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| National Weather Service rainfall forecast map through Friday morning. We hope it comes true, as it gives more than an inch of rain to southern Vermont and three quarters of an inch or so to the north. |
But as I said yesterday, this will do little to solve our drought problems.
As has often been the case since early August, what little rain we got focused on northwest Vermont. Some areas there got more than half an inch By contrast, many areas in far southern Vermont received less than a tenth of an inch Tuesday, which pretty much does no good.
You can tell how ineffective yesterday's rains were. There's still a high fire danger in Vermont today, according to the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
Rains from tomorrow's storm should be more widely distributed than yesterday's mini storm. I really hope the current forecast holds, because it gives close to 1.5 inches of rain through Friday morning in far southern Vermont and very roughly three quarters of an inch north.
That would put a small dent in the drought. However, we won't be able to see what kind of dent, if any, in the next weekly U.S. Drought Report, due out tomorrow.. That's because the data that goes into it ends on Tuesday. As noted, the rain yesterday would not have been enough to affect the drought one way or another.
I think the report might end up showing a worsening situation, since there was no rain in Vermont leading up to Tuesday. Of course, I'll do an update here tomorrow when that report comes out.
FORECAST SPECIFICS
Many of us woke up to some dense fog this morning. The rain yesterday, combined with calm, humid air last night ensured the bad visibility on the roads when you were on the way to work this morning.
The fog was burning off after sunrise. The rest of today will be kind of meh.
Skies will be mostly cloudy, but with some breaks in the clouds, especially north. It will remain a little humid for this time of year. There could be a few showers, mainly south, but they won't amount to anything. Temperatures should reach the low 70s north, and maybe hold near the upper 60s south under somewhat thicker clouds.
Tomorrow, a weak storm, but one with a nice slug of moisture with it, will come at us from the southwest and go almost directly overhead. Steady rains should blow in overnight tonight and continue tomorrow morning, and maybe into the afternoon.
During the afternoon, the rain should turn more showery, but we're hoping there will be a lot of them. We might even see some local downpours and rumbles of thunder.
We've been disappointed by weak rains so much, so I'm hesitant to get too optimistic. There's still time for things to go wrong and have the best rains miss us. But fingers crossed!
GOING DRY AGAIN
Then, poof! The rain goes away. Seemingly forever. Our somewhat rainy week is turning out to be a brief blip in our dry weather pattern. That dry pattern returns enthusiastically this weekend.
I suppose there might be a lingering shower Friday, but you'll barely notice it even if does rain. Then it's dry and warm again. We'll be back to lots of sunshine and low humidity starting Friday afternoon and going well into next week,
Temperatures will be somewhat above normal as well. The warmer it is, the better evaporation you get, so even that's working against us.
Meanwhile, something interesting might start to happen off the Southeast U.S. coast this weekend and early next week. It appears two tropical storms or even hurricanes might develop near and east of the Bahamas.
When two such storms develop too close to each other, like what seems to be happening here, they do weird things. They can rotate around each other for awhile. The stronger of the two can absorb the weaker one. One or both can spin off and go in weird directions,
This will give meteorologists major headaches trying to forecast what they will do. Pass them the Tylenol, despite what President Trump might say about it.
The reason I even bring this up in this post is, we don't know how these storms might affect the U.S., if at all. As noted, it's too unpredictable.
But the most certain part of this very uncertain forecast is that strong high pressure looks like it will deflect these storms well away from New England. Especially northern New England.
I don't wish a hurricane on us, of course. But it would have been nice if one or both of these wannabe tropical storms flung some moisture our way. Miracles can happen, but it doesn't look like anything like that is in the cards.
Instead, it looks like Vermont will see almost no rain after tomorrow at least into mid-October. Oh, sure, some weak fronts might give us a little light rain from time to time between now and October 15. But so far at least, we have no more soakers after tomorrow,
As I said yesterday, I hope I'm wrong about this!
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