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| The setting sun briefly lit up these trees in St. Albans, Vermont late Tuesday afternoon, but you can still see the thick gray clouds in the background. It has finally gotten cloudier in Vermont in recent days, but unfortunately not much wetter. |
No matter the time of year, chances are, if you make outdoor plans, you'll end up under at least partly cloudy skies if not an overcast.
But in the late summer and autumn drought, it was one sunny day after another. It was like Home On The Range, where the skies are not cloudy all day. It felt like California weather moved to Vermont.
By my rough, unofficial count, 19 days in both August and September were mostly sunny to clear. Ten of the first 12 days of October in northern Vermont were also clear to at least mostly sunny.
Cloudy Vermont usually starts to get even more overcast around the autumn solstice. Late autumn through early winter is usually the cloudiest part of the year in the Green Mountain State.
Sometimes in late October, November and December, you can go a week or even more without seeing the sun. This week, a little belatedly, those clouds have finally arrived. It's not that we won't see the sun ever again. It's just that it won't be as frequent.
Too bad that so far, those clouds aren't accompanied by much desperately needed rain.
We did have a solid overcast Monday and Tuesday. For most of us, yesterday was as gloomy as it can get. We had low clouds, fog, a little drizzle. Northwest Vermont had a glimpse of sun right before sunset, but that was about it.
That drizzle didn't amount to much. Between Monday and Tuesday, Burlington only had 0.05 inches of rain. My unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans did better, sort of, collecting 0.22 inches over the two days. Montpelier managed to receive 0,26 in those two days.
That's not exactly a drought buster. We need a drenching! We're still in search of it.
LOOKING AHEAD
Clouds will hang tough today and tomorrow, but they won't yield any rain aside from an isolated sprinkle over the hills.
A cold front blew through early this morning, sweeping away any lingering fog and drizzle. Today and tomorrow will feature mostly cloudy skies for most of us, chilly temperatures and a stiff north wind that will make it feel even colder.
High temperatures will barely make it into the low 50s today and tomorrow. Tonight will go into the low and mid 30s. Thursday night will drop us into the mid 20s to low 30s.
The summer that lasted into October is definitely over.
We'll see some breaks of sun both today and tomorrow, especially in the broader valleys and in southeastern Vermont. Tomorrow will be the sunnier of the two days.
The sun should be back in full force Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday amid a warming trend. Saturday will be the pick of the week with lots of sunshine and temperatures near or a little above 60. Sunday will be even warmer, as some places could touch 70. But by afternoon, it looks like the clouds will be coming back.
Another storm system should come through Sunday night and Monday. We're still getting hints we could see a decent, though not huge amount of rain then.
I might not believe it until I see it. We've been burned many times before over the past few months, where we thought we had a good shot at seeing a soaking, and nothing happened.
On the other hand, solid doses of rainfall on September 25 and October 7 briefly stalled the drought's worsening trend. If Sunday night and Monday are the start of a wetter trend, that would be terrific.
What I'm seeing, though are signs of a cloudier, but not necessarily super wet weather pattern heading through the end of the month. A handful of models bring a former hurricane near New England toward the end to October, but that type of specific long range forecast is seldom accurate.
My advice? Keep doing those rain dances.
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