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| More patches of green and flower buds keep showing up in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens amid mild air and April showers. A lot more greenery will appear this week as the mild, showers weather continues. |
As expected, not much rain fell, except in a few places. Most of northern Vermont got a quarter inch of rain, give or take. Some places close to the Canadian border got quite a bit more.
My unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans recorded 0.8 inches of rain overnight. In southern Vermont, there were only sprinkles overnight.
The wind also picked up in the Champlain Valley, and it was a bit gusty with winds to 40 or 45 mph at times.
Elsewhere, there were some breezes, and cloudy skies and damp air to start the day. The wind will tend to diminish some this afternoon.
This sets us up for a rather warm, pretty unsettled week. If you wanted your April showers, the next several days will result in a flood of May flowers. The good news is it doesn't look like the showers will be enough to bring much of any other kind of more unpleasant floods.
Except maybe in far northern Vermont. There's no flood alerts anywhere up in that neck of the woods. But that part of the state can expect some local downpours over the next few days. And maybe even some thunderstorms to jazz things up a little. Plus, there's still snow melting off of high elevations like Jay Peak.
I'm not particularly worried about any flooding at this point, but, as always, we'll keep an eye on it.
THE PATTERN
Everything is kind of stuck for a few days. A strong ridge of high pressure - basically a heat dome - is set up along or near the Southeast coast. That means the East Coast from about New York City south will have a week of hot, dry weather.
We'll see a bunch of record highs through much of the East. (Washington DC should have daily highs near 90 degrees all week, for instance). The East Coast will also face worsening drought and a worsening wildfire risk, so the news isn't good there.
It's been a relatively warm spring so far here in Vermont, but not as extreme as many other parts of the US. In many parts of the nation, summer essentially started by the time the spring equinox rolled around. Very weird.
Small storms and disturbances will ride the western and northern periphery of the heat dome, riding up through the Plains and parts of the Midwest, then turning eastward through the Great Lakes and then New England. Mostly northern New England.
That means several days of a tornado and severe storms risk in the middle of the nation and flooding risks in the northern Great Lake. For us in Vermont, it won't be so scary. Well see lots of showers mixed with breaks of drier weather, warm temperatures, especially in southern Vermont, a rapid advancement of spring and probably an explosion of those awful black flies we see every spring.
Spring can't just be flowers and sunshine after all.
THE DETAILS
Essentially, a front separating somewhere cooler air to the north and the summery air to the south will hang out near the Canadian border most of the week, wavering north and south into and out of Vermont as s disturbances come by one after the other.
Northern Vermont will be mild enough, as the real cold air will stay behind another boundary way up in Quebec. By that I mean highs in the 60s most of the week, lows near 50 with those requent shower threats.
By the time you get to southern Vermont, it will be almost full on summer. Today should be the first of at least six consecutive days in places like Brattleboro will be in the 70s. I wouldn't be a surprised if an 80 degree day or two were thrown in. Pretty impressive for mid-April!
Southern Vermont might see some showers and thunderstorms too, but probably not as many as areas to the north.
A warm front came though overnight. That established our boundary we'll deal with all week. The front should settle back down into northern Vermont as a cold front this afternoon. That means showers would re-blossom this afternoon.
Most of us should see only a tenth to a quarter inch of rain out of this.
TUESDAY
The cold front won't be able to drop temperatures much in the north and not at all in the south. So by tomorrow, we'll have another day that reaches the low 60s north, near 70 south.
Another in a series of disturbances will come at us tomorrow. This one might include thunderstorms. In fact a few of them could get a little strong in the warmer, humid air in central and perhaps southern Vermont.
NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has a marginal risk of severe storms basically south and west of Interstate 89 on Tuesday. That's the lowest of five alert levels for severe storms, but still. I think this i the first time we've contemplated severe storms this year.
Basically, we could have isolated instances of strong wind gusts and some hail in a few spots tomorrow. This forecasts will probably be adjusted one way or another by tomorrow, so stay tuned. There is a much better chance of severe storms tomorrow over the Great Lakes and many parts of the Midwest.
WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY
Kind of rinse and repeat. Disturbances will bring showers and maybe a few thunderstorms through both days. Whether we get any sort of strong storms depends on whether the disturbances come through during the peak heating of the day and whether we get sun ahead of these disturbances to make the atmosphere more unstable.
We'll keep an eye on that, too.
FRIDAY/SATURDAY/SUNDAY
The ridge of high pressure will tend to reorient itself so it pokes further north. By Saturday, that means we should have the warmest day of this spell of weather. Depending on how much sun hits, many areas could hit 80 degrees for a real summer preview. No promises, but we'll see.
Sometime later Saturday or Sunday, a cold front will come in with more showers and maybe storms, and that will bring us back down to reality. Summer will be temporarily over by early next week as temperatures fall to near normal (highs in the 50s lows in the 30s).
After a seemingly never ending winter, you didn't actually expect a never ending summer in Vermont, did you? Of course not.
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