Vermont Weekend Rain Streak Lives On, But Weather Will Be Decent. Meanwhile, Baked, Weird Alaska

The sky over St. Albans, Vermont around 7 a.m. tells the
weekend weather story. The darker clouds on the left
are toward the south, the blue skies are to the north.
Those blue skies will spend today fighting their 
way southward across the most of the 
Green Mountain State today. 

The long streak of consecutive weekends with rain or snow lives on in Vermont! This is now officially the 26th consecutive weekend with precipitation in Vermont, at least as measured in Burlington. 

Um, yay?  

A period of light rain early this morning in Burlington deposited just 0.05 inches of rain.  That's actually a tiny bit more than the trace Burlington had last weekend. 

Up here in St. Albans we had just a few raindrops around 6 a.m.today. Not even really enough to make the driveway look wet.

But don't worry, this will still be the nicest weather weekend Vermont has seen in ages. Even if conditions aren't perfect. 

First of all, it was such a relief on Friday to look over at the Green Mountains and they looked......green.

The main thing was you could actually see them, as the wildfire smoke that has been plaguing our area finally got flushed out by clean northerly winds yesterday. There was so little haze left that you could clearly see the lush greenness of our hills and forests in all their summer glory. 

FORECAST

The great news is we're getting the rain out of the way early and we can go on with the weekend. Hell, most people were still sleeping when it rained around here early today, so it doesn't matter. 

Overcast skies will slowly clear north to south today.  Blue sky was already starting to show up over St. Albans as of 7 a.m.

The north should have a pleasant, largely sunny day. It'll take longer for the clouds to clear in the south. If you're down around Brattleboro or places like that, it could take most or all of the day before you get some sun. 

It'll be cool for the season today, with highs only in the low 70s under the sun north and 60s under the clouds south. 

Tomorrow (Sunday) still looks pretty damn good, too. Not perfect, but good. It'll be partly sunny once again, with more clouds predominating in the south again. It'll stay cool with highs only in the low 70s.

There's a very slight chance of a shower Sunday.  But if you do get unlucky enough to see rain on Sunday it would probably amount to just a some sprinkles that last a few minutes.  

It still looks like it will get warmer and more humid as we go through the upcoming week. The ever-present risk of showers and storms will be there, mostly in the muggy air Wednesday and Thursday, 

Over this weekend, you might see just barely some hints of smoke from time to time in the atmosphere over Vermont this weekend, but it will be much, much better than it's been. Air quality here in Vermont will be fine.

For now, winds are taking much of Canadian wildfire smoke northwestward toward Alaska. 

AN ALASKAN EXCURSION

As an aside, things have gotten strange up in Alaska. On top of the smoke, we now have a baked Alaska situation, if you will. A first-ever heat advisory is in effect for tomorrow and Monday for a big stretch of central and eastern Alaska. Temperatures will be between 85 and 90 degrees, which isn't that bad by our standards but torrid for Alaska. 

Fairbanks, Alaska is forecasting high temperatures in the 80s daily through at least Friday. Normal highs there this time of year are in the upper 60s.

Meanwhile, much of far northern Alaska is under a flood watch. The snow pack up until now on Alaska's North Slope has been unusually deep and thick  and persistent for this late in the season. The big warm spell now moving into Alaska will rapidly melt this snow to cause flooding. There's still actually ice on the rivers up there, too, so ice jam flooding would also be a problem. 

So, complain all you want about Vermont's stretch of rainy weekends. At least we got rid of our ice jam and snow melt flood issues way back in mid-March. 

After A Gorgeous Fourth Of July Weekend, Some Showers

Well, kind of red, white and blue. A patch of astilbe with
a barely visible small blue flower in the foreground,
enjoyed the mild sunshine in my St. Albans, Vermont
gardens during this Fourth of July weekend

 The nation is facing lots of trouble and our Fourth of July weekend was bittersweet because of it. 

Since this is a weather and climate blog, I have to be a bit trivial in this instance: One saving grace here in Vermont to this Fourth of July weekend was that the weather was absolutely stellar. 

There's no data, of course, on what was the "nicest" Fourth of July holiday. You get figures like coldest, hottest, wettest, but not nicest.

For the record, the hottest Fourth of July in Burlington reached 98 degrees, in 1911. The coldest had a morning low of 40 degrees, back in 1962. The wettest had 1.89 inches of rain, in 2013. The most "violent" probably was in 2012, in which a severe thunderstorm brought gusts to 70 mph to the Champlain Valley and up to 1.5 inches of rain within an hour. 

That said, this one was one of the most pleasant Fourth of Julys, at least in terms of weather, I've seen. We dealt with warm afternoons with low humidity and a breeze. Scattered clouds to add interest to the sky, and provide a few short intervals of shade. Plus cool, comfortable sleeping weather. We had a happy medium with temperatures on July 4 with a high of 80 degrees on Monday and a low of 56, with no rain.

The only rain and humidity we had to deal with all weekend was on Saturday morning as a cold front departed, ushering in the good weather. 

All pleasant things must come to an end, and you'll notice it's cloudy out there today. Some rain will move through, especially this afternoon and evening, but I don't see anything huge coming through. Just more gentle showers

The relatively cool regime in Vermont will hold through at least next weekend. Two high pressure systems from Canada will pass through, with more cool nights and mild days. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington says there could be a couple nights mixed in there with temperatures in the upper 30s in the coldest hollows of the Adirondacks and Northeast Kingdom.