They've Already Canceled Our Next Shot At Vermont Rain

Read it and weep. Rainfall prediction map for the
next 7 days has nothing in and around Vermont. 
Meanwhile, torrential rain falls on the fishes
off the East Coast, and the Midwest gets
a good soaking. None of that is heading
in our direction, unfortunately. 

As expected, nothing more than sprinkles fell on a few spots last night, and many of us stayed completely rain free. One of the worst droughts in Vermont history continued to deepen. 

Some forecasts had a chance of isolated showers today, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. Worse, our next chance at any rain, which was hoped for toward the end of this week, is now evaporating. 

It seems like this drought is never going away. 

Things are getting ridiculous. I was digging in a client's garden yesterday. Digging down a foot, I was still getting dust. One of my spruce trees has some wilted needles. I've never seen anything like that before. 

The forest fire danger in Vermont remains high and will stay that way for at least the next week. 

The Lake Champlain lake level as of yesterday was 93.26 feet.  That's down a whopping five feet since early June.

The current take level isn't actually the lowest it's ever been this time of year, but it's close. (It was at 92.71 feet in mid-September, 1941). Lake Champlain water there continues to slowly recede and is now within shouting distance of its all time lowest level, 92.13 on November 23, 1908.

Lake Champlain normally reaches its lowest level in late autumn. So if this drought continues, we could approach or break the record for its lowest level.   As it is, boaters have been hitting shoals and reefs that are now much closer to the water's surface than they once were.

Both 1908 and 1941 were among Burlington's top five driest years on record, so the low lake levels then aren't surprising. 

I doubt this year will be among the top driest ones because the first half of 2025 was relatively wet. Burlington has had 25.1 inches of rain so far this year. If we get about an inch and a half or more of rain by New Year's Eve, it won't be one of the driest years. 

We should manage that amount of rain by then. Gawd, I hope so. 

THE FORECAST

None of that rain is coming anytime soon. Strong  high pressure is coming in now to replace the other strong high pressure that kept us dry last week. This new high pressure will pretty much stall over us most of this week. 

This one is warmer than the last, so we'll have a bit of a summer redux most of this week.  The dry weather system that went though early this morning was a cold front of sorts, so today and tomorrow will have similar weather to what we've been having. That means highs in the low to mid 70s, lows in the 40s to low 50s. 

Tuesday through Thursday will turn into a bit of a summer redux. Many of us will see highs poke up to near 80.  It's dry out there, and that could lead to surprisingly warm afternoons. I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of those days reach the mid-80s. 

A stalled storm near the Mid-Atlantic coast could end up throwing some high clouds our way, which might limit high temperatures a little. But alas, that storm won't send any rain clouds our way, either. 

It had been hoped the next cold front around this coming Friday would come in from the west. That would have allowed some moisture to flow up from the Gulf and give us a little rain. Nobody anticipated much, but a little bit might have been nice.

Now, it's appearing more likely that another mostly dry cold front will come in from the north instead. That means we'd get nothing more than scattered sprinkles on Friday. .This is five days away, so things could turn wetter again, but I'm doubting it at the moment. 

All we'll get out of this is another strong, slow moving high pressure system. The late week one will be a somewhat colder one.  It will be hitting in the second half of September after all. So by Friday night, and maybe Saturday night, we'll have to be on the lookout for scattered frost. 

I'll update that when we get closer to the event. 

Longer range forecasts have gotten slightly more encouraging, but not encouraging enough. Long range forecasts for the roughly last ten days of the month indicate near normal precipitation, which is better than nothing. 

Even longer range forecasts, which admittedly are not always that accurate, give us equal chances of above or below normal precipitation into the first half of October.  However, the overall weather pattern does favor a warmer and drier than average autumn for us.