American Exceptionalism? Lower 48 Of U.S. Cold While Rest Of World Had A Hot January, 2025

Unlike most of the rest of the world, large
sections of the United States were cooler than
normal in January, 2025 (blue shading)

 Early data suggests the world had a record to near record hot January, 2025, but the United States, at least the Lower 48, didn't join the climate change hot party. 

I'll have another post with more details on global data very soon. But let's look at the United States first, courtesy of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.

As almost all of the rest of the world basked in odd January warmth, it was a remarkably chilly January for the U.S. if you don't count Alaska and Hawaii. It was also incredibly dry. 

THE COLD

It was the 33rd coldest January out of the past 131 years in the Lower 48. It was the coldest January since 1988.

January bucked a trend toward warmer and warmer months thanks to climate change. Despite a warmer world, cold weather patterns can still develop, creating individual months that harken back to a colder time a few decades ago.

I hope you liked the chill of January, 2025, as this type of winter month will keep getting more and more rare. 

No state managed to have one of their top ten coldest Januaries, but nine states had one of their top 20 coldest Januaries. Few states were on the warm side. Only California, Oregon, Washington and Maine were a bit on the mild side. 

Meanwhile, Alaska has its 8th warmest January out of the past 101 years. 

THE DRY

It was sixth driest January on record across the U.S., too, as we really lacked the usual dynamic storms that regularly sweep across the nation in January, 

Seventeen states, including Vermont had one of top 10 driest Januaries this year. (Here in Vermont it was eight driest).  

Most of the U.S. was dry in January too. Anything
in beige or brown was dry on this map. Overall,
the Lower 48 had its sixth driest January on record. 

There were no states that were on the wet side, which is very unusual since in any given month, the nation is usually divided into wet areas and drier ones.  This time, everybody seems to have missed out on the precipitation. 

There were some relatively wet pockets in some states in the northwestern and central Plains, and in northern Florida, but they weren't enough to skew state averages to the wet side. 

About 42 percent of the nation was officially in drought in January, up about 4 percent from the end of 'December. 

This dryness was punctuated by the nation's first weather/climate related disaster of the year. Barely a week into the New Year, the extremely devastating California wildfires began,  At last check, the toll was 29 dead and 16,000 structures destroyed. 

Those fires have finally gone out as southern California has finally entered a somewhat wetter weather pattern. 

It seems does like there's a slight shift in February going on that should make the U.S, relatively warmer and wetter compared to average.  It won't be another January, but it still seems like it might turn out to be a slightly colder than average month for the Lower 48. 

The northern tier of the nation will probably still come out as cold in February, so the nation as a whole   will almost certainly not be among the warmer Februaries we've had. 

Unlike in January,  an active storm track from the the West Coast clear across to the Eastern Seaboard for much of this month will ensure a fairly wet February. Especially compared to January, 

 

January Turned Out Quiet And Dry In Vermont, A Break From Recent Chaotic Weather

The tone of January in northern Vermont: Snowy 
mountains, but not much in the valleys. 

We just got through a Vermont January and to sum up the weather for the month, I guess we can describe the month as, honestly, a little boring. 

Vermont weather during January frankly lacked personality. It didn't bring any exciting tales to tell in terms of storms. The month didn't wow us with temperature extremes.  If January, 2025 was a person, they would not be the type you'd want to invite to a wild party.  

We can't complain, though. Exciting usually means damaging and disruptive and chaotic when it comes to weather. 

Vermont has had more than our share of that kind of thing in recent months, so it was kind of a nice break to experience a rather colorless January. 

January temperatures statewide averaged out to be right near normal.  Of course this is the "new normal" as "average" is based on the past 30 years of weather. Climate change had already made things around here warmer over those three decades, so "normal" is toastier than it was a couple generations ago. 

A chilly mid-January sunset near Fairfield, Vermont.
This was a relatively rare day in which the sun
was out for a good part of it. 

Had this same month occurred, say in the 1960s or 1970s, we'd be remarking about how mild January was. 

The dull nature of the January, 2025 becomes more apparent when you dive deeper into the temperature data for the month. 

Across the state, average high temperatures for the month were a little colder than what is considered normal these days. Overnight lows for the month were a little on the mild side. 

That at least partly reflects the grey feel we had in January. It was usually cloudy, so that held daytime temperatures down while keeping nighttime temperatures up.

Despite all the clouds, it didn't really snow or rain much. Except for the northern Green Mountains, the entire state had a very dry January.  Most place had less than  half their normal installment of January rain and melted snow. 

It was driest in northern Vermont in towns west and east of the Green Mountains, where less than an inch of precipitation came down. The 0.75 inches of precipitation in Burlington tied with 1933 as the 13th driest January on record since the late 1880s, when reliable records started. 

After another cloudy day, late afternoon sun breaks
through to light up the trees if not the 
clouds in St. Albans, Vermont on January 15. 

Snowfall was below normal too, except for a small area in the northern Green Mountains. Generally speaking, most places in valley locations were about a half foot on the light side. 

Seasonal snowfall is seriously lagging especially in the Lower Connecticut and Champlain Valleys. Burlington should have had 46.6 inches of snow so far this season, instead only 31,2 inches had appeared through January 31. 

FEBRUARY

We've gotten ourselves into a highly variable weather pattern with lots of temperature swings, as I mentioned in an earlier post,  It's usually almost impossible to anticipate what the weather will be like for an entire upcoming month. February, 2025 is even more uncertain than usual.

For those of you who are not dark winter fans, on average, we're on the upswing. On average, the third week of January is the coldest of the year.. February begins a gradual upswing.

First of all, on Friday we had our first post 5 p.m. sunset of the year, at least as observed in Burlington. By February 28, the sun will set at 5:39 p.m. 

The average temperature does not go up much from January during February, but at least there's some improvement. Today's normal high and low temperature in Burlington are 29 and 12 degrees.  By February 28, the normal high and low are 35 and 18

Vermont Experienced One Of Its Warmest Mays On Record. Entire Spring, Too

May, 2024 was great for lilacs in Vermont, though they
came early and didn't stick around for long since it
was such a warm month.

Yep, May, 2024 Vermont climate figures are in, and we've had yet another really warm month. There's been a lot of those lately. 

 Burlington clocked in with its second warmest May on record, with a mean temperature of 63.3 degrees. That's 4.9 degrees above the "new normal." 

 I keep calling it the new normal because average is based on the aggregation of 30 years of data ending in 2020.  

That period was warmer than previous thirty-year intervals because climate change had already begun to take hold in the late 1990s and first two decades of the 2000s

In Burlington the only May in the past 140 years or so that was any warmer than this one came in 2015, which was just 0.3 degrees warmer than this one. 

What is now #3 on the list on warmest Mays isn't even close to being as warm as 2015 and 2024. 

Statewide the figures were pretty consistent, with most stations running somewhere around 4.5 degrees above our "new normal." 

Montpelier reported its eighth warmest May on record and St. Johnsbury had its fifth balmiest May. 

WARM NIGHTS

Following a trend I've seen frequently in the past couple of years, nights were especially warm in May. 

This was another month in which nights in particular were particularly warm, running a full 5.5 degrees above average in Burlington. 

The warmth was consistent. 

The coolest it ever got in Burlington during this May was 44 degrees on May 1. I checked back as far as 1900 - all I had time for, I'm afraid, and the closest Burlington came to such a warm monthly minimum in May came in 1904, when the coolest night reached 42 degrees. With this year included, there have only been four Mays that failed to at least get into the upper 30s if not colder in Burlington. 

All the other weather stations in Vermont had warm May nights this year. Except for Burlington, the chilliest morning of the month came Friday, May 31.  You'd normally expect the coldest readings of May to come near the beginning. Oh well. 

Unlike in most of the rest of the United States, there
wasn't much in the way of severe weather in Vermont
during May. There were some strong to severe
storms in a few Vermont towns on May 21, though.
Photo here is a storm moving into Georgia, Vermont that day.

Frosts and freezes in May are pretty common.  This year, we largely escaped that. 

Since 1900, 89 of the 124  Mays saw temperatures of 32 degrees or cooler, so you can see how odd a month's low of 44 is.  

In Burlington, May, 2024 joined the 90 degree club, as it got that warm on 22nd.  I looked back over 132 years of records in Burlington and found only 23 Mays that had a maximum temperature of 90 degrees or better. 

Probably with the help of climate change, 90 degree weather in May is beginning to get more common. Seven of the 23 Mays with 90 degree weather have happened just in the past quarter century. 

We've had a string of warm months. The last time we had a cooler than "new average" month was in November. 

RAINFALL

As with temperatures, precipitation was pretty consistent across Vermont. It was around an inch or so drier than normal in most places, give or take. The rainfall was on the light side, but it was frequent enough to keep things wet enough for spring blooms. Burlington had 13 days with measurable rainfall in May, all pretty evenly distributed through the month.

Overall, precipitation amounts were sort of in the middle of historical averages. Of the 140 years since records began in Burlington, 77 Mays were wetter than the one we just had and 63 were drier. 

May, 2024, blessedly, was not a month for weather extremes in Vermont, which was a nice break. While  repeatedly rounds of tornadoes, very severe thunderstorms, derechos, giant hail and flooding afflicted huge sections of the United States, we pretty much sat all that out. 

The only severe weather of note was in eastern Franklin County on May 21, when a severe storm threw down trees and power lines and tossed down a bunch of hailstones. 

The one other big event in the skies over Vermont during May wasn't exactly meteorological. Much of the nation - including Vermont - enjoyed a spectacular display of northern lights on May 10.  Leading up to the event, skies had been expected to remain mostly cloudy, so we'd miss out on the display.

But skies largely cleared, especially in the northern half of Vermont, leading to quite a show.  This was the second time this spring we lucked out with weather for a big celestial event. Skies over northern Vermont also remained mostly clear for the total eclipse of the sun back on April 8.

NEAR RECORD WARM SPRING

Meteorological spring runs from March 1 through May 31. In Burlington, it turned out to be tied with 1903 as the second warmest spring on record, with a mean temperature for the three months of 49.3.  The only spring that was warmer was 2012, with an average temperature of 50.3 degrees.

We've had a string of very warm springs. 2021 and 2023 are also in the top ten list of warmest springs, at least as measured in Burlington. 

United States Had Another Warm Month In March, Very Wet In Some Spots, Too.

Hot times roll on for the United States and the world as a whole. 

If you look carefully, you'll find only two out of 
about 1,000 counties in the United States that
were a bit cooler than average in March.
Both are in remote parts of California. 

Data from NOAA says the Lower 48 had its 17th warmest March on record, with pretty much no areas reporting cooler than average conditions. Which is odd.  

Meanwhile, some of the first analyses of global temperatures have started coming out. They suggest that world had its 10th record hot month in a row.  

No state had their absolute warmest March on record, but several came close. March was among the top ten warmest in eleven states, including Vermont.

Remarkably no states were cooler than average in March. In most months, the prevailing weather pattern dictates that some parts of the nation are on the cool side while others are warm.

The closest we could come to "cool" regions were mostly in the Southwest and parts of the Rockies, where several states were only slightly warmer than the long term average. 

There are about 3,000 counties in the Lower 48. Breaking the March data down county by county, I only found two in California that had a slightly cooler than average March. They were Modoc County in extreme northeastern part of the state, and Alpine County, a remote region in the Sierra Nevada mountains. 

Up in Alaska, they had their third warmest March on record. 

March for the nation as a whole was also on the wet side, coming out 30th wettest out of the past 130 years. 

 New England was especially soggy.  Connecticut and Massachusetts had their fourth wettest March out of the past 130 years. New Hampshire and Vermont experience their third wettest March, while Maine and Rhode Island were second wettest. New Jersey and Delaware also had one of their third wettest March. 

The Plains and the Ohio Valley were bit on the dry side during March. However the Ohio Valley has really made up for it this month, with bouts of flooding so far in April. 

The United States tallied another $1 billion plus disaster in March. It consisted mostly of severe storms and tornadoes in the central and southern parts of the United States. That's already the third confirmed weather/climate disaster this year that caused at least $1 billion in damage.

There's already at least two potential candidates for additional $1 billion disasters. Those include a severe weather in the South and a strong storm along the Eastern Seaboard on March 21-23, and this week's tornadoes, severe storms and extensive flooding across the South. 

Summaries for the world as a whole have been coming in for the past few days. I'll have more on that in an upcoming post. Spoiler: Think more hot times.

 

Mid-January U.S. Cold Snap Made Entire Month Temperature Come Out To Near Average in Nation

Despite a sharp mid month cold snap, the middle of the
United States was only slightly on the cool side for the
month as a whole.  New England and parts of the
Great Lakes were much warmer than average.

 An intense Arctic cold snap during the middle of January, 2024 captured most of the weather headlines during that month. 

The frigid air broke nearly 2,500 daily minimum records from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast, notes NOAA's National Centers For Environmental Information.

What didn't get so many headlines was the balmy weather across most of the United States toward the beginning and end of the month. 

All that warmth and cold mixed together left the month as a whole kinda, sorta warmer than the long term average. 

For the nation. the month ended up being 1.6 degrees on the mild side, which makes it the 47th warmest January of the past 130 years.  

The warmest areas, relative to average, were the Northeast, Great Lakes region, and parts of California. It's interesting that only one state - Wisconsin - had one of their top ten warmest January on record.

Seven states, including Vermont had their top 10 warmest daily minimum temperatures on record. That's a testament to the incredibly cloudy skies in the Great Lakes and Northeast this January, which kept nights warmer than they otherwise would have been.

Those same clouds suppressed daytime highs somewhat, so no state had an average maximum in the top ten list. The closest was Maine, who had the 12th warmest average high on record

The coolest areas relative to average weren't that much nippier than average, but extended across the central and southern Plains, and a pretty good chunk of the Southeast. 

January featured quite a bit of storminess in the Lower 48, making it the 10th wettest January in 130 years of record. Thirteen states had one of their top ten wettest January on record. The only dry areas were the northern Plains and parts of the northeastern Rockies. North Dakota had its tenth driest January on record. 

The most notably of these storms was probably the deluge in Texas and Louisiana that brought a month's worth of rain in less than three days in the January 22-25 time frame. 

Now we're into February.  Record high temperatures embraced almost the entire northern tier of the United States during the first 10 days of the month. (Post on that February heat coming soon). 

The rest of the month is looking somewhat on the cooler side for most of the Lower 48, but I'm not seeing a return to any sort of extreme cold anytime soon. 

Figures for the world as a whole should be out within a week.  Early indications are that January was the warmest on record for the Globe.  It appears the United States was just a small relative cool spot at the start of the year. 

May Weather In Vermont Was Simultaneously Gorgeous, Smoky, Disastrous And Very Weird

The intense May 18 freeze killed this set of leaves on a 
tree in Huntington, Vermont. The freeze also caused 
extensive damage to fruit crops throughout Vermont,
and defoliated numerous trees. 

I didn't get a chance to do my monthly climate summary for May yesterday, so I'll give a shot today. 

What a weird month! 

Most people who aren't extreme weather geeks are probably thinking what a gorgeous weather month May, 2023 was. And they're right! I would rate more than half the days during the month as clear or mostly sunny,

Temperatures on most days were comfortable, with low humidity and a nice breeze.  On paper, too, it was nice. The average temperature for the month was not that far from what is currently considered average.

But we saw some glaring nuances that made the month really kooky. 

FREEZE

The most obvious example is that killer freeze we had on May 18. Temperatures in most of Vermont that morning were between 18 and 28 degrees. Plants had blossomed prematurely amid what had been a very warm spring. 

Just six hours after those cold temperatures, it was back to sunny and pleasant. But that one frigid, record cold night caused an agricultural disaster in Vermont and surrounding states. Apple orchards, vineyards, blueberries, strawberries and other crops suffered severe damage. Some trees had their leaves frozen off, and those oaks, ashes, locusts and sumac are yet to recover. 

Although there has been no official declaration yet, I'm pretty sure at least some counties in Vermont will be declared a disaster area due to the extensive crop damage. 

SMOKE

Wildfire smoke from Canada mostly obscured the evening
sun over St. Albans, Vermont on May 8.

Then there was the the smoke.  Most of Canada was very oddly warm and dry during May. Large wildfires broke out in Alberta and British Columbia early in the month. By late month, those wildfires had spread to Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and especially Nova Scotia.

Since over the air over Vermont most of the time during May had come from Canada, smoke was almost a constant presence in the atmosphere. Most of the smoke was aloft, so it didn't cause much in the way of health problems for us. 

But it did haze over the skies, and sometimes the mountains. By my count, no fewer than 14 days featured some haze in the sky because of that smoke. 

RAIN PROBLEMS

Some nice, soaking rains arrived in late April and the first three days of May, which seemed to set us up for a nice drought-free early summer for a change. 

Not so fast. 

The rain shut off on May 4 and never really came back. Burlington's rainfall total for the month was just under two inches, which was about 1.8 inches below normal, and bad enough. But only 0.64 inches fell after May 3, a time period which should have seen a good three inches of rain.  That explains why your garden was so dusty by Memorial Day. 

Most other places in Vermont were about two inches shy of normal during May. 

Average temperatures for the month had an interesting slant, too. The trend this year so far has generally been nights being much warmer compared to average, while daytime highs weren't as far above normal.

By the end of May, we really had to irrigate gardens as
very dry weather had taken hold, starting around May 4. 

May had the opposite setup.  The past month had a bigger range between high temperatures and daily lows. Pretty much every reporting station in Vermont had somewhat warmer than average high temperatures but decidedly cooler than normal overnight lows. 

Rutland was especially notable in this regard. Nights in May averaged 4.6 degrees cooler than normal. And 18 nights during May in Rutland got below 40 degrees, with seven of those nights getting to or below freezing.  

Officially, the overall average May temperature in Burlington was 57.6 degrees.  That is 0.8 degrees cooler than what is now regarded as the normal average temperature for the month. But that's based on the average of the 30 years ending in 2020.

Because of climate change, that period is definitely warmer than the historical 20th century average.

If you compare how May, 2023 did with what the average was in say, around 1980, the just ended month was really 2.5 degrees above what was considered normal back in the 20th century. 

Which means we're still on a streak that began on February, 2022 in which every month since then has been warmer than the 20th century Burlington average. Even if a few of those months were slightly cooler than the new, warmer "normal" they're using now. 

Who knows, maybe June will break that streak.  The first two days of June have seen record heat in Vermont, but long range forecasts suggest we could be cooler than average for the next two weeks.

That's not a guarantee of course, but it's something to watch. 

NOAA Says Was Disaster Prone, Drought Prone, And Warm And Dry During 2022

Almost all of the nation was either warmer than normal or
much warmer than normal for 2022 as a whole. Only six
Midwestern states were near normal, and none 
were cooler than average. 

 NOAA has finished crunching the weather and climate numbers in the Lower 48 of the United States for 2022 and, to nobody's surprise, it was a warm, dry year. 

The warmth did not set any records for the nation as a whole. The average annual temperature for 2022 in the Lower 48 was 53.4 degrees, or 1.4 degrees above the 20th century average. That would put last year among the warmest third of the 128 year record.

An average temperature or 1.4 degrees above normal might not seem like much, but it's fairly substantial for the entirety of a year over such a large chunk of real estate. 

Six states had one of their top 10 warmest years in 2022. Vermont wasn't quite in that list, having had its 11th warmest year on record. However, within Vermont, Burlington did have its 5th warmest year on record. 

On average, precipitation in the contiguous U.S. totaled 28.35, according to NOAA. That's 1.59 inches below average and among the driest third of the 128 years people have been keeping track of this sort of thing. 

Over the course of 2022, drought covered between 44 and 63 percent of the nation, the most extensive drought in a decade.

The United States experienced 18 weather and climate disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage. The only one of those disaster that affected us here in Vermont was the broad ranging winter storm the swept most of the nation on December 21-26.

Total damage from these 18 disasters amounted to $165 billion.  It was the third most costly weather year in the United States, behind 2017 and 2005 in inflation-adjusted dollars.  

Hurricane Ian made up the bulk of the destruction, with $119 billion in damage. It was the third costliest hurricane in the U.S. since at least 1980.

I'll also note that in this young year of 2023, I suspect we already have one billion dollar disaster with the storms this month in California. 

The United States had a slightly above average year for tornadoes, with a grand total of 1,331 twisters reported. March was especially busy, with 293 tornadoes reported, the  most in any year since at least 1950.   

March Was Another Warm, Dry-Ish Month In Vermont

After a relatively warm March, crocuses were popping
up on the final day of the month in St. Albans, Vermont.

Notwithstanding a few wintry interruptions, March weather in Vermont followed a trend we've seen very often in the past two or three years: It was warm, and at least in a good portion of the state, it was on the dry side. 

Temperatures were uniformly warmer than normal across the Green Mountain State. ranging from about 2.5 to 5.5 degrees warmer than average, depending upon where you were.  

This wasn't anywhere near record warmth - Burlington scored well below the top ten warmest - but it was an early spring. 

The early spring was aided by a continued lack of snow. St. Johnsbury, for instance, had 9.8 inches of snow for the month, which was six inches shy of normal for March.

The story was about the same in Burlington, where they had just under 10 inches of snow for March, which was 7.7 inches below normal for the month. Snowfall for the entire winter season as of last night in Burlington was 66.5 inches, far behind what should be the normal 83.4 for this late date in the snow season.

This will be the third winter in a row with pretty far below snowfall, unless we get a huge, surprise dump of a couple feet of snow in April, which is highly unlikely. It will almost definitely snow in April, it pretty much always does. However, it won't be enough to bring the entire snow season up to what is considered normal. 

Though western Vermont had near normal overall precipitation in March, eastern Vermont was on the dry side again. Montpelier mustered just 1.43 inches of rain and melted snow in March, which is about an inch shy of normal. St. Johnsbury was nearly a half inch on the dry side. 

By contrast, both Burlington and Rutland were right about at normal with 2.35 inches in Burlington and 2.65 inches in Rutland. Bennington was actually on the wet side in March with 3.46 inches of precipitation, which is about three quarters of an inch above normal.

If March is a sort of prelude to spring, April is the grand opening.  If things progress normally, there's a dramatic difference in Vermont between April Fool's Day and the close of the month.  

In Burlington, for instance, the normal high temperature today is a still-chilly 48 degrees, but by April 30 it should be 63 degrees or so in the afternoon.  A freeze is an almost nightly occurrence now, but becomes pretty infrequent by the end of the month. 

Of course, there's no such thing as a completely normal April. Temperatures have been as high as 91 degrees and as low as 2 degrees in April in Burlington. There's been as much as 21.3 inches of snow in April (1983). Only two Aprils in the past century, 1941 and 2005, brought nary a snowflake to Burlington.

Remember, Burlington is the banana belt, so I'm sure other parts of Vermont had snow those two years.

Of course, we don't know how this April will shape up. Short term forecasts are fairly easy.  We'll open April today with chilly rain showers today. They'll change to snow during the day, starting at the mountain tops and reaching valley floors tonight. 

Us valley dwellers will only see a slushy coating to a couple inches, but high elevations of the northern and central Green Mountains could see three to six inches by late tonight. 

Temperatures are forecast to be pretty close to normal for the upcoming week, with rain chances increasing by the end of the week.

For what it's worth, NOAA's long range forecast for the entire month of April, 2022 give us slightly better than even chances of being both somewhat warmer and wetter than average. We'll see! 

November In Vermont Was Remarkably Well Behaved; One Of Warmest Autumns

This photo taken November 22 in St. Albans, Vermont is
emblematic of the weather the Green Mountain State
had during November - nothing wild going on, things
 pretty close to normal for the season.

 In a year in which weather and climate extremes have dominated the headlines throughout the world, here in little old Vermont, November was incredibly mellow.  

Now that it's December 1, the November data is in. It shows temperatures and precipitation in November were near normal, and there never were any really extreme days or weather events during the month. 

In Burlington, the average temperature came out to 37.9 degrees.  That's 1.4 degrees cooler than normal.

But remember, that's the new "normal."  Every ten years, "normal" is adjusted by taking the average of the previous 30 years.

Under the "normal" that was in effect for a decade through last year, this November would have been 0.9 degrees warmer than average.  To make all this simple,  we'll just say November, 2021 temperatures were pretty much what we'd expect for the month.

It never got wildly warm or cold, either. The hottest it's ever been in any November in Burlington is 75 degrees and the coldest is 3 below. We never came close to either extreme last month.

The temperature never exceeded 61 or got under 13 degrees. Only three days during the month were more than ten degrees warmer or cooler than average. Things stayed awfully steady. 

Rainfall (and melted snow) in Burlington came to 3.17 inches, which was a little under a half inch wetter than normal. Snowfall was four inches, just a little shy of normal.

Elsewhere in Vermont, Montpelier's average temperature for the month was 35.1 degrees, or just 0.7 degrees on the warm side. Montpelier was about a quarter inch on the dry side with rainfall. They managed to pile up 2.56 inches of rain and melted snow for the month. 

St. Johnsbury was similarly "boring."  At 36 degrees, the average temperature was a little over half a degree on the cool side. The 2.68 inches of precipitation was about a third of an inch on the dry side.

November in Vermont is traditionally a stormy, windy month and we really didn't have much of that, either. I counted only four days during the month where winds gusted over 30 mph in Burlington.

The only weather event of note was the wet snow on November 26 which caused a fair number of power outages and tree damage, especially in Rutland and Windsor counties. 

Meteorological autumn goes from September 1 through November 30.  It's a handy, dandy way for climatologists and weather geeks to compare seasons and spot trends. 

In Burlington, meteorological autumn this year was the fifth warmest on record, with a mean temperature of 52.7.  Speaking of trends, six of the top ten warmest autumns on record in Burlington have occurred since 2011. Records there go back to the 1880s. The warmest autumn, by the way, was 2017 with a mean temperature of 53.9 degrees.

The warm fall was spread far and wide. Buffalo, New York reported its warmest meteorological autumn, and Boston had its third warmest 

Looking ahead into the start of dark December, it looks like we'll go into the month with an active weather pattern.  The first week of the month will feature quick hitting and not particularly strong storms, kind of like we saw during November.

With all the bad weather news we've seen across the world, boring weather is a blessing. Enjoy it!