up being Burlington's 15th driest August. 

A more pronounced isolated wet spot was Woodstock, which received at least 2.62 inches of rain in August, thanks to well-placed, localized, heavy thunderstorms on August 7 and 14.

I say at least 2.62 inches because data is missing from Woodstock on August 25, and it might have rained that day. Which leads to this editor's note: 

I noticed this morning there were more gaps and delays than usual in August climate information on the National Weather Service page.  I'm unsure whether that's because of cutbacks in staffing at the National Weather Service due to those odious DOGE cuts from the Trump administration, or because today is a holiday or it was just a bad month. 

In the cases of the missing data, I was either able to find the information elsewhere to fill in the gaps, or I just had to give up on highlighting information or drawing conclusions. 

Anyway, going on with Vermont's August weather:

TEMPERATURES

Average temperatures for August, 2025 in Vermont were a little below what is now considered "normal."   Of course, I have to remind you again this is the "new normal." based on the average temperatures from 1990 to 2020. 

This "new normal" is balmier than the 20th century average. So a slightly cooler than average August nowadays would have been a normal or even slightly warmer than normal August had it happened a half century ago.

In fact, despite this August being allegedly "cool" it was still a tie for 30th warmest August out of the past 126 years in Burlington. 

Looking more closely at August temperatures, we find an oddity: Average high temperatures were above normal, but overnight lows were even further below this new normal. 

It's what you'd expect in a dry month. The dry ground allows the daytime sun to really heat the atmosphere instead of focusing on evaporation, so the daytimes are hotter. Nighttimes are cooler during dry spells. If the ground had been wet, that added humidity would have kept temperatures from falling as much as they did. 

This warm highs/chiller lows pattern we saw this August bucks a climate change trend.  Nights have generally been getting warmer faster than daytimes, so this past month was an exception. 

That high temperatures were so warm in August were boosted by a weird heat wave on August 9-12.  Temperatures reached as high as 98 degrees in Burlington on August 12. The heat was accompanied by unusually dry air. 

The weird heat wave is what really started our flash drought in August. 

SUMMER 

Meteorological summer runs from June 1 through August 31, so for climatologists, summer ended last night at midnight. 

Despite the allegedly "cool" August that really was not chilly, Burlington had the seventh warmest summer on record. 

Due to ties, there are actually 14 summers in Burlington's top ten list of warmest summers on record. With this summer added, nine of the top 14 hottest summers have occurred since 2005, and five of them have occurred since 2020.  

So yes, most summers nowadays are way different from the way they were decades ago. 

AUTUMN OUTLOOK

Meteorological autumn runs from September 1 through November 30.  NOAA is saying that above normal temperatures will continue though this new season. In fact, the best chances of higher than average temperatures during the fall in the United States would be in the Southwest and New England. 

Seasonal forecasts aren't alway correct, but NOAA did say last spring that our just ended summer would be very warm, and they were absolutely right. 

The autumn seasonal outlook doesn't help much with our precipitation, which we really need. NOAA just gives us equal chances of above or below normal rainfall between now and the end of November. 

In the short term, the first half of September does look mostly cooler than average, though that doesn't mean the overall warm forecast is wrong. Two weeks out of a season don't make much of a difference.e 

Today through Thursday, and maybe Friday will feature near to slightly above normal temperatures, but it should cool down for at least a few days after that. 

After that, who knows what will happen the rest of the autumn. Watch this space.