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| A sea of lilacs as viewed from my back deck in St. Albans, Vermont. The hot temperatures of the past few days made them rapidly bloom. Hopefully the upcoming cooler weather will preserve the blooms and the fragrance for awhile. |
After clouds held temperatures in the 86 or 87 degree range much of the afternoon, skies cleared and helped boost temperatures to 90 degrees again. Second day in a row that happened. Tuesday's high fell just one degree short of the record high set in 1989.
Other cities in the Northeast set record highs in a big way.
In Philadelphia, it was 98 degrees, setting a new record for the hottest temperature in the entire month of May. Newark, New Jersey at 99 degrees and Manchester, New Hampshire at 97 degrees tied the record high for the month of May.
Manchester shattered the record for the date by eight degrees, which is quite an accomplishment.
Other record highs include 96 in Boston, 93 in Providence and 92 in Portland, Maine.
All these are extraordinary hot temperatures for so early in the season.
Back here in Vermont, unlike the day before, the morning didn't start cool. The low temperature in Burlington yesterday was was 71 degrees, breaking a 123-year old record.
This May heat might portend a hot summer. The number crunching meteorologists at WCAX discovered that if the first 90 degree day of the year hits in June, which is what usually happens, on average the enter year will have eight days of 90 degree heat.
If the first 90 hits in May, then on average 11 days during the year will touch at least 90
Also yesterday, those thunderstorms failed to materialize in Vermont. As we mentioned yesterday, it could have gone either way. A weather disturbance that could have touched off some storms passed through the Green Mountain State in the late morning. That was too early to touch off anything more than light showers.
The disturbance did generate some thunderstorms in far southern Vermont and in southern New England. The storms in Connecticut were strong enough to knock down a few trees.
TODAY
Big changes are afoot, but it will take a little while to get here.
Early morning temperatures across Vermont were extraordinarily warm. At 7 a.m, Burlington hit their low temperature for the day so far at 76 degrees. Not long after dawn at 6 a.m., it was 74 in Montpelier and Rutland and 72 degrees in Newport. These would easily be candidates for the hottest, stuffiest nights of the month in July.
We won't set any records for highest low temperature today because by midnight tonight, it will much cooler than what we saw early today.
Our cold front looked like it was in eastern New York as of 8 a.m. today and will come through Vermont thorough the rest of this morning. Forecasts call for highs to get cut off in the upper 70s to near 80 north and in the low to perhaps mid 80s far south.
Meanwhile, our friends in southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic States will endure one more torrid May day.
Here in lilac-scented Vermont, though, you'll notice the change in the air today by mid afternoon north and late afternoon south. Even thought the sun should come out, temperatures will be slowly falling amid northwest breezes, humidity levels will fall. Summer will temporally end in favor of spring.
THURSDAY
You'll need to dig out your fleece and long pants if you're taking your dog for a walk early tomorrow. We'll wake up to early morning temperatures in the low 40s. That's not ridiculous for May, but it is another shocking weather whiplash moment.
Highs will only get into the 50s to near 60 north and low to mid 60s south, which is actually about 10 degrees colder than average for this time of year. Skies should be at least partly sunny, but there might be some more clouds north and mountains away from the Champlain Valley.
Away from the Champlain Valley, we're actually back to a risk of some frost in some spots Thursday night and early Friday morning. We'll have more details on that in tomorrow morning's post.
MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND
This will feature a standoff between strong, cool high pressure in far eastern Quebec and coastal southeast Canada and storminess to our south and west.
Depending on how this sets up, it could either be cloudy and cool or partly sunny and seasonable. I'm not yet sure where we're going to go with this. Friday has the best chance of being sunny and nice. Saturday will probably be rain-free, especially north. Showers might or might not come in Sunday, and those showers are somewhat more likely Monday.
Whatever happens, it looks like whatever rain we get will end up being quite light.
Places further south will have an even bigger change in the weather. Cities like Newark and Philadelphia that were in the upper 90s Tuesday will probably have highs barely making it into the low 50s Saturday under rainy skies.
Back here in Vermont, we'll probably warm up nicely next week. There's mixed signals as to whether it will be just seasonably warm in the 70s or quite warm in the 80s. But we have time to figure that out.
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