August Was World's Hottest On Record As El Nino Grows; U.S. Had Hottest Summer

The world had its  hottest August on record. Only
tiny areas on the map are blue, which is a little on the 
cool side of normal. All the orange is warmer than
normal. Dark orange is a record hot month. 

New data released this week show that the world endured its August on record, beating out a tie between 2023 and 2024.  

The hot August was a big contributor to what turned out to be the world's hottest summer on record. Global oceans, taken as a whole, were also at record warmth. 

The United States also had its hottest August, and hottest summer on record. 

HOT WORLD

This all comes from NOAA's National Centers for Environment Information. Every month, NCEI is among a handful of meteorological agencies that take detailed temperatures of the world. Copernicus, the European climatological agency, also deemed August, 2026 the hottest on record. 

August, 2026 broke the record for hottest by 0.14 degrees F., according to NOAA's assessment. That doesn't sound like much, but it's a pretty wide margin if you add up all the thousands of weather stations that measure temperatures daily.

If you want a long, depressing trend, I've got one for you. This is the 48th consecutive year the world has seen an August warmer than the 20th century average, The top ten hottest Augusts have all happened since 2016.

The hot August comes from an amalgamation of data from throughout the world. Some were sort of hot, some were very hot, some were record hot, and a very, very few were a little on the chilly side. Taken together, we have confirmation of our record hot global August

Regions that experienced a record hot August included large swaths of Greenland, northern and central Africa, southern and western Europe, northwest Asia and much of the western United States. Reflecting the El Nino conditions, a huge area of the eastern and central tropical Pacific also had record warmth. 

Even in the warmest months, you can find pockets of relatively cool weather. Parts of the Arctic, eastern Russia and Antarctica had an August that was a tad cooler than the 20th century average. But not by much. 

The world had its warmest June-August period on record as well. That's meteorological summer in the northern hemisphere and meteorological winter in the southern hemisphere. The records for all of the above go back 177 years

 UNITED STATES

All of the continental United States had a warm month
North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Indiana were only
slightly warmer than normal. California, Nevada,
Colorado and New Mexico had the hottest August.

August was also the hottest on record in the United States, as was the summer as a whole. The average temperature across all of the Lower 48, if you aggregate all the established weather stations, was 75.6 degrees. Daytime maximums set an all time record to averaging 88.6 degrees across the continental U.S.   

The records go back 132 years

California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado had their hottest August on record. Seventeen other states had one of their top 10 warmest Augusts.

Nobody in the United States had a cooler than average August North Dakota came closest, having its 58th warmest August on record. 

Here in Vermont, we had our 23rd hottest August, so I guess we escaped the worst of a torrid month. 

It was both stuffy warm nights and torrid afternoons that gave us the hot August. While there were plenty of daily record highs set across the U.S. in August, there wasn't the all-time highs you often see in super warm months. 

August also lacked any real cool spells anywhere in the Lower 48.

Another factor in creating such a hot month were those nights. This happened everywhere in the continental United States. But it was especially noticeable in the lower Great Lakes. That region was along a sort of borderline between especially hot weather to the south, with somewhat more moderate air to the north. 

The cloudy, humid weather in Indiana that cooled afternoons and made nights stuffy gave the state its 44th coolest average maximum temperatures on record. But it also gave Indiana the 28th warmest average minimum temperatures. Add it all up and it was Indiana's 49th hottest August out of the past 132 years.

Indiana was in the epicenter of bad weather in the United States. Indiana and neighborhood Ohio had their wettest August on record. A band extending west to east from Utah to New Jersey, with dry conditions north and south of that band.

Summer and Looking Ahead

Summer in the United States was also the hottest on record. June was warmer than normal. July was the hottest on record in the Lower 48. And, as noted above, August was hottest on record.  The previous record hot summers were a tie between 2021 and 1936

That Dust Bowl summer of 1936 is still regarded by many as the benchmark for hot summers, despite what happened in 2021 and now 2026.

The summer of 1936 certainly had its extreme hot spells, hotter than anything we saw in 2026.  

The summer of 1936 still holds the record for the hottest temperatures on record in eight states. However, it wasn't hot everywhere. The 1936 heat was focused on the Plains States. The Pacific Northwest and New England actually had a cool summer in 1936,.

During August, 2026, the heat wasn't as extreme, but it was far more widespread. There were 1.541 record highs set or tied at weather stations across the Lower 48 compared to kist 87 record low temperatures. That's about as big an imbalance as I've ever seen. 

The summer heat has become a trend this decade in the United States, as climate change worsens. Four of the five hottest summers in the United States have occurred in the past five years, according to NOAA data. 

AUTUMN

 When El Nino takes hold, autumn in the United States are often unusually warm. Especially with climate change holding court. 

The first 10 days of September have featured torrid, often record-breaking hot weather across the southern third of the United States. The rest of the United States have so far mostly lacked the usual cool spells that often spill across the border from Canada we usually see this time of year. 

NOAA predicted a warm September for most of the nation, except in the Pacific Northwest and possibly New England. Overall, autumn is predicted to be warm across most of the Lower 48, especially in the northern Rockies. 

August In Vermont Was Super Dry (Most Places) And Otherwise Kind Of Weather Weird

Very low water levels in the Missisquoi River in 
Enosburgh Falls due to what in many parts of
Vermont were a record or near record dry August. 

You're not going to be the least bit surprised at the following fact now that August is over.

That month was exceptionally, in some cases record dry in Vermont. Montpelier only managed 0.62 inches of rain in August. 

In most Augusts, that amount would fall in a single, hour-long thunderstorm. Normal rainfall for August is 3.81.   

Rutland was even worse, with a preliminary total of just 0.48 inches, against a normal of nearly four inches.s St. Johnsbury only had a bit under an inch of rain.

There were some slight exceptions to the August extreme dryness rule. Burlington had 1.66 inches of rain, which is below normal by 1.88 inches, thanks to a fairly wet final week of the month. This ends up being Burlington's 15th driest August. 

A more pronounced isolated wet spot was Woodstock, which received at least 2.62 inches of rain in August, thanks to well-placed, localized, heavy thunderstorms on August 7 and 14.

I say at least 2.62 inches because data is missing from Woodstock on August 25, and it might have rained that day. Which leads to this editor's note: 

I noticed this morning there were more gaps and delays than usual in August climate information on the National Weather Service page.  I'm unsure whether that's because of cutbacks in staffing at the National Weather Service due to those odious DOGE cuts from the Trump administration, or because today is a holiday or it was just a bad month. 

In the cases of the missing data, I was either able to find the information elsewhere to fill in the gaps, or I just had to give up on highlighting information or drawing conclusions. 

Anyway, going on with Vermont's August weather:

TEMPERATURES

Average temperatures for August, 2025 in Vermont were a little below what is now considered "normal."   Of course, I have to remind you again this is the "new normal." based on the average temperatures from 1990 to 2020. 

This "new normal" is balmier than the 20th century average. So a slightly cooler than average August nowadays would have been a normal or even slightly warmer than normal August had it happened a half century ago.

In fact, despite this August being allegedly "cool" it was still a tie for 30th warmest August out of the past 126 years in Burlington. 

Looking more closely at August temperatures, we find an oddity: Average high temperatures were above normal, but overnight lows were even further below this new normal. 

It's what you'd expect in a dry month. The dry ground allows the daytime sun to really heat the atmosphere instead of focusing on evaporation, so the daytimes are hotter. Nighttimes are cooler during dry spells. If the ground had been wet, that added humidity would have kept temperatures from falling as much as they did. 

This warm highs/chiller lows pattern we saw this August bucks a climate change trend.  Nights have generally been getting warmer faster than daytimes, so this past month was an exception. 

That high temperatures were so warm in August were boosted by a weird heat wave on August 9-12.  Temperatures reached as high as 98 degrees in Burlington on August 12. The heat was accompanied by unusually dry air. 

The weird heat wave is what really started our flash drought in August. 

SUMMER 

Meteorological summer runs from June 1 through August 31, so for climatologists, summer ended last night at midnight. 

Despite the allegedly "cool" August that really was not chilly, Burlington had the seventh warmest summer on record. 

Due to ties, there are actually 14 summers in Burlington's top ten list of warmest summers on record. With this summer added, nine of the top 14 hottest summers have occurred since 2005, and five of them have occurred since 2020.  

So yes, most summers nowadays are way different from the way they were decades ago. 

AUTUMN OUTLOOK

Meteorological autumn runs from September 1 through November 30.  NOAA is saying that above normal temperatures will continue though this new season. In fact, the best chances of higher than average temperatures during the fall in the United States would be in the Southwest and New England. 

Seasonal forecasts aren't alway correct, but NOAA did say last spring that our just ended summer would be very warm, and they were absolutely right. 

The autumn seasonal outlook doesn't help much with our precipitation, which we really need. NOAA just gives us equal chances of above or below normal rainfall between now and the end of November. 

In the short term, the first half of September does look mostly cooler than average, though that doesn't mean the overall warm forecast is wrong. Two weeks out of a season don't make much of a difference.e 

Today through Thursday, and maybe Friday will feature near to slightly above normal temperatures, but it should cool down for at least a few days after that. 

After that, who knows what will happen the rest of the autumn. Watch this space.  

After Being Mostly Cheated On Monday Rain, Vermont Faces Autumnal Week In One Of Its Driest Augusts On Record

Last evening had a bit of an autumnal look and feel
to it here in St. Albans, Vermont, and this week
will definitely be pre-autumn in Vermont. But
rain faltered Monday, and not much is in the 
forecast. This will likely be one of the driest
Augusts on record in the Green Mountain State., 

As always with summer rains, there were winners and losers with showers on Monday.

Things usually even out, but with our Vermont drought deepening, the stakes are much higher now. Yesterday's misses make the situation for many much more dire for many of us. 

It turns out a small area around where I live in northwest Vermont was the big winner. 

The more than three quarters of an inch of rain that fell around St. Albans and Georgia early Monday was more than anyone else in the Green Mountain State received by a pretty large margin. 

A patch of showers that passed through early this morning slightly added to the wet bonus in the Champlain Valley. 

My place in St. Albans received another 0.1 inches of rain early this morning, for a three day total of 0.95.   That's better than almost all the rest of Vermont. 

So I'm damn lucky. And gloating,

Elsewhere,  most places received a third of an inch of rain or less. Widely scattered showers and thunderstorms Monday afternoon provided a bit of additional help in a handful of places, but most of us stayed dry.   

August now stands an excellent chance of becoming one of Vermont's top 10 driest Augusts. In some towns, it might well be the driest August on record. 

So far this month, Montpelier has only had 0.31 inches of rain. They should have receive about 3..2 inches by now.. St. Johnsbury has logged only a half inch of rain so far in August. By now 3.3 inches should  have accumulated this month.  

If no more rain falls in Burlington this month, it'll be the second driest August on record with just 0.93 inches. (The driest August was in 1957 with just 0.72 inches.) The tenth driest August in Burlington was 1.49 inches in 1894, so we should make the list.  

It would take a big surprise this coming weekend for this August to become one of the ten driest. 

RAIN PROSPECTS

We do have a remote, outside chance of a decent rain this weekend, but I'm to holding my breath. Still, it seems increasingly likely that at least some parts of Vermont will get a little bit of rain Thursday night and Friday. And maybe continuing a bit on Saturday. really doubting it. 

We're in what I would guess pre-autumn now, and weather conditions will be classic September. 

Last evening, I really did feel start to feel the cool autumnal aspect of autumn, even if in reality it really wasn't all that cool. Just seasonable, but it's been mostly a hot summer until now. 

For the rest of the week, we'll have a pretty typical regime for autumn or even winter. A northwest flow with embedded weak disturbances will continue today and tomorrow. 

That means cool air and party cloudy skies with a risk of a few light showers, mostly in the mountains. It'll be sunniest in the southeast with virtually no chance of showers down there. Which is bad, because that part of the state really missed out on the rain Sunday and Monday. 

Today's showers won't amount to much, so in general, we'll either start drying out, or continue drying out. The drought lives on.  

On Thursday night a stronger cold front will approach. It also looks like an upper level storm will want to get going overhead or nearby, with a small corresponding small storm down where we live.

The front itself will have some oomph to it. So we might briefly get some moderate intensity showers and maybe a little rumble of thunder with it toward Friday. 

The upper level low will have a pocket of pretty chilly air with it, so highs Friday and Saturday probably won't get out of the 60s. Or even 50s in some colder, higher northern spots. Burlington on Friday will probably have its first sub-70 high temperature since June 13. 

Showers, mostly along the west slopes of the northern Green Mountains should continue into Saturday. That's a very typical winter pattern. At least it's going to be rain, not snow, right?  

Some - but not all - forecasts have the chilly upper level low lingering through the Labor Day weekend, If that chill remains, it won't be much of a farewell to summer. Too cold for the beach, and possibly too showery to enjoy hiking to the mountain summits. 

The late week storm and cold front are coming in from the north, so it won't be able to scoop up a lot of humid air from the south. So even though the front and storm might have a lot of energy, it probably won't be able to generate a huge amount of rain. 

But, as I keep saying, we'll take anything. We'll have a better idea of how much rain as we draw closer to the event. 

Longer range forecasts have high pressure stalling over us starting around Monday and continuing much of the following week. That will keep us dry with a bit of a warming trend. 

After this thing we're getting at the start of Labor Day weekend, the next chance of decent rains wouldn't come along until around September 5 or 6, as it looks now.  

Cooldown Coming To Vermont (Eventually) But No Throwback To "Frigid' Augusts Of The Past

If you're tired of the smoky, hazy, hot air we've experienced
in Vermont this summer, I present you with this image
of a crystal clear, clean frosty day, taken Feb. 4, 2021.

 We've still got a few more warm days to go before the strongest cold front since early June blows in on Sunday. 

Dry weather will mostly continue, keeping me concerned that a flash drought is starting. At the very least, Vermont will remain abnormally dry. 

The drying trend will continue big time today.   We can expect sunshine, warm temperatures and very dry air.  

The dew point - a rough measure of how humid it is out there, will stay relentlessly low today. Those dew points could fall into the upper 40s this afternoon which is quite arid for an August afternoon in Vermont.

We've still got a quick squirt of very warm to hot air coming in Saturday. The warmer valleys could reach 90 degrees which might well be the final day this year of 90 degree heat. We don't know for sure, of course, as sometimes we get heat waves into the first half of September.

The humidity will only rise modestly, so our crops and gardens will continue to get more and more parched. 

The cold front Sunday means business, but only in terms of temperature. At this point, rainfall looks lame with it, amounting to a quarter inch or less. Maybe a little more than that north, maybe a little less south. A few pinpoint places could get a little more in local downpours, but it won't be anything exciting. 

You'll certainly notice the temperature drop behind the cold front.  You'll feel it cooling off quite a bit  later in the day Sunday. By Monday, highs will only make it to within a few degrees of 70. Monday night will be in the 40s for most of us. 

There's a slight chance we'll get lucky and the cold front will stall just to our south. If that happens, a storm might form along it and give us a little more rain Tuesday. Especially south. But that scenario is iffy at this point. I'm not holding my breath yet for any showers then.

It will only slowly warm up the rest of next week, but still stay slightly cooler than average. Nothing unusual for August. We will be nowhere in the league of notable chilly Augusts of the past.  

PAST COLD AUGUSTS

The Death Valley heat earlier in the week was definitely a bit much.  But let's face it, at least we're getting a summer.  They're kind of short here in Vermont, even with climate change, but you want to at least get through most of June, July and August with at least several days of beach weather. 

It wasn't always like this.  We've had our share of disappointing Augusts that masqueraded  as Septembers.  

It started in the cold summer of 1962, when August four consecutive days mid month in which highs never got out of the mid-60s. 

Then came 1963. That year, only seven August days made it as high as 80 degrees, with the warmest being 84.. (For comparison, this year, we're only halfway through the month and Burlington has had 14 days that were at least 80 degrees.  

In 1963, eight days never made it to 70 degrees. One day, the 13h had a low of 46 a high of just 59 with over a half inch of rain. In other words, a somewhat raw October day in the middle of August .

The next year, August, 1964, brought slightly warmer afternoons, but way to chilly nights. Fifteen mornings that month in Vermont's banana belt of Burlington got under 50 degrees. On both August 1 and August 7, there was frost in some of the cold hollows of Vermont. On August 1, the temperature got down to 30 in South Londonderry and 32 in both Chelsea and Somerset.   

August, 1965 brought some summer weather early in the month, but fall made a very strong, early showing toward the end. Daytime temperatures stayed in the 50s for the final three days of the August, 1965  culminating in a hard freeze in some spots on August 31,

It got down to 25 degrees in South Londonderry, 26 in West Burke and 27 in Northfield. 

For the remainder of the 1960s ,each August was also cooler than normal, but not as bad as the years I mentioned here.

I don't know why 1960s summers were so chilly. It could have been just a natural cycle. Particulate and sulfur pollution in that era might have blunted the warmth of the sun a bit, too.  

Now that climate change has taken hold, it's highly unlikely we'll have such cold Augusts that we had in the 1960s. We'll still have relatively chilly Augusts from time to time. After all, climate change has not stopped weather patterns from bringing cooler air down from Canada. 

But that climate change has altered our perspective of summers. Actually the whole year.  The chances for hot Augusts, or hot any month are way up. For August, the top four hottest Augusts in Burlington have all happened since 2016. 

Burlington has 15 years in the top ten list of hottest summers due to ties. (Measured as temperatures between June 1 an August 31).  Eight of those hottest summers have happened since 2005, and there's a chance this summer might join this list. 

As I always like to say, this ain't your grandfather's climate. 

Stepping Down Unevenly Into Cooler Vermont/New England Weather Pattern. Drought Continues

A hazy sun sets over St. Albans, Vermont Wednesday.
It was the last time until next spring the sun set at or 
later than 8 p.m. True to the season, cooler 
weather is due by next week. 

 If you don't like hot weather, the good news is you probably won't see anything like the heat we've seen in the past few days until next summer.  

It's getting toward the back half of August. Things will start to cool. We'll probably have more hot weather, but nothing like the mid and even upper 90s we saw this week. 

WEDNESDAY EXPLAINED

The beginning of the end of the heat came yesterday with the arrival of showers and thunderstorms. 

I got a little smug yesterday morning with my surprise and delight over some early morning showers here in St. Albans, Vermont but the joke was on me.  

That was pretty much it for me with the rain. St. Albans received 0.23 inches, with nothing coming down after noon. 

The showers in far northwest Vermont kept the skies cloudy and cooler much of the day and stabilized the atmosphere. It only got to 87 degrees in Burlington and 81 in Highgate. So no new showers developed during the day much north of Route 2.

Elsewhere in Vermont, Wednesday was another hot one. St. Johnsbury set a record high for the date with 95 degrees. Springfield made it to 94 degrees. Montpelier got to 90, missing the record high for the date by just one degree. 

Unlike in far northern Vermont, the heat allowed widespread showers and storms to develop, though most places had unimpressive amounts of rain. Burlington had about a third of an inch, which ended an unprecedented dry spell for August. It was the first time on record the first 12 days of the month were rain free. 

Elsewhere yesterday,  Montpelier managed to see a quarter inch of rain, and Springfield a half inch. St. Johnsbury could only muster 0.15 inches. 

Wednesday also proved you can get a flood alert in a drought. 

An area around Londonderry, Bellows Falls, Windham and some other communities in southeast Vermont were socked by storms that dumped up to around three inches of rain in a short period of time. The National Weather Service issued a flood advisory for that area for a time late Wednesday afternoon.

DROUGHT REMAINS

Wednesday's rain was not nearly enough to quench our thirst, and mostly dry weather looms.  But at least there's a little precipitation in the forecast.

Today is starting out muggy.  One weak cold front came through, another boundary temporarily stalled in northern New York. Neither front was enough to push the humidity that built up yesterday out.

A third cold front today will do the job. This last front is weak, and will produce at most isolated showers. But it will flush the humidity out. You'll notice the change in the air this afternoon. The decrease in humidity will be nice, but it will come with some wildfire smoke again. Can't escape that! 

The drier air means you'll sleep better tonight.  Dry air allows temperatures at night to cool rapidly, especially if skies are clear. That'll be the case, so expect lows to drop into the comfortable 50s.

Friday will also be a nice summer day with sunshine and highs hitting the low 80s. After a fairly comfortable Friday night, a brief squirt of hot, dry air will work in Saturday. Some of us could get to 90 again. The humidity will stay low, so the drying ground and fire danger will continue. 

The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor is released every Thursday. I'll file a report in this blog thingy after it comes out later today. It will be interesting to see how much worse things got in Vermont after what I'm calling Vermont's Death Valley Week. That hot, arid air was something!

"FAIR WEATHER" COMING

Next week, right on schedule we'll enter what I call "Fair Weather." Not "fair" as in fair skies, though we'll probably have plenty of that. But in Vermont, "Fair Weather" is the not quite summer, not quite fall type weather you at least used to see in late August and the opening days of September. 

That's when most of the county and local fairs come through the Green Mountain State.  Traditionally, the weather during these events is cooler than what you endure in high summer, but warmer than the crisp air you'd expect once we really get into fall.

Due to climate change, "Fair Weather" has not been happening as much in late August in the past decade or two.  Instead, it's been staying hot. So this year might be a nice throwback to tradition. 

A cold front Sunday will throw some showers our way, but it won't rain all day.  Next week will feature highs mostly in the low 70s north to mid and upper 70s Champlain Valley and south. Lows will get into the upper 40s, low 50s, that kind of neighborhood.

It's hard to tease out exactly what each day next week will be like this far in advance.  Weak disturbances could generate a little rain on one or two days, but the dry northwest flow will probably prevent any of the real soakers we need.

But I think we're now past the truly hot part of summer. 

August Is Vermont's Month For Historic Heat Waves, (Though Not Saying It Will Happen This Year, I Think)

Then peak of summer might be over in August, but
a majority of Vermont/New England's most intense
heat waves have hit in August. 

 July is the hottest month of the year in Vermont, but most of our most intense heat waves seem to hit in August.  

True, arguably the granddaddy of all New England heat waves hit in July, 1911. And New England endured some historic heat this June.

But August is the place to be for extreme heat. So, if you think our current, refreshing spell of weather is the way things will go this month, think again. 

Here are some of the highlights for August Heat:

August, 1918: Some of the coldest weather on record in Vermont hit in the years 1917 and 1918, so I guess it was a relief to see some 100 degree weather in the Green Mountain State. Vernon reached 102 degrees and Cornwall hit 100.

That heat missed northern Vermont. Burlington got to 91 degrees on one day that month on the seventh. August, 1918 was otherwise a chilly, September-ish month. 

THE 1940s

For some reason, the 1940s brought us a series of torrid Augusts. We haven't seen anything like it since. 

August, 1944:  This was an especially intense and brutally long lasting heat wave. Burlington reached 101 degree on August 11 that year. But it was 89 degrees or hotter for an astonishing nine consecutive days from August 9 to 17. 

Because of climate change, August, 1944 is now relegated to the ninth hottest August on record in Burlington. Individual hot days in more recent years might not have been as extreme as 1944. But in the now-hottest Augusts of 2018, 2021, 2016 and 2022,  the heat has been more consistent, with fewer and less chilly cooler breaks.

August, 1947  The temperature in Burlington, Vermont reached 90 degrees ten times on this month. Dry conditions helped daytime temperatures reach such levels. Portland, Maine had only 0.27 inches of rain that August. The drought that late summer and autumn led to the most devastating wildfires in Maine history. Which is another reason to fear hot summers. 

August, 1948: Bellows Falls had six consecutive days in the 90s, peaking at 98 degrees August 24 to 30, which is awfully late in the season to have that many days so hot. Burlington had a four-day streak in the 90s,  

August, 1949: Burlington hit 90 degrees on eight days this month, part of a summer that brought 26 days with 90 degree readings. That's still the record for the most in a single summer.  

OTHER AUGUST HEAT

August 2, 1975 "Hot Saturday" gave us the hottest temperatures ever recorded in New England.  It reached 107 degrees in Chester and New Bedford, Massachusetts. 

Providence, reached 104 degrees, still the hottest temperature on record for Rhode Island. One weird aspect of the 1975 heat wave is how much it hugged the coast, with absolutely no sea breeze. Nantucket reached 100 degrees for the only time on record there. 

Portland, Maine reached their all-time high of 103 degrees. Portsmouth, New Hampshire reached 102. 

Here in Vermont, it was "cooler" with Burlington reaching 99 degrees.  That's a multi-way tie for third hottest on record. I'm not aware of any official 100 degree readings in Vermont but my unofficial thermometer in West Rutland did hit 100 degrees that day. 

August, 2018, 2021:  The sleepless in Vermont months, as the striking thing about this hottest month on record were the muggy nights, rather than hot days. Only four days got to 90 that month, including a record high of 97 degrees on the 29th. 

But eight days during this month failed to get below 70 degrees in Burlington, It never got cooler than 66 degrees from July 31 through August 9.

August, 2021 had even worse nighttime sleeping weather. Ten nights in Burlington failed to get under 70 degrees, with five consecutive 70 degree or hotter nights from August 9-13. The low on two days in a row never got under 75 degrees. 

THIS AUGUST

All signs continue to point toward mostly warm to hot weather for most of this month. True, yesterday and this morning were the coolest since early June, but that is about to change. 

Burlington has a real shot at being in the 80s every single day from today through the next two weeks. Some of those days could touch 90 by the end of next week. 

We'll see how the end of this month goes, but even those long range forecasts lean toward warmer than normal temperatures. 

Stats Confirm: This July Is Yet Another Hot One, Third One In A Row

A severe thunderstorm over Lamoille County on 
July 10, as seen from a distance from Williston
Vermont. Other than that date, severe 
weather was pretty infrequent in our hot,
humid Vermont July, 2025

 I'm sure you felt and melted in Vermont's tropical July, 2025, and I have the receipts to prove it.

This July was another summer month that didn't really feel like Vermont.   

In Burlington, the mean temperature was 74.6, tying with 1975 and 1995 as the sixth warmest on record. 

This was the third July in a row that was among the top ten warmest on record.  Six of the top 10 warmest Julys have happened since 2018. 

Montpelier had its fifth warmest July on record. 

Unlike June, there was never any super extreme heat. No record highs. The heat was fairly persistent, but not as relentless as last year. We managed to see a substantial break in the tropical conditions on July 20-23 and the 31st. 

Still,  Burlington had eight days that got to 90 degrees or more. Only ten other Julys in the past 125 years had as many or more such days. 

It's telling how much climate change has altered our perception of a "normal" summer.    Under the "new normal" which is the average of temperatures between 1990 and 2020,  July in Burlington was a mere 2.2 degrees above this warmer "average".

Average temperature were much lower in most of the 20th century, of course. In July, 1975. the month Burlington just  tied with for sixth warmest, was at the time more than five degrees warmer than average. 

Rainfall

July in Vermont was dry, except in the Northeast Kingdom, parts of which had a destructive flash flood on July 10.  The month was also a little on the wet side in the extreme northwest. Burlington was close to normal, while my unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans collected a pretty soggy 6.5 inches of July rain. 

Extreme southwest Vermont was also a little on the wet side, but overall, most of the state was dry. A lot of places missed out on many of the typical midsummer shower and thunderstorms.

So far, drought hasn't developed, thanks to the wet spring and early summer.   Given the current forecast, though, I think some parts of Vermont will soon be declared "abnormally dry" though not in drought unless the rain falters for weeks on end. 

St. Johnsbury, having endured by far its wettest month on record last July with an incredible 17 inches of rain, was one of the driest spots in Vermont this year. They only had about 2.4 inches of rain, or about half the usual installment for July. Rutland came up about two inches short for July rainfall 

St Johnsbury is just south of the area hit be the July 10 flash floods in the Northeast Kingdom, which really was the only real extreme weather event of the month, other than the heat and humidity. The July 10 event severely damaged at least a couple homes, and washed away sections of road in Sutton, West Burke and East Haven. 

Thick wildfire smoke from Canada obscures the view for
these fishing enthusiasts at St. Albans Bay,
Vermont on July 26

That same day, severe thunderstorms in Addison County caused some flooding, and tore part of the roof off of Middlebury Union High School.  

Other than that, there were only widely scattered instances of severe thunderstorm damage in Vermont during July, which is usually the peak of what passes for the Green Mountain States severe storm season. 

The other hazard we dealt with was wildfire smoke from Canada. That's been happening most summers lately, in part another negative consequence of climate change. 

 Unlike in the upper Midwest, the smoke in Vermont usually wasn't that bad this July, 

Except on July 26, when the air quality in Vermont was some of the worst ever seen. 

LOOKING AHEAD

In June, NOAA released its outlook for July, indicating it would be a hot month around here. They were right. That forecast also leaned hesitantly toward July being a wee bit wetter than normal.  I give that a win, too, since a few places in Vermont had some extra precipitation, while others were dry.  

As we know, August is opening with cool weather. That won't last. Forecasts have us shifting to warmer than normal temperatures by Sunday afternoon, 

We lose about an hour and a half of daylight, so normal temperatures will start to cool, especially during the second half of the month.  That's only if we have some semblance of a typical pattern.

We do know that after we get through today and tomorrow, odds lean really heavily toward above normal temperatures through mid-month, according to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.

Precipitation chances during the first half of the month in this forecast seem to be near normal, maybe ever so slightly leaning toward heavier than normal toward mid month. 

Beyond mid month, forecasts get even more tenuous. The deeper into the future you go, the higher the odds forecasts will be off. Still, NOAA's three to four week outlook released today still leans pretty strongly toward above normal temperatures here. Rainfall is a tossup between above or below normal, so take your guess. 

Confirmed: August And Summer As A Whole In Vermont Hot, Wet

 Hot and wet.

Dark thunderstorm clouds invade blue sky on a humid
day over Colchester, Vermont on August 4. That
turned out to be typical weather for the entire month.

That's definitely how you can describe the summer of 2024. We knew that already, but the final figures are in to prove it. 

TEMPERATURES

The August figures are in and we had another warmer than normal month, at least if you look at all the historical averages dating back to the 1880s.

Even so, August was the "coolest" relative to normal of the three summer months in Vermont this year.  Overall temperatures for the month were near what has become a new normal. 

"Normal" temperatures are the average of the period from 1990 to 2020.  This is moved ahead every decade. Until 2020, the "normal." was the average between 1980 and 2010. You see how it's updated every decade.

Under this arrangement, Burlington was actually a touch cooler than this new normal in August, 2024, with a mean temperature of 70.4 degrees compared to this so-called "normal" of 70.7 degrees.

But this August was decidedly warmer than the 20th century average in Burlington. In the past 132 years, I could only find 29 Augusts that were as warm or warmer than this year. And only fifteen of those were before 1990.

Elsewhere in Vermont, August came in just a bit warmer than the new average, mostly by a degree or less. 

The month was humid in general, and you can see evidence of that in the numbers. Humid days tend to keep high temperatures suppressed a little bit, and overnight low temperatures on the higher side. 

Across Vermont, average high temperatures in August, 2024 were a bit below the "new normal," But average lows for the month were solidly on the warmer than average side. 

RAINFALL/OTHER EVENTS

Precipitation was generous across Vermont in August, 2024, but thankfully not nearly as torrential or destructive as in the previous month. 

Still, the Northeast Kingdom did have some more flooding in early August, and more heavy rain associated with the remnants of Hurricane Debby around August 9-10. Over those two days. St. Johnsbury had 2.78 inches of rain. 

Debris from a roof that blew off a house in St. Albans Bay,
Vermont on August 9 due to high winds produced by
former Hurricane Debby 

For the entire month, pretty much everyone was about an inch on the heaver than average side, except ultra wet St. Johnsbury, which had 6.11 inches of rain in August, about two inches more than normal. 

We did get a scare with Debby on August 9 to 10, as forecasts prior to the storm indicated Vermont might be in for another devastating flood. Instead, the severe flooding hit Pennsylvania, western and northwestern New York and on into Quebec.

High winds with that storm,  however, did cause quite a bit of damaging in the Green Mountain State, especially in and near the Champlain Valley. 

Like in many recent summers, we also dealt with occasional bouts of wildfire smoke during August, but the pollution wasn't nearly as bad as last year. 

FULL SUMMER

Meteorological summer runs from June 1 to August 31. This year, there's some pretty impressive records for the season.   .

St. Johnsbury  - very remarkably - had both its hottest and wettest summer on record, reports the National Weather Service office in South Burlington. 

It's especially wild since records in St. Johnsbury go back to 1894. The longer the period of record at a weather station,  the less likely they are to break big records like seasonal temperature and rain. The average summer temperature in St. Johnsbury was 70.3.

St. Johnsbury's wettest summer record was so off the charts I still can't believe it. From June 1 through August 31, they had an incredible 29.48 inches of rain over the three months, including that insane 17.15 inch total for July. 

St. Johnsbury's wettest day in history was the 8.08 inches that fell on July 30. Even if you subtract out the July 30 from this summer's rainfall, St. Johnsbury would still have had its wettest summer on record.  

Burlington tied with 2018 for the third hottest summer on record, with a three-month average of 72.1 degrees. That means four of the top five hottest summers in Burlington have been since 2018.  That's quite a trend that certainly hints at climate change. 

It reached at least 90 degrees on 14 days this summer. It's looking really unlikely we'll see any more such days, so that should be the total for the year. Only 13 other summers in Burlington since the late 1880s had as many or more 90 degree days than that. 

Montpelier had its third wettest and sixth warmest summer on record in 2024. 

Vermont managed to see a rare year in which at least one place managed to get to at least 100 degrees. North Springfield, Vermont, reached 101 degrees on June 21. They had quite a heat wave, with daily highs on June 19-21 at 98, 99, and that 101.

Speaking of quite a heat wave, Lebanon, New Hampshire had the most consecutive 90 degree days on record as each of the 12 days from July 6 through 17 reached at least 90.  Lebanon is a good proxy for White River Junction since it's right across the Connecticut River. 

LOOKING AHEAD

Long range forecasts, as I always like to point out are prone to error. But they often do provide hints as to what's coming up, even if they're not always reliable. 

In recent years, summer weather has extended well into September, another sign of climate change. 

This year, though, the first half of September looks like we'll be a little closer to autumn than usual. Temperatures over the next two weeks are forecast to be near or a little cooler than average across Vermont. 

Longer range forecasts from NOAA, however, hint at better odds of a warmer than average autumn overall.  NOAA gives the best chances of a toasty autumn to the southern Rockies and New England.   

That's also consistent with recent autumn. Seven of the ten warmest autumns on record in Burlington have occurred since 2011. Records go back to the 1880s.

Vermont Forecast Keeps Getting A Colder And Colder Look

Dark, cool and dreary for August this morning in St. 
Albans, Vermont. It's going to be like October
probably through Thursday. 

 The cool spell that arrived in Vermont is now looking like it might well be one of the chilliest spells of August weather we've had in years. 

It won't be the coolest August weather on record, not by a long shot. As I wrote the other day, we used to regularly have autumn-like episodes of weather in August on a regular basis. 

Still, this will probably be the nippiest August regime since at least 2014.  That was the last time we had three consecutive days in Burlington in which high temperatures never made it out of the 60s. 

Even then, those three days in August, 2014 were in general about as cool, or even possibly slightly warmer than what's in the forecast for today through Thursday.  

Originally, today was supposed to the coolest day of the bunch. And it will be chilly by August standards with highs only in the 60s.  

But we should see glimpses of sun every once in awhile between the clouds, and there won't be all that many showers around. So you'll actually get to go outside and, I don't know, enjoy the isolated pockets of fall foliage that have already popped up?

Wednesday now looks to be the more shockingly chilly day of this.  At least shockingly compared to what we've seen most of the time this summer. 

The cold upper level low pressure causing this brisk weather will be right on top of us.  That will inspire lots of clouds, and numerous showers, though they will be light showers. 

But it will be a nasty day for late season summer visitors to Vermont. I hope they brought more than t-shirts and shorts. High temperatures will range from the mid-50s - that's it - over somewhat higher terrain of the north, to the mid-60s in banana belt towns in the Champlain Valley and lowlands of southeast and southwest Vermont. 

The forecast high of 63 in Burlington is normal for October 6.  We still probably won't have the coldest high on record for the date. That honor goes to August 21, 1982, when the "high" in Burlington reached a less-than-balmy 58 degrees. That was the day I mentioned previously in which people were skiing three inches of snow atop Killington. 

Speaking of snow, I do wonder if Mount Washington. The forecast high up there Wednesday is just 40 degrees, with lows in the mid-30s.  That might be cold enough for a few wet snowflakes atop New England's highest peak. 

It won't get cold enough for snow on the higher summits of Vermont's Green Mountains. Still, hikers should take note that summit temperatures will only be within a few degrees either side of 50 today through Thursday.  Rain showers will make it seem colder. A cotton t-shirt and sandals won't cut it, folks! 

The cool, showery weather is now forecast to continue well into Thursday, which is a change from forecasts issued a few days ago. Those earlier forecasts had said a warmup would start then, but now the warmer weather is postponed until Friday, and won't really kick into gear until the weekend. 

By Saturday and Sunday, we should see daytime highs poke into the low 80s for many of us. That's about normal, or a little warmer than average for this time of year. 

Until now, this August has been running decidedly on the warm side. But this cool spell might take the month down to the cool side of what is the new climate change normal for the month. It all depends on how balmy it gets - and stays - after this cold snap departs. 

I'm making a big deal out of a spell of autumn in August, only because by today's standards, it's odd. But like I said earlier in this post, and in a post I put up on Sunday, this kind of thing used to happen all the time in mid and late August. 

It's all just another way we've adjusted to a new normal in the age of climate change.   

Strong August Vermont Cool Spell Looms, But Back In The Day, It Would Have Been "Normal"

It's going to feel like autumn in Vermont this coming week,
though we'll definitely have to wait several more weeks at
least before we see fall foliage and snow
capped mountains like this. 

 Arguably the coolest August weather in quite a few years appears to be looming in Vermont for the upcoming week. 

It's looking like we'll have a couple days with highs just in the 60s, with maybe a couple upper 50s for highs in the coldest spots. Overnight lows during this spell, which will peak Tuesday and Wednesday, will fall into the 40s to maybe around 50 in the warmest spots.

That's quite a shocking change after the long, humid, almost tropical summer we've had here in the Green Mountain State. 

It's still hazy and humid out there this Sunday morning. Some light showers dampened things last night, and we have a chance of some scattered showers today. Not too big a deal. Though an isolated spot or two could see a very heavy downpour. 

Monday will be the transition day, as a wet cold front comes through. Most of us should see a good inch of rain by the time it winds down Monday night. 

We'll have to watch for locally heavy rain. It's possible some embedded thunderstorms could hit the same spot repeatedly, raising the (again!) risk of isolated flash flooding. It doesn't look like it will be a widespread problem, but it is something to watch in case things get out of control in one or two towns.

THE COLD SNAP

Forecasts have been trending colder and colder with the upcoming cool blast of air. It will really feel like we're well into autumn Tuesday and Wednesday. 

On both days, there's some questions as to how much cloudiness and showers will be around. Some forecasts have only widely scattered showers under partly sunny skies both days. If that happens, highs will reach the upper 60s for most of us, which is cool for the season, but not totally out of control.

Some forecasts call for lots of clouds and showers both days, which would hold high temperatures in the low 60s, with some upper 50s in the colder, higher elevation towns.  Stiff north winds would make it feel chillier.

Drag out those hoodies and blankets, folks!

I don't think anybody has to worry about frosty nights just yet, but the colder hollows could reach the upper 30s if skies clear enough during the nights.

It'll start to gradually warm up later in the week, and we should be back to normal temperatures (highs 75-82, lows in the 50s to near 60) by next weekend. 

OLD FASHIONED COLD

Nowadays, the type of chill that's in the forecast for this upcoming week is unusual for August. Climate change has made summers hotter, so a couple days of highs in the 60s this time of year has become unusual. 

Especially if you consider the top four hottest Augusts in Burlington have all occurred since just 2016.  

It never used to be that way a few decades ago.  A few days with highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s used to happen virtually every August. The coldest high temperature on record for Tuesday in Burlington is 60 degrees, and for Wednesday that record coldest high is 58 degrees.  I strongly doubt we'll break those records. 

There's lots of examples of cold August weather in the past. 

In August 1965 and 1976, it got as cold as 35 degrees in Burlington, and widespread frosts damaged crops in other parts of Vermont.  Eight of the first 10 days of August 1964 got into the 40s in Burlington. On the weekend of August 21-22, 1982, skiers cut turns on three inches of fresh snow near the summit of Killington. 

So yes, it was a different type of late summer in Vermont a few decades ago. 

COLD TO HEAT?

The following is the most uncertain part of the forecast, but there's some evidence to suggest the cold high pressure from Canada this week will end up moving to our east and eventually merging with the Bermuda High. 

If the happens, and if no new cold fronts immediately emerge from Canada, the same weather system that is about to cause our big preview to autumn might also eventually bring in some late season heat. Stay tuned on that one.   

Atmospheric Traffic Jam To Keep Vermont Occasionally Showery, Occasionally Smoky

On a quiet morning today in St. Albans, a rabbit
wonders if he should chomp on the flowers on either
side of him. 

 Mid August is peak season for summer doldrums in the atmosphere.

Most weather systems are in no hurry to get anywhere. Aside from hurricanes, almost all of these systems are relatively weak. And they sort of linger around instead of zipping right along.  

The classic August dog days for sure. 

In these cases, which happen almost every August, you end up with fairly long spells of vaguely unsettled, often kind of humid, warm but not super hot weather with an almost constant threat of a few hit or miss showers or storms. 

Which is our fate for the next several days. 

As an added bonus this year,  smoke from western and Canadian forest fires keeps recirculating in this lazy mix of atmospheric meandering. So we get some of that, too.

The upper level low pressure that gave us scattered showers and garden variety storms Sunday and Monday is still not far to our east. The north flow behind it is sucking occasional bursts of smoke down from Canada.

We saw somewhat smoky skies on an otherwise nice Tuesday. It looks kind of hazy again this morning, and a thicker batch of smoke looks like it's on its way from the north for Thursday. Most of the smoke seems to be aloft, so the air quality shouldn't get too awful. 

But the blue skies between showers will not be all that blue. 

The system to the east will also send weak weather disturbances running north to south today and tomorrow, so there's the ever present risk of a shower.  Today, the vast majority of us will stay dry. But a few lucky devils could get a fair amount of rain in some isolated downpours. That's because the showers are in no hurry to move in this blah weather pattern. 

Showers and some storms will be a bit more widespread Thursday, but again, not everyone gets wet. Despite the very lame northerly flow, humidity is starting to creep up. It won't be extreme, but dew points in the 60s starting today and lasting into the weekend don't make for refreshing air.

THE NEXT SLOTH

That little thing to our northeast will gradually move off, only to be replaced by another upper level storm system that will set up shop in over the Great Lakes starting Friday and going into early next week. 

This thing will only very slowly move east. The traffic jam will be made worse by soon-to-be Hurricane Ernesto.

It will become a powerful hurricane as it moves north in the Atlantic Ocean over the next several days far off the East Coast.

Ernesto will have no direct effects on us here in Vermont. But Ernesto will help maintain the atmospheric traffic jam.

As a result,  that Great Lakes disturbance acting like a sloth, moving ever so slowly across the Great Lakes  and Northeast through the early part or middle of next week. Kind of like an annoying lost, whiny tourist. 

Bottom line: A constant risk of shower and storms for several days in a row. 

It won't rain all the time, and I'm not especially worried about a lot of flooding, at least so far. Some of the downpours with this might end up being pretty heavy. And of course won't be in a hurry to move much. So that could cause some local problems here and there. Especially Sunday and Monday, when this thing should peak. 

Eventually, this sluggish pattern will shift gears into autumn. Sometime, probably in September, you'll really see weather systems step up the pace, and things will get much more changeable.

Record Global Trend Continues: August Was World's Hottest On Record

The world had its hottest August on record this year.
The only place that was cooler than the 20th century
average was in and near Antarctica for some reason.

 The numbers are in for August and to almost nobody's surprise once again, it was the hottest on record for Earth as a whole. 

Here's Yale Climate Connections with the update: 

"Berkeley Earth, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service also rated August 2023 as the warmest August on record, crushing the previous August record by a huge margin. Global temperature amalyses extend back to 1850 in the NOAA database."

As I do every month, I'll note how long it's been since the world had even so much as a marginally cool August. If you're under the age of 45, you've never seen a global cool August. 

August was the 534th consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th century average. So yeah, this global warm trend has been going on for a little while, huh?

Before El Nino took hold earlier this year, most months were running in the top five warmest category, but not hottest ever.   Now, with El Nino, which usually gives global temperatures a boost, July and August have come in at record warmest.   

With El Nino expected to go full steam for the rest of the year, and climate change showing absolutely zero signs of letting up, all of 2023 looks like it will establish a new global record. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information says there's a 93 percent chance that this year will be the warmest on record

Reliable records go back two about 1850.

A whopping 228 major reporting stations across the world reported their hottest on record August temperatures. A grand total of zero reporting stations reported all-time coldest readings. 

Most of the cities that had record high August temperatures were in Japan, Turkey, Spain, France, and the southern United States. 

Through the end of August, fourteen nations or territories reported their hottest ever temperatures, Yale Climate Connections reports. 

 Reports from polar regions were mixed, but generally pretty damn bad. Antarctic sea ice extent for August was the lowest on record. On the sort of bright side, ice growth around Antartica was a little better than average. Even better, the Antarctic region had its 16th coolest August on record, seriously bucking the trend seen in the rest of the world during the month. 

Arctic sea ice extent was the eighth lowest on record. So not the worst, but definitely far from the best. 

Greenland is also closely watched, because unlike frozen oceans, any ice that melts off of the Greenland ice sheet will raise global sea levels

This summer in Greenland got less attention than it deserved. The amount of melting off of Greenland was the second worst this year since they starting keep track of this in 1978 via satellite. Only the epic melt year of 2012 was worse.

Greenland's melt rate was far above average from late June through July, when you'd expect the most melting in Greenland. However, by late August, it normally has started to get cooler up there, so ice melt doesn't usually amount to much.  

Not this year.  A mid-month melting spike astounded scientists, as the thawing approached record melt paces from June and July. 

With El Nino expected to last into the winter, and climate change roaring along, it looks like we'll see a few more record global hot months heading through the fall and winter. 

The Stats Are In: Summer 2023 Was Brutal For Much Of The United States

Much of the nation had a warmer than normal to '
hot summer this year, but the Ohio Valley was on
the cool side. The higher the number, the higher
the ranking for the state for heat compared to
other summers. The 129 in Louisiana means
they had their hottest summer in all
of the past 129 years. 

Heat waves were in the news all summer, including August. The United States numbers are in, revealing that overall the nation had its ninth hottest August on record. This is out of the past 129 years. 

The data comes from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. That issue monthly reports on national and global climate data. 

The global report is just coming out today, Friday, September 13. Spoiler:  It'll tell us it's the world's hottest August on record. I'll have a much more detailed report on global August temperatures soon.

If that scenario plays out, it won't be weird, really. The United States comprises just 1.867 percent of the world's surface.  

Even in record hot months or years, a minority of areas are cooler.   So the U.S. can have a warm, but not record hot period while the rest of the world does.  

Ground zero for United States heat was Louisiana.  August was the warmest on record for Louisiana and Florida by a whopping 1.5 degrees. (Usually, if you break a monthly heat record, it's by a couple tenths of a degree. Mississippi was a strong runner up, also breaking is August record by half a degree.

Louisiana also recorded its driest August on record and its hottest summer on record. Yuck!

Vermont's August wasn't spectacularly warm or cold in either direction. Out of the past 129 years, Vermont's August was the 56th warmest. So I guess we escaped a lot of the heat that other places had. Of course we sort of paid for it with that torrid week earlier this month. 

Meteorological summer goes from June 1 through August 31, so now the data for the entire summer season is in. Over all, the United States had its 15th warmest summer out of past 129 years. Louisiana (surprise!) had its hottest summer on record.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana is the poster child of how awful the summer of 2023 was. Of course it was the hottest summer on record, with a mean temperature between June 1 and August 31 of 87.5 degrees.

Almost always, when a new seasonal record is set like that, it beats the old mark by only a couple tenths of a degree or so.  But Baton Rouge beat the hottest summer record by an incredible 2.9 degrees. Baton Rouge also set the record for the hottest month in the city's history with a mean temperature of 87.8 degrees. But that record was broken in August, with an average temperature of 90.3.

Baton Rouge also had the most days reaching at least 100 degrees (30 of 'em); most night staying at or above 80 degrees (27 total) and most consecutive days at or above 100 degrees (10 days, which happened twice this summer) 

Consider the Baton Rouge summer of '23 the next time you complain it's 90 degrees in humid here in Vermont. 

Elsewhere, Texas, Florida and New Mexico had one of their top two or three hottest summers. Mississippi, Washington and Oregon had one of their top 10 warmest summers in 2023.

At least some people got a break, though. Areas in and around the Ohio River Valley had a rather cool summer overall. West Virginia had its 32nd coolest summer out of the past 129 years. Kentucky had its 35th coolest summer. 

Vermont statistics for the summer were weird.  The summer of 2023 in Vermont was the 22nd warmest overall. But the average high temperature for the summer was the 50th coolest on record. Yet, more bizarrely, the average low temperature was the second warmest out of the 129 years they've been keeping track.  

Large parts of the nation had a wetter than normal 
summer (states in blue) The darkest blue in Wyoming,
Vermont and New Hampshire mean those states had
their wettest summer on record. States in brown
had an unusually dry summer

These odd stats are a reflection of what an oddly cloudy, humid summer we had. 

Cloudy, humid afternoons don't get very warm due to the lack of sun. Cloudy, humid nights tend to be warm, because the clouds hold in the heat. And humid air tends to prevent temperatures from dropping much, too. 

Speaking of clouds and humidity, Vermont as a whole had its wettest summer on record. Two other states, New Hampshire and Wyoming of all places also had their wettest summer. 

The rain wasn't that evenly distributed in Vermont. Looking at specific towns,  Montpelier certainly had its wettest summer, but Burlington didn't even make it into the top ten wettest. 

On top of all these hot summer statistics, it turns out the whole year so far has been a hot one in the United States. By my count hrough August, 28 states, including Vermont, are so far having one of their top 10 hottest years on record. (So far, Vermont's is third hottest). 

September so far has come in hot for Vermont, so we might move up in that hottest year ranking, depending upon how the rest of the year goes. 

 

Vermont August Had One Weird Cold Statistic, But The Month Was Actually Kinda Normal, But Too Rainy

Unsettled skies over Georgia, Vermont on August 26
were typical for the entire month in the Green 
Mountain State as we had another month of
frequent rains and even sometimes flooding.

August was another weird weather month in Vermont, and I'll start with what was really striking, at least to me. 

For all of August in Burlington - a month normally known for its impressive heat waves, the warmest it ever got was 83 degrees.  

That's the coldest maximum temperature for the month of August since almost a century ago - August, 1927 - which never got above 82 degrees. 

That's one impressive stat, to be honest. 

Especially since, if you add up all the days of the month, August was only slightly cooler than normal. 

And we're talking about the warmer "new normal."  Had this August occurred say in 1980, when averages weren't so skewed by climate change, August would have actually been a bit warmer than normal. 

The heat was similarly tempered in  August statewide. Montpelier, St. Johnsbury, Rutland and Bennington all said their hottest day of the month was between 81 and 83 degrees.

The month probably felt warmer to you than it was, because it was pretty humid much of the time. Nighttime temperatures were pretty close to the "new normal" average while daytime highs were on the cool side. 

The relative coolness of Vermont's August, 2023 stands in contrast to most of the rest of the world. Experts say August on a global basis will either be the warmest on record or very close to it. 

To nobody's surprise, the stats also show it was another wet month.  Burlington's 4.9 inches was about 1.3 inches on the wet side. The rain was frequent, too. Only 12 days in August were precipitation-free in Burlington. 

Other reporting sites were even wetter. Montpelier and Rutland had around six inches for August. That's better than the eye-popping July totals that led to such extreme flooding then, but it was still impressive.

That flooding continued into August as well. Severe flooding struck in and around Middlebury on August 3, and that dangerous flash flooding spread into Rutland and surrounding communities on August 4. 

LOOKING AHEAD

We're starting September this morning with a cool, almost autumnal morning. Most of us were in the 40s at dawn. Gallup Mills, Vermont and Saranac Lake, New York were down to 37 degrees and Island Pond was 39.

Almost makes you think fall is arriving. 

Postpone that thought. 

After those cool daytime temperatures I talked about in August, we have a shot at reaching 90 degrees in the days ahead. Even if we don't get that warm,  reading will go well past that August peak of 83 degrees in Burlington. 

In fact, current forecasts bring Burlington, and many other places in Vermont up to 85 degrees or more each day Sunday through Thursday. 

Longer range forecasts are less reliable, but for what it's worth, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center tilts our odds strongly in favor of generally above normal temperatures through mid-month. 

Miserable, Wet Tragic Vermont July Ends, Hoping For A Better August

A man wades through flood waters in Richmond, Vermont
on July 11. I think we all want to forget the horrendous'
rather of July, 2023.

I have no surprises from the July weather numbers in Vermont. After all, we just lived through one of the worst flood disasters in the state's history.

The month was scarily wet, humid, warm, smoky and we want to move on from it.  

RAIN SWAMPS US

Maybe the most remarkable July weather stat comes from flood damaged Montpelier, which logged a whopping 12.06 inches of rain for the month.

 I believe that's a record for the wettest month there. Though the weather station at the Knapp Airport did not exist at the time of the Great Vermont Flood of 1927.

It wasn't just Montpelier. Other towns, such as Plainfield and Woodstock, had more than a foot of rain during July. Normally, the month would have yielded just four inches of rain, give or take. 

One weird exception to the record or near-record wet month was Burlington.  The city was in a small, odd rainfall hole. The heaviest rain kept going around the city. Though I don't have official stats, I do know just a few miles away, in southern and northern Chittenden County, more rain fell during the month than in Burlington. 

The official Burlington weather station at the airport measured 5.89 inches of rain. True, that's substantially above the normal of 4.06 inches.  But July's rainfall wan't even in the top 10 wettest list for July. 

Other major stations in and near Vermont had strikingly heavy rain, as the storms weren't limited to areas near Montpelier. Bennington, St. Johnsbury and Lebanon, New Hampshire, just across the river from White River Junction each had more than eight inches of rain in July, roughly double the average. 

JULY HEAT

The month was also hot, in addition to being sopping wet. 

July in Burlington was the seventh warmest on record, with a mean temperature of 74.4 degrees. There were no real temperature extremes. The hottest temperature for the month reached 93 degrees, and five days made it to 90, but that's not super out of the ordinary.

As we well know, though, the humidity through most of the month kept nighttime temperatures stuffy, and that contributed to Burlington hitting the top 10 warmest July list. 

I guess we've had to get used to hot or stuffy Julys. In Burlington, four of the top seven warmest Julys have occurred since 2018.

It wasn't just the Green Mountain State that was very warm, with weird weather.  I noticed the Washington Post this morning included Vermont in a long list of places that in the world that had disconcerting weather in July, partly due to climate change, apparently. 

Antarctic sea ice is at record lows, while the North Atlantic Ocean is at record warmth. Persistent, record breaking heat waves hit parts of North America, Europe and Asia. July appears to be a shoo-in to be the globes hottest month on record. 

WEIRDNESS

The skies over Vermont were not only obscured by storm clouds, but also by wildfire smoke from Canada. I counted at least 14 days in July with at least some smoky haze dimming the view. 

Things did improve somewhat late in the final couple of days of July as Quebec fires temporarily diminished, but fires in central and western Canada are still lurking with bursts of smoke ready to move back over what should be our blue summer skies. 

We even managed to have one tornado in Vermont in July.  A twister swept through parts of Benson and Sudbury on July 13. It was a narrow, long tracked relatively weak tornado, being 20 yards wide, a path length of a little over 12 miles and top winds of 85 mph. 

LOOKING AHEAD

Back here in Vermont, we're in a reprieve as August is getting off to a refreshing start. The coolest weather since mid-June has settled in. Many places in Vermont were in the 40s this morning and probably will be again tomorrow morning. 

We are watching for the risk of some locally heavy rain Friday, but so far, that situation isn't looking quite as serious as some of the days we faced in July.  The weather outlook for Vermont in August is kind of uncertain. It's starting cool, but we don't know whether it will stay that way. 

In any event, August can't be as bad as July was, right?  Right?  Well, I hope so anyway.