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| Henry the Weather Dog says his favorite weather is warm, sunny weather, so he's been very happy lately. He's not as worried about the drought as many Vermonters are. In this photo, he's taking a quick break from playing with his friends in Sunday's sunshine at a St. Albans, Vermont dog park. |
A weak disturbance gave us some clouds Saturday, but no rain, of course.
Sunday was beautiful and mostly sunny and oddly warm for the end of September. The high temperature in Burlington was 81 degrees, just two degrees below the record high for the date.
That band of clouds that came through midday Sunday was allegedly a cold front. It had no rain with it - again, of course. The "cold front" introduced some less humid air, which allowed temperatures to fall a little lower this morning that the very mild previous nights.
Sunday's alleged cold front was the start of a temporary cooling trend that will reverse itself by the end of the week. By next weekend, it'll be strangely warm again. The only constant through all this will be the daily almost wall to wall sunshine. Not great if you're sick of Vermont's deep, destructive drought.
Today will be almost as warm as Sunday, ahead of the next cold front. That front will come through tonight with no fanfare, no rain, no nothing. All it will do is make tomorrow feel noticeably cooler. But still mild enough for the last day of September.
BRIEF COOL SPELL
The trend will keep running cooler Wednesday through Thursday. Temperatures will actually be fairly close to normal for this time of year. Highs both days should be within a few degrees either side of 60. That's not bad, considering in the past we've sometimes seen highs in the 40s in the opening days of October.
Even so, we'll have to worry about scattered frosts and freezes again Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. It won't be anything out of the ordinary for the first days of October, but it you're hanging on to your outdoor plants, you probably will have to cover them up again.
Much of the Champlain Valley looks like it will escape the frost, but pay attention to future forecasts in case it gets unexpectedly cool any of those nights.
One thing that could slightly mitigate the risk of frost comes in part - believe it or not - from Hurricane Humberto and soon to be Hurricane Imelda far offshore of the East Coast.
The contrast between those storms, and massive, dry high pressure coming down from Quebec, will stir up a north to northeast breeze. Overnight breezes might keep temperatures up just a bit.
By the way, the forecast trend has been more and more for Humberto to tug Imelda away from the southeastern United States, so the effects of Imelda won't be nearly as bad as first feared.
Meanwhile, back here in Vermont, that big, fat, sunny, dry high pressure will stick around. Starting Friday and even more so during the weekend, the high will shift a little to the east.
Because of that, the cool north breezes will shift and become very light puffs of wind from the southwest. That will bring back the warm air. Despite the relative chill on the opening two days of the month, October looks like it will come in hot.
I wouldn't be super surprised if temperatures flirt with 80 degrees once again by Sunday or early next week. That's definitely unusual but not unheard of for early October. I don't know whether the entire month of October will be warm, but the balmy weather coming up for the beginning of this October fits a recent trend.
Three of the past four Octobers - at least as measure in Burlington - were among the top ten warmest on record. Maybe we'll do it again this year.
In terms of rain, it's still looking grim heading into October. The dry air that's become established in Vermont will erase the slight gains against the drought we saw with last week's rain. Then it will continue deepening our serious drought.
I've been saying our next chances of rain are around October 9. I'm not sure yet, but that needed rain is beginning to look like it might be postponed a few more days. Let's hope not!
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