A Cool, Wet Spring In Vermont Kept Gardens Blooming, Frustrated Warm Weather Fans. With Some Exceptions

The cool, wet character of May, 2026 made it a great daffodil
growing month. This photo was taken May 10 in St. 
Albans, Vermont.

I didn't finish our May Vermont climate summary yesterday, so my bad. 

The weather forecast this week is straight forward enough. Sunny with a warming trend through the week, with perhaps some showers late in the week. Summer weather is here .

So let's 'get into what we Vermonters went through during the month of May

 The month of May in Vermont that just ended was definitely on the cool side, and in most places, wet, too.

We didn't break any records with temperatures or precipitation, but it was cooler, cloudier and more damp that we've gotten used to in recent Mays.

COOL MAY

In Burlington, the average temperature was 57.1 degrees, or 1.3 degrees below what is now considered average. As I always mention, average isn't what it used to be.  Nowadays, we compare months to the average of a recent 30 year period. Months in the 20th century were cooler than they are now. 

You can see that in the stats. Out of the past 135 years, this May was the 82 coolest, or 53rd warmest. So by historical standards, May was a little on the warm side.  

Most weather stations in Vermont were about the same degree cooler than the modern average as Burlington. Rutland, Montpelier and St. Johnsbury were all around one to two degrees on the cool side. Bennington was 2.3 degrees below normal. 

Nineteen days in Burlington were cooler than  normal, but the cold was never extreme. All of the cool days were less than 10 degrees below normal. The month's chill was offset by a brief heat wave that set temperatures soaring to near record heights on May 18-19. The low temperature in Burlington on the 19th was a muggy 71 degrees, a record for the date.

WET MAY

It was a wet month, with rainfall pretty well distributed throughout the month. We never came close to dealing with any flooding issues.  

Burlington had 4.88 inches of rain, which was a little over an inch above normal. It was the 22nd wettest May out of the past 143 years. (The wettest May was in 2013, with 8.74 inches.)

Most other places in Vermont, with the exception of the far south, had a wetter than average May, too. Montpelier had nearly six inches of rain, which was 2.39 inches above average. St. Johnsbury was given a boost by a super soaker of a rainstorm on the 30th. Their month total worked out to 6.46 inches, which was 2.7 inches above average.

Far southern Vermont was drier. Bennington had 2.56 inches of rain, nearly an inch on the dry side.

LOOKING AHEAD

For what it's worth, NOAA's monthly outlook says odds lean fairly heavily toward a warmer than normal June. There's also a somewhat greater than even chance of a dry June, according to NOAA's predictions.

That matches the forecast for the opening week of June, anyway, which will be warm and dry. 

NOAA got May's prediction basicalliy right. They said the month's temperatures would be near to somewhat below normal, and that's true. They also said there were equal chances of above or below normal precipitation. Since most of the state was wet but the south was dry, I'll give it to them.

 

It's Burlington Vermont's Snowiest Season In 7 Years, But That's Not Saying Much

Heavy snow seen her crushing one of my lilac bushes
in the winter of 2018-19.  That was the last winter
we had more snow than this winter. This year's snowfall
is running close to normal. The winter of '19 was our 11th
snowiest on record. So we're lucky this year, I guess. 

The bad news: It's going to snow again today in Vermont. The good new: It won't amount to much.  

The snow we get today will be because the sniveling, drizzling, frizzling mess of a storm from yesterday is still dying to keep harassing us a little. 

The storm is now for to our east, but it's leaving a pool of frigid air high overhead as a parting gift.  

That pool of chilly air up there adds enough instability to the air to set off snow showers through today and into tonight. 

Most of us will see an inch or less. But the central and northern Green Mountains, along with many areas of the Northeast Kingdom, could collect two to five inches today. 

Today will also be cold, to put my Captain Obvious hat on again. It'll barely get into the low 30s in most of Vermont. Temperatures should stay below freezing in the far north, and upper 30s in the warmest valleys far south. 

Be careful under foot, too. As expected, all that slush from yesterday froze solid. And there were still a couple patches of freezing drizzle here and there to start the day.  The freezing drizzle will yield to the snow showers soon. Tis the season winter becomes like a guest who stays way too long. 

REST OF THE WEEK

Looking ahead, we have a bright side: The next in our series of storms coming in from the west looks like it will be mostly rain. Fingers crossed, anyway, as we've had some unpleasant surprises with the last two storms. 

Before we get there, Tuesday looks like the only day we'll have with no precipitation. With sunshine, it should get up to near 40.

A warm front will stir up some clouds Wednesday, and drop a few rain and/or snow showers, mainly north. 

It looks like the next storm coming by on Thursday might go to our north, which means mostly rain. But  forecasts issued this morning have it going barely to our north. If the outlook for the storm sinks its path  southward just a bit, we're looking at another snow north/rain south scenario.

Stay tuned on that one. 

Whatever happens with Thursday's storm, we get a very cold for the season blast of frigid air Friday into Sunday.  We'll stay below freezing all day Friday and probably Saturday, and overnight lows will be in the single numbers to low teens. That would be a solid 15 degrees or so colder than normal for this time of year. 

This being early spring, that cold won't last forever. Somewhat warmer air will start to come in next Sunday afternoon.

SEASONAL SNOWFALL

The snows of the past week or so have brought Burlington's snow total for the season to 79.4 inches. That's the most snow in seven years, but as you might imagine it's not all that much compared to some winters. 

If by some miracle we receive no more snow this season, this winter's snow would be in the middle of the pack. The current total of 79.4 inches would make this the 51st snowiest winter out of the past 124 seasons. 

More snow is inevitable (I mean, look at today's forecast, above), but we won't get to the total we did see seven years ago in the winter of 2018-19, when we had 103.6 inches. Well, at least I hope we don't see another two feet of snow or so this season, which would bring us to that level. 

I'll do another update on these stats several weeks from now when I'll be reasonably sure we're done with snowier the season. 

Vermont Experienced Coldest February, And Coldest Winter Overall, Since 2015

Henry the Weather Dog makes his way down  his St.
Albans, Vermont driveway, flanked by big snowbanks.
Snowfall hasn't been that much above normal, but 
consistent cold weather has kept snow on the ground
This February was coldest since 2015.

The data is in - at least some of it - and as I'm sure you noticed, Vermont experienced its coldest February in over a decade.  

For the record, the average February temperature in Burlington was 19.5 degrees, or 3.4 degrees colder than average. The last time we had a colder month than this was in January, 2022. The last time we had a colder February was in 2015, but that one was really cold. With an average temperature of 7.6 degrees, February, 2015 was the third coldest on record.

This February wasn't particularly cold by historical standards. By my reckoning, it was the 56th coldest out of the past 139 years in Burlington. 

It just seemed a lot colder because Februaries since 2016 ranged from kinda mild to incredibly warm for the season. Three of the top five warmest Februaries in Burlington came after 2015. 

In Burlington, it got to zero or below on eight occasions, again the most since 2015. That month had 17 such cold mornings. It appears the driving force behind February's chill was overnight lows. 

Burlington's average overnight low in February was 5.1 degrees below the "new normal," which is the mean of data from 1990 to 2020. Remember, those years had already been affected by climate change. Historically, Burlington was colder. 

February was the fourth consecutive cooler than the 1990-2020 average, as measured in2 Burlington. That's the first time since 2018-19 that has happened.  There were actually nine consecutive months that were at least nominally cooler than normal from October, 2018 through June, 2019. 

This was also the first year since 2019 that Lake Champlain had entirely frozen over. 

DATA ISSUES

A bit of a whine here: There is a LOT of missing data in the National Weather Service February climate summaries for various cities in Vermont.  I was able to piece together complete data for Burlington and St. Johnsbury using daily data in February I found from other areas of the NWS web site. 

But I was unable to find complete data for much of the rest of Vermont, making it almost impossible to detect trends in this February's weather across the state.   

I put in an inquiry today to the National Weather Service asking whether this data will be recovered and added to the incomplete monthly summaries now on the NWS website. 

I don't expect them to answer on a Sunday, so I'll keep you posted as to what's up with this. 

The missing data might be related to some problems with National Weather Service automated data transfers. One question I asked in my inquiry is whether this is all related to those awful DOGE cutbacks at the National Weather Service.  I honestly have no idea if the data issue is related to the cutbacks or not, so I'll reserve judgement. 

I noticed the same problem with data back in August.  I looked at the August data today, and it appears almost all the missing data from that month has been added back in. August data is definitely more complete now. 

I'm hoping the February data gets reviewed and the missing data is restored as it was in August. It is Sunday, so maybe they don't have the staff to deal with this issue until the work week.  

This isn't any kind of slap at the meteorologists at the National Weather Service in South Burlington. They do incredible work.  I just worry that they, and personnel at all the other meteorologists nationwide, no longer have all the resources they should have. 

MORE FEBRUARY INFO

Precipitation in Burlington amounted to an even inch, which is 0.77 inches below normal. I was able to look back 144 years and it turns out this February was the 30th driest on record. Other weather stations in Vermont appear to have been on the dry side as well. But again, the missing data makes it a little hard to truly assess that. 

Once again, Vermont tended to sit out dramatic weather events that were hitting other parts of the United States. In Burlington, February 20 was both the wettest and snowiest day of the month with 5.7 inches of snow which melted down to just a hair  under a half inch. As you can see, those figures don't exactly tell the tale of a big storm. It was just a routine snowfall. 

The lack of thaws this winter has allowed snow to accumulate pretty well, despite snowfall that has not been far from average, except in the mountains, which have had a good snow season.

Most towns in Vermont had at least a foot of snow on the ground on the last day of February. Several places had two feet or more. That kind of snow cover isn't anywhere close to record-breaking, but it's pretty good. Especially for places that need moisture because of the lingering effects of last year's drought. 

In Burlington, through yesterday, there has been snow on the ground for 83 days, the most days like that in at least 22 years. 

MARCH OUTLOOK

March is always a wildcard and this year is no exception. We're starting off bitterly cold, like mid-winter, but temperatures will go above normal later this week.  We don't yet know how far above normal readings will get or how long the warmish weather will last. 

March has the most variable weather of any month. Temperatures during March in Burlington have been as low as 24 below and as high as 84 above. More often than not, we get a March like 2017. The first day of that month was springlike, with a record high of 63 degrees. By the March 14, 2017, the "Pi Day Blizzard" hit. That one is still the second deepest snowstorm on record in Burlington, with 30.4 inches. 

So yeah, don't be surprised if the weather surprised you this month. 

The forecast from NOAA has Vermont leaning toward a warmer than average March, but it's not a slam dunk. NOAA thinks precipitation in the Green Mountain State during March will be near to perhaps edging a bit above normal. 

We will of course, see whether that forecast was accurate in about a month. If we can get the data.  

The Year In Lightning, 2025: Florida Unseated As Nation's Lightning Capital

A lightning bolt in Ferrisburgh, Vermont in August, 2023.
AEM, an environmental consulting company, has some
interesting lightning data from 2025. 

The lightning capital of the nation is usually Florida. All summer, thunderstorms bubble up in the humid Florida air, so it seems like lighting is always zapping across the skies in the Sunshine State. Storms during other times of the year add to Florida's total. 

But in 2025, Florida lost its status - at least temporary - as the king of lightning storms.  

According to AEM, an environmental consulting firm, Oklahoma beat out Florida as the state with the highest concentration of lightning. The Sooner State had 73 flashes per square mile in 2025. The most lightning-dense county in America was Kay County, Oklahoma, with 123.4 lighting strikes per square mile.

Kay County is on the border with Kansas, about midway between Oklahoma City and Wichita, Kansas. About 43,700 people live in the county and go to enjoy 2025's lightning displays. 

Oklahoma's next door neighbor to the south, Texas, also had quite a lightning year. The state had 1.3 million more lightning flashes than normal. 

Across the United States in 2025 there were 88.4 million lightning flashes, which is 9.8 percent more  than in 2024. 

Most of those flashes had multiple pulses, in other words, flickers of charge. You'll often see a lightning bolt dim and brighten in split second intervals. Those are pulses. If you count all the pulses of lightning in the U.S. in 2025, you end up with 429.9 million pulses. 

The day with the most lightning strikes was June 15, with 929,016 of them across the nation. 

Lightning peaked on days that featured disasters costing a billion dollars or more. 

June 15 is a good example. That date as the start of a four-day outbreak of severe weather in the north-central and Northeast part of the U.S. The storm consisting of more than 60 tornado report sand 1,400 confirmed damage reports, caused seven deaths and $28 billion in damage, according to Climate Central.

The United States has a TON of thunderstorms each year. But the nearly 430 million flashes is a small percentage of the worldwide total, which is about 1.4 billion annually, according to NASA.

The lightning information AEM released this week was a teaser. Their full report is due on January 12 The report will have state by state information, so I might do a followup on Vermont and New England when the information becomes available.

The full report will have information in which states and counties had the least amount of lightning, which counties besides Kay County had the most lightning, and how lightning affected airports and tourist attractions around the nation  

Climate Central Takes Over Billion Dollar Disaster Database That Trump Administration Abandoned.

Climate Central has taken over a data base of
billion dollar disasters in the United States.
The federal government had maintained the
data, but the Trump administration ended
it because they don't want to 
acknowledge climate change. 

Weather and climate science runs on data.

The more data you have, the better information you have, the better judgement you'll have, the better prepared you'll be.  

As I've noted numerous times, the Trump administration has been cutting back on the tools scientists need to keep track of the weather and climate.

One of the things gone is a data base of disasters that cost a billion dollars or more. 

The Trumpsters hate anything that shows climate change is causing trouble, since they insist climate change doesn't exist.

So they decided if climate driven disasters aren't reported, they don't exist. 

Or something like that. 

AsABC News Explains: 

"But in May, the Trump administration announced it was shutting down the website that hosted the dataset. That made it difficult for the public and experts to track the impact of major disasters, as the program used a combination of private and public data, some of which was not available to organizations outside the government."

Obviously, anyone who cares was bummed about the loss of that information. 

However, the data is coming back. Climate Central, a non-profit organization that communicates climate change science, affects and solutions to the public and policy makers. 

A guy named Adam Smith is running and managing the billion dollar disaster data set. He managed the billion dollar list at NOAA, but he was let go by the Trump cutbacks. He is now Climate Central's Senior Climate Impact Scientist. 

ABC continues:

"'The billion dollar disaster analysis is vital in demonstrating the economic impact of extreme weather and climate events, which helps communities understand the real-world consequences of climate change and the increasing impact of these different events," said Smith. 

'I would also say this dataset was simply too important to stop being updated,' Smith added. 'We've seen a widespread demand for its revival from many aspects of society and industry, including the private sector, academia, local community decision makers, even Congress,'"

Climate Central replicated all the data sources for the disaster report, so the information going into it is equivalent to what we used to see on the federal NOAA website.  They'll also use the same peer reviewed methods as the NOAA version did. 

The billion dollar data base isn't the only set of information being rescued from the follies of the Trump administration. 

The Trump administration pretty much got rid of the web site climate.gov, which was the go to place for comprehensive, accurate climate information. The site now directs you to noaa.gov, which has some climate information, but nothing nearly as comprehensive as what was once on the site. 

A non-profit developed an alternative site called climate.us that has much of the information that was removed from climate.gov. 

THIS YEAR'S DISASTERS, COMPARED

According to the revived data compiled by Climate Central, so far this year, the United States has had 14 disasters costing $1 billion or more. (This is all inflation-adjusted).

Mostly because of the incredible wildfires around Los Angeles in January, the cost of this year's disasters are so far is running well above average. The fires alone cost more than $60 billion in damage.

Through June big U.S. disasters have cost $101.4 billion. Most of them involved, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and flooding. 

This means even if no other big disasters hit this year, 2025 will end well above the average of $67.3 billion. 

However, 2025 won't necessarily be the most costly year on record, despite the strong start. Years with large hurricanes in the U.S. tend to be the most expensive, The year 2017 was the most costly, in large part because of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, with $405.2 in damage.

 Next was 2005, which included hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with $275.5 billion in overall damage. 

It looks like no big hurricanes will hit the U.S. this year. (Forecasters worry Tropical Storm Melissa will turn into a giant hurricane, but most predictions expect that storm to have relatively little effect on the U.S. 

If no other billion dollar disasters happen this year, it looks like 2025 would be the eighth most expensive since 1980, which is the beginning of the data base record.

The disaster total will probably go up for this year. Four other disasters are still being assessed to determine whether they cost at least $1 billion. These include the horrible, deadly July 4 weekend floods in Texas, and three severe weather outbreaks between May and August.  

And gawd knows what the final two months or so of 2025 might bring. 

 

Canadians To The Rescue Again: Montreal University To Preserve Endangered U.S. Climate Data

Since the United States has apparently given up
on science, Canada is stepping up, as usual. 

Seems like lately, it's always Canada to the rescue. 

Unlike some in the United States, Canadians are really in the habit of making sound decisions, based on you know, facts, And reality. 

Sure, every nation has its nutcases. I'm sure Canada does. But overall, if we want an example of an adult in the room, we look to Canada.  

The latest example - at least in terms of climate and weather,  -is what's going on at McGill University in Montreal.

The Trump people are destroying - or at least are threatening to destroy -  years of climate and environment research. Mostly because the facts arising from the research conflict with the world they want.   

So, a group at McGill University is working to preserve that research. 

This actually started about six months ago, when researchers at McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management launched the Sustainability Academic Network (SUSANHub.com). It's a database that centralizes climate research and data.

At first, this wasn't necessarily an effort to preserve scientific research. 

The whole idea was to connect researchers and other professionals involved in climate change and sustainable developing, kind of a LinkedIn for that field of study, said Juan Serpa, a professor at the Desautels Faculty of Management.

Then Donald Trump came on the scene.

Already unimpressed by Trump's desire to make Canada the 51st state in the United States, they also knew that America's wealth of climate research was under threat. 

So, once again, the Canadians did the right thing. 

As the Canadian Press News reports:

"...at a time when the administration of United States President Donald Trump is firing climate researchers, banning certain words from scientific article, cutting funding for environmental research, threatening to withdraw financial support from universities and deleting scientific reports from government websites, the McGill platform has taken on a different significance.

'The goals is to protect scientific data against threats from the U.S. government,' Serpa said".

Just a couple years ago, I would have never thought academic freedom would be under siege in the U.S. like it is now.  Once again, thank gawd for the Canadians.

Canadian Press News continues:

"Scientific data that is on the chopping block south of the border is download and uploaded to the platform. 

Scientific data on wildfires, protecting forest from insects and diseases the impact of climate change on agriculture, flood risks, ocean plastic pollution, and the industries that emit the most greenhouse gases are just a few examples of the data that can be accesses on SUSANHub.com that would otherwise be at risk for being lost."

The Trump administration has launched a war on science, and that obviously includes climate and sustainability research. Information on climate has been removed from more than 200 U.S. government web sites. 

We know about the layoffs and funding cuts at NOAA and other U.S. agencies that deal with climate change and related issues. NOAA is one example of how science is dead in the U.S. thanks to Trump. 

BRAIN DRAIN

As a result of Trump, there's now an alarming brain drain from the U.S.  As grateful as I am for McGill University and their efforts to save climate and environmental data, it's just one of many shifts that are drawing the best minds in science away from the United States toward much more receptive nations.

As Le Monde reports, the European Union is encouraging U.S. researchers to relocate to Europe. They've announced an incentive package worth about 500 million Euros to make the bloc a "magnet for researchers." That equals about $566 million. 

The European Union isn't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. They know that Trump is ruining one of the United States' most important economic engines: Scientific research that improves the lives of people, and increases markets for new and innovative products and ideas. And protects the public from expensive crises ranging from disease to climate change. 

It's a business decision on the part of the European Union, and who can blame them?

 It's not just Europe.  China and Russia are also trying to recruit U.S. scientists, and that's a whole other threat.   At least traditionally, Europe has been our friend. China and Russia, not so much, despite Trump's fondness for Vladimir Putin. 

As Fast Company and other outlets report, China seems to have embarked on an effort to recruit recently laid of U.S. scientists to relocate or contribute remotely to research operations based in Shenzhen.

China's goal, of course, is to gain technological knowledge and trade secrets to put them at an advantage over the United States.  So much for Trump's America First rhetoric. 

Per Fast Company:

"Laid off federal employees with security clearances or institutional knowledge are considered particularly vulnerable. Analysts suggest that financial strain and professional uncertainty may make these individual more susceptible to overtures from foreign entities."

So great, on top of everything else, Trump is creating a potential industrial espionage or spy crisis.  

High Temperature Records Absolutely Obliterated In Vermont, New York, Elsewhere In Northeast

The landscape today said late autumn. But the air in
Vermont said midsummer as high temperature
records were absolutely shattered in the region. 

 The Halloween heat wave today more than lived up to its hype today, shattering records as those readings rose to unprecedented end of October levels.  

Final figures weren't in yet as I was writing this around 5:30 p.m. today. But the temperatures I've seen so far are insane. 

The wildest report came out of Plattsburgh, New York, where it got to at least 83 degrees today. That was a whopping 11 degrees above the old record for the date. 

It was also 30 degrees warmer than the normal high for this date in Plattsburgh, and a couple degrees warmer than an average mid-July day.

In Burlington, it got to at least 77, making today the warmest day for so late in the season. The low this morning in Burlington was 64 degrees, and it's unlikely to get cooler than that by midnight. So that will break the old record for warmest low temperature by a full five degrees. Today in Burlington averaged out exactly normal for June 29. 

Elsewhere, Montpelier got to at least 75 degrees, breaking the record for the date by five degrees. 

St. Johnsbury got to at least 76, Lebanon, New Hampshire, just across the Connecticut River from White River Junction, reported 81 degrees at midafternoon. Other midafternoon temperatures include 79 at Springfield, Vermont and 78 in Bennington. 

It's going to be a summery evening for the trick or treaters now starting to haunt Vermont neighborhoods. You might want to bring some water, as the kiddos will probably work up a sweat in this weather trying to get their candy haul.

I'll have updates to these incredible temperatures in a post tomorrow morning. I'll also get into how October as a whole stacked up compared to normal. Spoiler: It was toasty. 

Sneaky Peak At October Global Temperatures Hint At Another Big Record Breaker

Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service offered
a grim sneak peak at Earth's October climate data.

Most of the official data for global temperatures and other facts and figures for October aren't out yet, but early indications are October was pretty much as scary as September. 

September was the world's hottest on record, but what really had climatologists hitting the panic button was the huge margin by which September's global temperature exceeded the previous record. 

The first major data to come out on a previous month's global climate is from the EU's Copernicus Climate  Change Service.  It shows that the world  just exceeded its previous record for the hottest October by 0.4 degrees Celsius. 

That 0.4 Celsius is roughly a degree Fahrenheit, which doesn't sound like much, but it is a whoppingly large margin when measuring the world as a whole. 

 Preliminary data suggests that 19 percent of the Earth's surface had its hottest October on record.  That's an extraordinarily large area for an all time record. The only month experts say is comparable is September. As was the margin by which October broke the previous record for hottest.

The preliminary October data makes it virtually assured that 2023 will be Earth's hottest year in 125,000 years, according to a team of EU scientists. 

Such hot global air really does a number on storms, making them stronger, more dangerous and more unpredictable. The world seems to be in a sort of mini-lull in big storms over the past couple weeks, with the exception of Europe's Storm Ciaran in October.

But I expect with the combined heat of climate change and El Nino, this is going to be a really destructive winter from intense storms around the world. 

We're still awaiting more data from NOAA, NASA and other agencies to assess this October's global temperature. But scientists say that data, due in a week or so, will be similar to the Copernicus findings. 

I'll keep you posted when the new data comes out!

 

Recent Vermont Turn To Cool Autumn Weather Is Actually Still Rather Warm

Late afternoon sun cuts through some still-green trees
after a mild rain shower Wednesday in St. Albans,
Vermont. It really has been another warm autumn so far.

 The weather has been cooler and unsettled in Vermont since Sunday, ever since last week's record breaking heat wave ended.  Or at least it seems that way.  

It's been mostly cloudy, breezy, with showers around all week, and that state of affairs will continue today and tomorrow. . Highs for most of us have been in the 50s to around 60, and lows have been mostly in the 40s.

It might feel a little nippy to you. But the truth is this week so far has been pretty close to average - actually a bit on the warm side - for this time of year  in Vermont.  And that's the hotter "new average." 

By the National Weather Service standards, "normal" is the average of what we've experienced over the past 30 years. But as I've repeatedly pointed out (I know! You're sick of it!)  The past 30 years have been decidedly warmer than the 20th century average.

That means if we had this exact week two or three generations ago, we would have regarded it as a warm spell. 

The striking thing about this autumn's weather is what hasn't happened yet.

It's getting into mid-October and there hasn't been a widespread frost or freeze in Vermont. Oh sure, a few colder mountain valleys have gotten a touch of frost, but that's what you'd expect in mid-September, not the middle part of October. 

In the Banana Belt Champlain Valley, the coldest it's got through Thursday so far this autumn in Burlington is 45 degrees. We should have had several mornings in the 30s by now. 

The normal low now is 43 degrees. It finally ever so briefly got colder early Friday morning when skies cleared. Burlington got down to 39 degrees. That's still pretty warm for the coldest for this point in the season. .  

High temperatures are bizarre, too. For the first time this autumn the temperature in Burlington failed to get as high as 60 degrees on Wednesday.  (I originally said it didn't get to 60 on Monday, but it turned out we snuck a 60 in briefly that afternoon).

I couldn't find a later first sub-60 high temperature in Burlington's records. Even during the very toasty falls we had in recent years. 

I'm also not aware of any snow falling in Vermont so far this month. Usually, the mountain tops should have been dusted at least once or twice by now. 

With climate change, cold spells are becoming less frequent and less intense. At least in general. We can still have sharp turns toward record cold, but they are now less frequent. For instance, it has been a very warm year, but we did have brief record cold snaps in mid-May and early February. But they were an exception to a warm 2023 so far. 

This year is an example of how climate change has tipped the odds toward warmth. So far this year, Burlington has had nine record highs and only one record low. 

Since we're so far into fall, we can expect a continued general cooling trend (maybe!) as the month continues. But I still see no signs of true freezing cold.  It looks like temperatures over the next few days will remain more or less the same as they've been lately. 

Sunday and maybe Monday will be a bit cooler than recently, as highs stay in the upper 40s to mid 50s.  There are signs of a few days of warmer temperatures once again later in the week.  

So we'll blissfully wait longer for the arrival of winter-ish air.  I see uncertain signs of a semi-wintry blast at the end of this moth  that would make it feel more like November,   but that's iffy. 

Winter will come, but much like recent years, it's not in a hurry to arrive. 

 

Extremely Hot June 1 In Vermont Part Of A Disturbing Trend

A few days after I cut away some frost damaged leaves from
this costa, the same plant suffered some heat scald in 
Thursday record heat and desert dry air. 

 Once again on Thursday, we had an over-performing heat wave in Vermont. 

The temperature in Burlington got up to 96 degrees, shattering the old record for the date by six degrees. This was also the hottest temperature for so early in the season. 

This was part of a worrying trend, consistent with climate change.  We've been seeing many new record for hottest so early in the season in the spring. We've also seen a spate of hottest for so late in the season during the autumn. 

Weather patterns that favor hot weather are getting a boost from climate change, turning what would have been a toasty day into something torrid. Or at least completely out of character for the season. 

The trend in Burlington for hottest for so early/late in the season really ramped up after 2015 and if anything, has intensified.

I've got plenty of receipts. Here's some examples from Burlington's records:

May, 27, 2020, 95 degrees, hottest for so early in the season and a new May record. 

June 7, 2021, 96, which until yesterday was the hottest for so early in the season. 

October 26, 2022, 78 degrees, warmest for so late in the season

November 6, 2022, 76 degrees, warmest on record for the month of November and warmest for so late in the autumn. 

April 15, 2023, 88 degrees, hottest for so early in the season. 

The springtime earliest first 70, 80 and 90 degree days have all happened since 2002:

 Burlington's records go back to 1884.  Nine of 12 months had their all time record highs tied or broken since 1995.  The most recent month in which the entire month's low was tied was in 1986.  

Lots of numbers we just went through, but you see my point, I'm sure. 

DAMAGING HEAT?

Other records for the date set in Vermont yesterday include 94 in St. Johnsbury and 90 in Montpelier. The air was incredibly dry during yesterday's heat, too. Usually heat waves in Vermont are fairly  humid. Not this one. 

A bit hard to see in this photo, but these sugar maple
leaves wilted in the record heat and desert dryness
Thursday in St. Albans, Vermont. Most of these
leaves had recovered by this morning

I noticed the dry heat put a lot of stress on garden plants. And probably some agricultural crops, too. Some of which were already damaged in the tough May 18 freeze.

In my gardens, I notice some of my hostas once again have heat scald, some of why iris blooms turned brown prematurely.

 Even the leaves on healthy sugar maple trees around me temporarily partly wilted in the desert heat. (Vermont's forests are not meant for a climate like, say Phoenix). 

We now need a lot of rain. Not the relatively paltry amounts in the forecast. At least an anticipated lengthy cool spell will help things recover a little

LOOKING AHEAD 

We have one more hot day today.  We won't set another hottest for early in the season, but more daily records could be set.

It'll turn a little more humid, too. Bad for us humans, but maybe a bit of relief for those over-stressed garden plants and crops.

Clouds and scattered showers and thunderstorms this afternoon will also help tamp down the dust.  The thunderstorms that do form won't be severe, but they'll be slow moving. So, while most places won't get all that much rain, a few lucky people stuck under a slow moving storm could get a decent dump of rain. That'll be the exception, not the rule. 

After today, we'll go through a long period of relatively cool weather that will could last two weeks or more. Luckily for outdoor activity, previous forecasts for showery, overcast weather for Saturday have improved to cool, partly sunny with isolated sprinkles. 

All of next week, and quite possibly the following week, will feature highs only in the 60s to around 70, with almost daily chances of showers. That's a pretty long stretch of cooler than normal conditions.

However, given the trends I've just given you in detail, it's only a matter of time - weeks or months, really - that we'll endure another whacked out spell of unprecedented warmth. That's not just here, but in most places around the world.

We've changed the climate. So get used to extremes. 

Did Climate Change Create U.S, Global Warming U.S. Refugees In 2022?

People evacuating in Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma
in 2017.  In 2022, 3.3 million Americans had to
evacuate their homes, at least for a little while, 
due to extreme weather. 

Natural disasters forced 3.4 million Americans from their homes in 2022, according to a report from NBC News. 

Says the network: 

"Natural disasters forced an estimated 3.4 million people in the U.S. to leave their homes in 2022, according to Census Bureau data collected earlier this year, underscoring how climate-related weather events are already changing American communities. 

The overwhelming majority of these people were uprooted by hurricanes, followed by floods, then fires and tornadoes. Nearly 40 percent returned to their homes within a week. Nearly 16 percent have not returned home (and may never do so) and 12 percent were evacuated for more than six months."

 Some experts find the numbers from 2022 rather shocking, as NBC reports: 

"'These numbers are very distressing,' said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change law at Columbia University, who was not involved in the data collection. 'The numbers are what one would expect to find in a developing country. It's appalling to see them in the United States.. They're only going to get worse in the years to come because climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and more severe.'"

I have to be careful here, though. It's not like the people who  had to leave their homes due to storms are all climate refugees.

Displacement created by climate-boosted disasters is definitely a thing. And it will get worse as the years go by and climate change intensifies.

As tragic as these 2022 disasters were, it would be wrong to call all the 3.4 million people displaced by severe weather climate refugees. Any time somebody is forced out of their homes by a storm, floods or some other disaster, that's unequivocally bad.  

It's fortunate that 40 percent of the people displaced were able to go home within a week. 

But still, we've always had hurricanes, floods tornadoes and fires that displaced people for months.  years or forever. At least some of the displacement highlighted here is due to climate change. But some of it is just dumb, bad luck. 

Also some homes are built in disaster prone areas. I'm not blaming the victim here, as many people are forced by poverty or other circumstances to live in places that can be dangerous.  Racial issues also, as seemingly always, come up. 

The U.S. Census data backs this up. Says NBC:

"Those earning less than $25,000 a year had the highest evacuation rate of any economic group, and Black and Hispanic residents had slightly higher evacuation rates than white residents."  

I don't have complete information on how the number of disaster refugees compare to previous years, but other organizations besides the U.S. Census have estimates.

As NBC News reports, the 1.4 percent of the U.S. adult population that the Census Bureau says were displaced by weather/climate disasters is higher than other estimates Says NBC:

"Data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, part of the humanitarian organization The Norwegian Refugee Council, previously estimated that disasters displaced an average of 800,000 U.S. residents a year from 2008 through 2021."

Dishearteningly, it seems adults who identify as LGBTQ are disproportionately affected by nature disasters. Four percent of LGBTQ people reported having to leave their homes compared to 1.2 percent of straight people.   

In a state by state breakdown, it's no surprise that Florida came in #1 in terms of the number of people displaced in 2022 with just under a million people, North Dakota had the fewest, with 1,088.

Here in Vermont, 1,629 people were displaced at least temporarily from their homes due to storms. I'm guessing most of that is from the effects of power outages during storms. 

In One Of World's Hottest Years, 2022 In UK Was Off The Charts

United Kingdom had its hottest year on record in 2022.
Other nations might follow suit, and globally, 2022
will be among the top 10 hottest. Where the world
ranks will be known for sure by the middle of this month.

 We won't begin to get great data just yet on how 2022 stacked up in the list of world's hottest years.

So far, the expectation is it certainly won't be the hottest year ever, but still will crack the top 10, probably somewhere between sixth and eighth hottest. Pretty remarkable for a year with a La Nina, which tends to cool the world a bit. 

The United Kingdom, though, came in with a scorching hot year.  The UK has been keeping track of temperatures since 1659, the longest period of instrumental data in the world.

After all those years, 2022 will be the hottest, according to provisional data from the UK Met Office.  The Met Office is the British equivalent to the National Weather Service in the U.S. 

As the Met Office reports:

"Dr. Mark McCarthy is the head of the Met Office's National Climate Information Centre. He said, '2022 is going to be the warmest year on record for the UK. While many will remember the summer's extreme heat, what has been noteworthy this year has been the relatively consistent heat through the year, with every month except December being warmer than average.'"

Every month of 2022 was warmer than average in the UK, with the exception of December, which looks like it will be a little cooler than average. That's thanks to a cold snap during the first half of the month. 

As the year closed, it was unusually warm in the UK, and as the New Year began, unprecedented winter warmth spread into most of the rest of Europe. 

Several other European nations might have also had their warmest year in 2022.  If the way 2023 is beginning continues, those records won't last all that long.

Data is starting to come in regarding how 2022 ranked globally, and we'll have a very good idea of that ranking by the middle of this month. 

I'll keep you posted. 

 

Kentucky Bank Tornado Security Video Eerily Similar To Iowa Bank Video From 2008 Hit By Similar Intense Tornado

Screen shot of surveillance video in the front lobby of
FNB Bank in Mayfield, Kentucky a 9:29:05 p.m 
December 10.

As I have anticipated, security videos are surfacing of the terrible tornadoes that wrecked swaths of Kentucky and surrounding states earlier this month.  
 

Cameras were rolling at the FNB Bank in downtown Mayfield when the tornado arrived at 9:28 p.m. December 10. 

The surveillance videos show the interior of the bank, meticulously neat, clean and tidy before the storm arrives. Cheerful Christmas trees guard the front doors, which are adorned with well-crafted wreaths.   

As the power fails, posters in the bank lobby begin to sway in a breeze. Then, the front walls and doors implode violently into the bank, mowing everything inside down with debris.

The video is almost a carbon copy of surveillance videos taken at a bank in  Parkersburg Iowa on May 25, 2008 when an EF-5 tornado hit. Fortunately, both banks were closed at the time the tornadoes it. Unfortunately, the 2008 Iowa tornado killed 9 people and the Kentucky tornado killed at least 55 people. Other tornadoes in the outbreak earlier this month caused a total of at least 90 deaths.

Just five seconds after the above screen shot, the bank
is being blown apart by the EF-4 deadly tornado that
struck Mayfield, Kentucky. 

By the way, there are some updated, but still preliminary statistics about the Kentucky/Mayfield tornado that are jaw-dropping.   The tornado was on the ground for about three hours, traveling a distance of at least 165 miles. 

It wasn't the "Quad  State Tornado that early media reports suggested traveled 250 miles.   The supercell that produced the scary weather produced one EF-4 tornado earlier.  

 Then, as intense supercell storms normally do, the system cycled, leaving a 15-mile gap in tornado damage before the storm produced the new EF-4 tornado that hit devastated towns like Mayfield, Cayce and Dawson Springs, Kentucky.  

The Mayfield bank video is below. As usual, mobile users might need to click on this hyperlink to see it. Otherwise here it is. Click on the arrow and then the YouTube logo for best viewing. 

Big Storm Gives Us A Very Warm Squirt After Toasty November

This morning, December 1 in my St. Albans, Vermont yard.
Grass is still and the perennial beds look ready to burst
into spring growth.  It was a very warm November and
December is off to a toasty start.

The large storm that gave us here in Vermont some decent rains and some destructive winds elsewhere has helped us kick off a remarkably toasty start to December. 

Early morning temperatures today were in the low 60s in parts of Vermont, which would have been a bit above average for that hour in July. 

Eastern Vermont was the warmest.  Island Pond, usually a notorious cold spot in the Northeast Kingdom was at 61 degrees early this morning. Morrisville was 62 degrees and Montpelier was 60.

Further afield, Caribou, at the northern tip of Maine, was at 57 degrees, just one degree shy of the all time warmest day for December up there. If it makes it to that record, it would be the second month in a row with the all time hottest temperature. It reached 75 degrees up there in early November. 

Even so, this does not portend a record hot day for most of us.  Temperatures will actually slowly fall here in Vermont during the rest of the day, though still stay quite warm by December standards. 

This follows a very warm November, both locally and nationally.  Virtually all of the continental United States was warmer than average in November. Many cities east of the Mississippi River had either their warmest November or at least scored in the top five warmest. 

Here in Vermont, November averaged out to 43.3 degrees in Burlington, enough to tie the record with 2011 as the third warmest November.  Unless December turns out to be remarkably cold - unlikely according to current forecasts - this will be one of the warmest years on record here in Vermont.

Elsewhere in Vermont temperatures ran two to four degrees above average in general.

Rainfall was near normal in eastern Vermont and below normal west of the Green Mountains. It's good that eastern Vermont bore the brunt of what precipitation we got in November. They were the drier part of the state.  In fact, there's still some lingering drought east of the Greens, but that's diminishing. 

Yesterday's storm also got eastern areas wetter than the west. Go further into New Hampshire, Maine and southern New England, you had a worse storm, as expected. Those areas had widespread power outages and local flash floods. 

Vermont got brushed by those high winds. As of early this morning, nearly 2,000 homes and businesses were without power in Orange County, near the New Hampshire border, according to Vermont Outage Map.

Further south, tornado watches were up as far north as New Jersey, and it appears at least one tornado touched down in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

Back here in Vermont, the trend will be toward gradually cooler weather, with slightly above normal  temperatures Wednesday through Saturday, with near normal temperatures from Sunday well into next week at least.

Near normal in early December is certainly cold enough for snow, so winter sports tu

The weather will be active, with several chances of rain and snow, then snow through next week.  It's still hard to tease out whether any of these rainy and/or snowy spells will amount to anything substantial. 

It still looks like more springtime in Vermont, the kind of conditions we had this morning, will have to wait until, well, spring.