Drought Update Still Grim, But Wednesday Rain Over-Performed In Parts Of Vermont, Rain Turns Light

Drought conditions improved just slightly in 
northwestern Vermont, but stayed the same
elsewhere despite Monday's rain
Moderate drought is light orange, severe
drought is dark orange and extreme
drought is depicted in red. 

I'm not surprised, but in the past week, the drought in Vermont has barely improved, despite some heavy rain earlier this week. 

The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report comes out every Thursday, and it's hot off the presses as I write this. 

As expected, rain fell Wednesday in Vermont, but that wasn't considered in the drought report. It used data through Tuesday. If Wednesday's rain had any effect, we'll see it in next week's report.  

This morning's new Drought Monitor shows northwestern Vermont improving somewhat, but little change elsewhere in the Green Mountain State. That makes sense, given that some of the heaviest rain on Monday fell on the central and northern Champlain Valley. 

Western Chittenden and Franklin counties improved from severe drought and are now considered to be in moderate drought. That's good, I guess.

Eastern parts of those counties, along with western Lamoille County "improved" from extreme drought to a mere severe drought. 

Elsewhere in Vermont, there was no change in drought conditions from the previous week. 

Bottom line: Things are still really, really bad.  It's good that things improved a little in parts of Vermont, but this morning's report confirms that we really, really need a bunch of super wet storms to get out of this mess. 

I guess we can count Vermont as lucky. For the Northeast region as a whole, drought conditions worsened and expanded a bit since last week. 

In New Hampshire, the drought was exactly as bad this week as it was the prior week. In Maine, the drought intensified, especially up in the northern part of that state. In New York, drought more or less held steady. 

WEDNESDAY RAIN

Storm clouds looming over lingering fall foliage 
Wednesday in St. Albans, Vermont. Heavy 
downpours once again blessed northwest
Vermont, but rain was lighter elsewhere in the state,

Wednesday's rain probably helped with the drought, at least in northwest Vermont, which as noted has already improved a little. Especially in the Champlain Valley, the rain really over-performed, dumping much more precipitation than expected. 

That was due to a band of heavy showers, followed by another band of thunderstorms that moved northward up the Champlain Valley. 

These storms had some oomph to them. Pea sized hail accompanied some of them. In Jericho and a few other places, the hail was heavy, piling up on decks and lawns. 

More importantly, the rainfall was notably heavy. 

Here in St. Albans, 1.1 inches of rain poured down on Wednesday. We've had four inches of rain within three days, a bit more than what normally falls in the entire month of October. I took Henry the Weather Dog to the dog park after the rain yesterday, and he was very unimpressed and annoyed by how swampy the park was. 

Us humans, on the other hand, rejoiced in the dent all this rain put in the drought. 

Burlington had 0.79 inches of rain Wednesday, far more than the third of an inch or so that had been forecast. Total rainfall this month in Burlington is 4.13 inches, actually a bit above normal for the entire month of October.

That's great to see.

Elsewhere in Vermont, rainfall Wednesday wasn't nearly as heavy. But many places got a little bit more than forecast. Montpelier, St. Johnsbury and Rutland, for instance, each received right around 0.4 inches. 

Not huge, but not bad. 

OUTLOOK

The rain machine is largely shutting off now, but things won't dry out quickly like they did right after what ever rains we did manage to see in August, September and early October. 

Today will be the "wettest" day of the forecast period. Showers will be pretty frequent, especially north and mountains and especially this afternoon. Unlike yesterday, there's no atmospheric energy to promote downpours. Instead, we expect basically irksome, light, chilly showers. 

Rainfall totals today will be around a tenth of an inch or less, except maybe a little more in the central and northern Green Mountains. 

Over the next several days, we can expect typical late October/early November weather. That means partly to mostly cloudy skies in general, cool temperatures and a frequent chance of inconsequential sprinkles. 

Those will be mostly in the mountains. Higher up, those sprinkles will take the form of snowflakes. 

A parade of super dry, huge high pressure systems that have been stalling near us since August to intensity the drought. That's happening again, but this time, it's setting up a little further north in Quebec than previous dry highs, so at least we'll get a few clouds and sprinkles as a result. 

We still desperately need a series of very wet storms. In the near future, nothing's coming. The next shot we have at a decent rain would possibly be around Halloween. 

Us Vermonters generally dread a gloomy, soggy November, but this year, I'm all in.