Vermont October Was Warm, And Surprisingly Wet. Maybe The First Hints Of Drought Relief?

Very low water levels on Lake Champlain, seen here in
Milton, Vermont during a record late season
heat wave on October 6

November is here, so it's time to look back on an October weather.

The month brought more warmth to Vermont, and also provided the first hopeful signs that a few cracks might be forming in our deep, relentless drought. 

October in Vermont had its extremes, and a rainy end made the month actually turn out to be on the wet side. That's a trend we hope we will continue for the next few months.  

 The drought appeared to peak during an early month heat wave that shattered record highs. A rainstorm just after that heat wave offered a hint of wetter times ahead. 

We had to wait until the final 11 days of the month for the skies to finally open up. 

The rainfall was uneven, focusing on northwest Vermont, while cheating other parts of the state out of the heaviest downpours. Here in St. Albans, 6.76 inches of rain came down in those 11 days. In Burlington, those 11 days featured 4.55 inches. 

For the month as a whole, Burlington had 6.27 inches of rain, which surprisingly makes this past month the fourth wettest October on record in Burlington. 

Elsewhere in Vermont, rainfall wasn't nearly as heavy in Burlington, but it was least everybody got some rain.  Most weather stations in the state had October rainfall just slightly above normal, with most reports coming in at 3.8 to 4.5 inches. 

Such rainfall is, of course, not enough to emerge from a deep drought. We'll watch anxiously for any heavy rain or even big snowstorms we can get our hands on.  

WARMTH

October was yet another warm month in Vermont, punctuated by an extreme late season heat wave on October 4-7.  Burlington tied its all time high for October with a high of 86 degrees. Montpelier tied its October record at 84 degrees. 

We were on the edge of an incredible October heat wave in southeast Canada that shattered monthly record highs by wide margins. 

All those 80s have been adding up in our age of climate change. In Burlington, 76 days this year got to 80 degrees or more,  Only five other years out of the past 130 have had more 80 degree days in a single year. Four of those years were since 2016. 

Storm clouds gather over South Burlington, Vermont
on October 20, signaling a welcome wet stretch
to close out the month. 

After that early October heat wave, the rest of the month featured no more extreme temperatures, but it remained consistently mild. Burlington ended up with a mean temperature of 52.9 degrees, which is 2.6 degrees above the climate-change influenced "new normal."

That "new normal" is the average of the years 1990-2020. Those years were warmer than the 20th century average, due to climate change.  

October, 2025 in Burlington was tied with 2012 as the 12th warmest on record. In general, most other weather stations in Vermont were also very roughly two degrees warmer than average for October. 

For only the seventh time since the 1880s, this October in Burlington had no days with a high temperature colder than 50 degrees. 

Unlike some Octobers, absolutely no snow fell in the state except in the highest elevations. That is until late last night.  Even before midnight switched the calendar to November, some places above 1,500 were snowing. 

LOOKING AHEAD

The outlook heading into November is mixed. 

Long range forecasts, always a bit of a crapshoot, predict near to above normal temperatures for November. The ever-important precipitation outlooks is a tossup, with mostly equal chances of above or below normal rain and snowfall. 

Despite the nice, wet end of October, we still need many drenching rainstorms to fully emerge from our tough drought.  

There's a little rain and mountain snowfall in the Vermont forecast, but nothing big enough to rock our world.