Friday Morning Wind Blast in VT/NY To Go On Repeat Overnight Tonight

This house in St. Albans, Vermont was damaged early 
Friday when strong winds tore down part of a large
tree, which landed on the house.
Photo via Scott Levick/Facebook

As those sputtering showers and thunderstorms were speeding through northern New York and Vermont early yesterday morning, the wind was absolutely blasting parts of northern New York and the northern Champlain Valley. 

It was so bad that a large section of a tree fell and smushed a big chunk of a house in St. Albans, and another tree blocked a major commuter route for a short time in the same community. 

 Winds gusted to 57 mph at Knight Point State Park in Grand Isle County, 54 mph at the Milton Sandbar 50 mph in Plattsburgh and 49 mph in Burlington. 

In hindsight, it might have been a good idea for these parts of Vermont to be under a wind advisory, which is designed to alert people to potential gusts of 50 mph. 

The wind died down somewhat by Friday afternoon and by this morning, things were calm. 

Tonight and early tomorrow, we're going to do it all again. For pretty much the same reason as yesterday. A storm will go by to our northwest, bumping into high pressure over northern Quebec. That will funnel strong south winds up the Champlain Valley. 

Winds will again gusts to or a little over 50 mph. A wind advisory is up for the central and northern Champlain Valley in Vermont and across northern New York from 8 p.m this evening to 8 a.m. Sunday. The strongest winds are expected between 11 p.m. an 6 a.m., says the National Weather Service. So it'll be a noisy overnight. 

Like yesterday, expect a few scattered power outages in northwest Vermont during this windy period as well.

SOME OTHER DIFFERENCES'

Even though the weather situation early Sunday morning will be strikingly similar to Friday morning there will be a few minor differences. Really odd, though, that the exact same weather setup will happen within two days of each other. 

This time, the cold air won't dam up as well in eastern Vermont, so I see little risk of any freezing rain. It might come close to freezing in a couple of the cold hollows when the rain comes in, but this won't exactly be the Great Ice Storm of '26. 

If you head further east into northern New Hampshire  and northern Maine, you probably will run into mild precipitation late tonight and early Sunday, so a winter weather advisory is up once again over in those parts. 

Unlike early Friday, I don't think we'll hear any rumbles of thunder, but hey, we could be surprised. There is a risk of severe thunderstorms in western New York later today. Those will fall apart well before we get here, but there's a minuscule chance, I suppose we can hang on to one or two lightning strikes by the time the rain gets here.

The rain over Vermont will be a little heavier than what we got yesterday, which isn't saying much. We should only get a quarter to a third of an inch of rain, which would mostly fall in the morning and early afternoon.

Oh, and both today and tomorrow should see highs in the low 50s. Which is about 10 degrees chillier than most of us saw yesterday. Low 50s is maybe a couple degrees above normal for this time of year.

QUICK COLD SHOT

We're still looking at a quick return to "winter" Sunday night through Wednesday morning. Again, don't panic. This is just a typical early April interruption to spring. 

It means highs in the mid 30s to mid 40s  and lows well below freezing. It's not like some of those past Aprils in  history in which we get a big snowstorm followed by true winter cold. We'll survive this just fine. Despite a few possible snow flurries in the air. 

It'll warm up by the end of the week and actually get quite nice again. 

I'm going to jinx it here, but with everything I see in the forecasts, this could turn out to be a much mellower April than we often get around Vermont. We often rocket between winter and summer and in in between the temperature hijinks, and we usually get some pretty interesting storms this time of year. 

I obviously won't be surprised by any weather surprises we get this month. But other than those wind storms, this is beginning to turn out to be an easy Vermont April.