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| Some late season flowers hanging on in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens. Near record heat coming up should keep them going, unless the drought finally does them in. |
It hasn't rained in a week, which will surely worsen the drought, and no rain is in the forecast until Tuesday. And even then, I'm unimpressed with the rain forecast.
More on that in a minute, but first we have to get through the weekend. It feels strange to say this but it'll be a hot one. At least for October.
Our big honking high pressure is moving off a bit to our east now, opening flow of very warm, but - of course - dry air from the Midwest and South.
Some of those areas in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes have had some record high temperatures, and that's coming our way.
Today and tomorrow will brings us balmy temperatures in the 70s. Then Sunday and Monday get really warm.
RECORD HIGHS?
In early October, Vermont days should have a pretty crisp feel to them. Highs are usually just a little over 60 degree, and nights get into the 30s and 40s.
Daytime highs coming up will instead be more like early to mid August. That means we could have some record highs on Sunday and Monday.
It Burlington, the record high Sunday is 83 degrees and on Monday it's 82. In Montpelier, Sunday's record high is 82 and Monday's is 79. All those are in reach.
In St. Johnsbury, the record high Monday is 83, and that could fall, but their record high Sunday is 87, which is insanely warm for October, That record was set in 2023, which brings me to my next point.
This will be the third year in a row with insanely warm October weather.
That St. Johnsbury's record high of 87 from 2023 was part of the biggest October heat wave in Vermont history. Burlington reached 86 degrees on October 4, setting the all time record high for the month of October. Montpelier tied its October high with 84 degrees. Woodstock, Vermont had three days in a row with highs of 86 degrees on October 4-6, 2023.
Last year, the end of the October brought a summer redux. Record highs were set on October 21-23 with highs in the mid and upper 70s.
Then, Halloween hit, and I think the 2024 costume of the year had to be beachwear. Record high were shattered with Burlington hitting 77 degrees, breaking the days's record high by six degrees. Plattsburgh was even more ridiculous, reaching 83 degrees.
In 2022, the autumn heat waiting until November. On November 6 that year, Burlington reached 76 degrees, setting a new all time high for the month of November. Summer-like thunderstorms hit that day, too.
Climate change is altering all our seasons, and autumn is certainly included!
RAIN CHANCES
For a change, the next cold front that will end our October heat wave won't be a dry one. But it won't be an especially wet one, either.
It will cloud up Tuesday but still be oddly warm for October. Showers could start in the afternoon, then continue into the evening. Early guesses are we could see roughly half an inch of rain, give or take. That will do almost nothing to help with the drought, but we'll take what we can get.
Also, in the past couple of months, I've seen optimistic forecasts of rain dry up before the weather system actually got here, so I have that bit of pessimism in my brain.
Even if it does rain Tuesday night, we have yet another in our long series of big honky dry high pressure systems that will linger around here for perhaps a week after Tuesday night's cold front, so drought relief does not look like it's in the cards.
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