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| A pretty sky on a brilliant September day Monday as seen from a hillside near Richmond, Vermont |
One sunny, breezy, admittedly gorgeous Vermont Monday and it's already getting parched out there.
The rain from Saturday soaked in a little, but only wetted the thinnest top layer of soil. That's already drying out.
You can tell the rain did little good because river levels scarcely budged from their low levels.
Rock bottom low Lake Champlain rose a whole 0.03 inches from late last week to a 93.38 feet yesterday, an incredibly low level.
So, given this, we'll have to watch for occasional fire risk days when low humidity and breezy winds overlap for the rest of this autumn until we get some soaking rains. As leaves die and drop and weeds and vegetation turn brown and dormant, the fire risk will rise.
We'd better pray for a soggy mid and late autumn
THE FORECAST/FIRE RISKS
They did get some frost in the very coldest hollows last night. There were some reports of low to mid 30s in the Northeast Kingdom. The always-cold spot Saranac Lake, New York in the Adirondacks was down to 29 degrees. It was 32 there yesterday, ending their always short growing season. This year, it was 97 days between the last spring freeze and the first one of the fall.
All the rest of us, of course, escaped anything like that. I'm grateful the wildfire smoke in the atmosphere has been pretty minimal around here lately. It was nice to see that deep blue sky between the decorative clouds in the sky during the day Monday,
The very low humidity will continue to dry out the landscape over the next few days. Today, the fire danger is high in southern Vermont and just moderate in northern Vermont, where better rains fell Saturday.
We'll continue to have cool nights and warm sunny days today and tomorrow, (lows 40-52, highs well into the 70s) and plentiful sunshine. But we won't have much wind. So if a fire were to start, it wouldn't spread too fast. And the lingering but waning moisture from the weekend might also hinder the spread.
THURSDAY DANGER
The potential problems come Thursday. By then, the fine fuels that can catch fire - dry grass, weeds and leaves) will have dried out completely after Saturday's rain.
Meanwhile, the drought has gotten so bad that big things in the forests like big dead branches and fallen logs have really dried out. It takes a long time for those objects to get dry enough to burn efficiently, but we've accomplished that this year. Once they dry out, it takes a lot of rain to get them sort of too wet to burn once again.
If these big branches and logs do burn, they can generate a lot of heat and can make fire behavior more dangerous than usual. And make it much more difficult to contain a forest fire.
It's one reason why droughts are so dangerous
The reason I bring this up when I'm talking about this coming Thursday is another cold front is coming. It will have no rain with it like most cold fronts do. But it will generate some gusty north winds. It won't be a gale, but the 25 mph gusts could spell trouble.
That kind of wind is enough to make it easy for fires to start and spread quickly. With all that dry stuff in the woods we can really have some trouble.
Which is why we all have to be careful with fires. Especially on Thursday. If we don't start any blazes, then there's no problem. At least in terms of wildfires.
The wind should quickly calm down late Thursday night, so at least the gusts won't last long. The next chance of somewhat windy weather is Saturday, when breezes will pick up from the south.
We do have a slight chance of light showers Sunday, but that's iffy. If it does rain, it will be very light - easily less than a tenth an inch. Which wouldn't do much good. There's a good chance it might not rain at all.
According to a lot of the forecasts I've seen, the next shot at any real rain in Vermont would come around September 20. That's an awful long time to wait in a drought like this.
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