Fire Weather Alerts In Vermont Today Amid Dry Air, Gusty Winds. When Will The Rain Arrive?

After a long day of enjoying Monday's 
warm sunshine, a tired Henry the Weather
Dog settles down in the evening to watch
TV as evening sun bathes the 
living room in warm light. 

 We hope  you got to enjoy yesterday, Vermont's nicest day of the year so far. Temperatures were in the 70s, the sky was blue, there was a nice breeze making the daffodils dance. It was perfect. Except for the black flies, but you can't have everything. 

Last night turned interesting, at least for weather geeks like me, South winds in the Champlain Valley kept temperatures up, while in other areas especially east of the Green Mountains, light winds created another chilly night. 

It was a summer-like 58 degrees in Burlington at 6 a.m. But at the same time, it was just 34 degrees in Morrisville and 37 in Springfield.

The dry air and those south winds are conspiring to create probably Vermont's highest fire danger of the year so far. 

The whole region has a big fire risk today, but the worst of it is in the Champlain Valley and northern New York. 

A storm that caused severe weather over the Midwest yesterday is pushing east. That storm is rapidly weakening, but combined with the high to our east, it'll funnel stronger wind gusts up the Champlain Valley and into northern New York today. The humidity will stay rock bottom as it has for the past few days. 

With everything dried out and those winds gusting as high as 30 mph, fires could easily get going and then spread fast. And they'll be really hard to control once they do get going.    

Even though winds will be lighter in eastern Vermont, they'll still be enough to propel any fires that start there, too. The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation says today's fire danger is very high in western Vermont and the lower Connecticut River valley. That's an unusually dire declaration from state fire wardens. Elsewhere in Vermont, the forestry department gives today a high fire danger rating.

As of this writing, there was a fire weather watch in western Vermont and northern New York due to the fire danger. That watch will probably be upgraded to a relatively rare for Vermont red flag warning. Elsewhere in Vermont, a special weather statement highlights the fire danger.

This is not the day to be careless with cigarettes or burn that nasty weedy patch in back of your house. Do that and you can lose your house. Or your neighbors' house. 

That storm coming in will start to spread clouds our way this afternoon, but we won't have any rain to reduce the fire threat. Any showers coning from the Great Lakes area will fall apart long before they reach Vermont.

Otherwise, today will be great. Highs will reach the low 70s again. And the winds might help keep the black flies at bay a little. 

All this will leave us with a quiet, mild night tonight. 

WEDNESDAY

It'll still be dry and relatively warm, so the fire threat will remain. It won't be as windy and the humidity will be slightly higher than it is today. It'll get into the 60s to around 70, so again, fairly warm for this time of year. Clouds will tend to increase again later in the day, in anticipation of a huge change in our weather pattern

RAIN ARRIVES

The next weather disturbance in the pipeline will head northeastward up the western side to the Appalachians and will start to arrive here late Wednesday night. 

That means much colder air and rain for most of Thursday. The steadiest and heaviest rain will probably come Thursday morning but I don't see any real dry periods at all.  High temperatures will only reach the 50s at best. 

Rainfall predictions are always tricky. They do change a lot leading up to a storm like this. But for now, the forecast calls for a respectable three quarters of an inch of rain, give or take. That's more than enough to dampen the fire risk. 

And the dreaded "S" word enters the picture, too. It should cool off enough Thursday night for rain showers to mix with or change to snow at elevations above 1,500 feet.  There might be an inch or two of new snow at the summits. This isn't super weird for late April but still vaguely depressing.

NEW COLDER PATTERN

Nothing's really changed in the extended forecast we've been talking about for a few days now. We have an extended period of mostly cooler than normal weather.  We had several days of sunny, dry weather, now we'll have at least double the amount of chilly, unsettled weather. Like I said yesterday, no good weather in Vermont goes unpunished. 

This will last at least until mid-May. It won't rain every day, and we should have a couple reasonably warm days thrown in here and there. 

Most days will have a chance of showers. The coldest days will be Friday and Saturday, as some of us will probably not break 50 degrees for highs.

On the bright side, chilly ain't what it used to be, as normal temperatures have been rising fast and will continue to do so into May.  Look at it this way.  A day that was ten degrees cooler than normal on April 10 would have had a high of 42 degrees. A day that's ten degrees on the cool side on May 10 would have a high of 57. 

So chilly weather is definitely getting easier. 

And for what they're worth, very long range forecasts call for a potentially hot and unusually humid summer around here. If that comes true, you'll be pining for those damp, cool days we'll have in May this year.