Vermont Weather Week Ahead: Normal Weather For A Change!

Pretty much normal weather coming up in Vermont 
this week, but there's always a few surprises. As dawn
broke, a few unexpected dark clouds, and in a
few spots, a couple surprise showers this morning.

For a big change, I'm not going to talk scary weather in Vermont.

There's no big heat wave coming in.  Not much in the way of humidity to talk about, either. There's no gigantic flood risk. It's not going to be cold, either,  No tornadoes, no locusts, not much in the way of weirdness, either. 

For once we have a sort of normal weather week coming to Vermont. Normal  for this time of year means highs in the 70s to around 80 and lows in the 50s to around 60. It also means the ever-present risk of showers here and there. 

We're going to be close to that "normal" game plan all week.  But this being the Green Mountain State, expect plenty of day to day changes and some surprises here and there. 

The first surprise is this morning. There were a few showers scattered around as of 7 a.m., which I didn't expect. 

As of that hour, most of them were in eastern New York, heading into the southern half of Vermont.  They didn't look especially heavy, and I imagine they will clear out later this morning. A few other showers lurked in northern New York, so a couple places in the upper half of Vermont could get briefly wet, too. We'll see. 

Those showers did appear to be weakening somewhat, but that might not be the end of it. 

FOR STARTERS, AN UPPER LOW

After those unexpected scattered light showers clear out this morning, it should be a mostly nice day.  Some sun, highs getting close to 80, humidity reasonable. 

But I can't say there's no further rain risk. The latest in a series of upper level low pressure systems is starting to dive down from eastern Canada.

As previously advertised, this one is weaker and warmer and faster moving than the system that caused the chilly, dreary weather this past week. Still, it'll bring us some weather. Again, nothing extreme.

A few more isolated showers or even a rumble of thunder could pop up this afternoon, with the best chances the closer you get to the Canadian border. 

Again, we could see an afternoon surprise or two. Up until now, most forecasts had limited the risk of showers and storms to the far north and kept them very few and far between.

Some computer models just released this morning suggest more scattered storms, not just isolated ones. They'd still be hit and miss, but instead of just affecting areas north of Route 2, a few could pop up just about anywhere.  

If you have outdoor plans today, you might need to move inside for a little while to avoid lightning and quick downpours. That doesn't apply to everyone, just some unlucky towns here and there. 

Monday

On Monday, as the upper low dives southward and over New England, plenty of showers and thunderstorms will develop as this thing destabilizes the atmosphere. 

A couple storms could be strong-ish, and there's a marginal chance that one or two will create some damaging wind gusts during the afternoon. So, if you're very unlucky, you might briefly lose power, and lose a couple tree branches, too.

It won't be humid enough to cause super torrential downpours, and the storms will be moving too fast anyway to drop all that much rain. So for once, Vermont will not see any flooding. Or flooding risks. Hallelujah!

Tuesday:

A classic late summer day as the upper low gets out of the way. We'll have a fair amount of sunshine, and it will feel rather humid again.  Again,  nothing extreme.  

Later Week

Long range forecasts from a few days ago had strongly hinted at some possible late season heat to close out the month of August. Meteorologists have backed way off on those projections, now that we have better data. 

Instead, strong high pressure in eastern Canada looks like it will shove another cold front southward across Vermont around Wednesday. That'll bring some showers, and some cooler air. 

Once again, by cool, I mean air that might only be a couple degrees below average for this time of year. Nothing out of the ordinary for the end of August. 

It's possible - but not definite - that we might get a quick squirt of hot, humid air toward next weekend. But new cold fronts also lurk then, too.  

This being Vermont, I'm sure some unexpected things will come up during the week. Like they always do. But it is nice that the weather is actually "boring" for a change. 

 

"Coldest" Morning Of The Vermont So Far Was Right About Normal, Actually

Wednesday was a candidate for the most perfect weather
day of the year in Vermont.  Trees aren't really turning
color yet, but the recent turn to more seasonable
temperatures might encourage some foliage in the coming days.

 This morning in Burlington, Vermont, the temperature went down to 47 degrees, the first time it was under 50 degrees since June 4.  

As far as I can determine, this looks like it might be the second longest period continuously above 50 degrees on record. This year it was 108 such days. In 2021, it was 110 days. 

This also  had to be one  of the latest or possibly even the latest first 50 of the autumn on record.  After all, it has been below freezing this time of year in Burlington, according to past weather records. 

All this is to say, it might have felt chilly this morning, but temperatures were actually very close to normal for the days around the Autumn Equinox. 

Morning lows in the warmer valleys of Vermont are usually within a few degrees of 50 degrees this time of year. Away from Lake Champlain, lows this time of year are generally in the 40s, which is right where most people were at dawn today 

The perennial cold spot, Saranac Lake, New York was down to 31 degrees today, but for them, that's totally par for the course in mid-September. The cold hollows of the Northeast Kingdom were in the upper 30s, but again, yawn. 

This of course, is what we've been waiting for in oddly humid June, July, August and early September. Tuesday was about as perfect a day as you could get: Deep blue skies dotted with just a few clouds, perfectly comfortable temperatures and a pleasant light breeze. It was a strong candidate for nicest day of 2023.

The good news is, the weather looks like it will stay almost as nice as Tuesday, with of course a few hiccups and caveats. 

Today will be another nice one.  We're back to having wildfire smoke in the atmosphere due to those ongoing Canadian fires. So the sky won't be as nice a deep blue as yesterday. It will have a disappointing haze to it. The smoke is aloft, so we don't really have to worry about air quality. 

Right now there's a weird storm forming off the east coast of Florida. Looks like it will be some sort of odd hybrid between a regular storm and a tropical storm. 

The effects on the ground won't matter either way. Things should get nasty in North Carolina and Virginia by Friday night, with gusty winds, storm surges and torrential rains. 

The question is how far this thing will move north.   Early signs suggest it might get shoved off to our south by strong high pressure building strength in Quebec, but there's no guarantees.   

Initial guesses are that rain might spread into southern Vermont over the weekend, but might not make it much further north than that. But nobody knows for sure. No flooding concerns with this one, though.

This silly storm could spread high clouds across Vermont like Lee did last Friday, which could give us another round of great sunsets. Especially with a little wildfire smoke in the upper atmosphere. 

On Paper, Vermont March Weather Was "Normal". But It Was Weird

Vermont experienced one of its most even-tempered Marches on 
record this year, a huge mid-month snowstorm 
notwithstanding. Here, a pleasant sunset in
St. Albans, Vermont on March 9

 Given all the weather going on all over the place Saturday, I didn't get a chance to review the previous month's weather on the first of the month, like I usually do.

So, today, it's time to delve in March. 

It was a simultaneously sort of average and a really strange month. 

The basic numbers tell a "normal" story. 

In Burlington, the average temperature for March was 33.2 degrees, just a little under a degree warmer than normal.  

Of course, as I always remind  you, this is the "new" normal, based on the average of the past 30 years. The past 30  years were warmer than the overall 20th century average.

Precipitation in Burlington was 2.7 inches, which is on the wet side by 0.86 inches. Snowfall was above normal, too, with 22.9 inches. That's 5.4 inches above normal.

None of these figures from March, 2023 came close to breaking any record. 

Dig deeper, though, and the numbers begin to look wonky. 

WARMISH NIGHTS, COOL DAYS

Completed dig out on March 15 in St. Albans, Vermont
after a foot of heavy, wet snow. 

If it didn't seem like a warm-ish March to you, like the basic numbers indicate,  you can be forgiven.  Daytime highs were near normal, or even a little on the cool side.

Daily low temperatures, which mostly happened when you were probably sleeping, were well above normal.  

For instance, the average high temperature in Burlington in March, 2023 was 40 degrees, which was almost a degree cooler than normal. The average low was 26.3 degrees, which was 2.7 degrees above normal. 

You could see this trend across Vermont. In Montpelier, St. Johnsbury, Rutland and Bennington, high temperatures this March were right about normal. Low temperatures were quite a bit on the warm side, somewhere close to three degrees above average.

STRANGELY EVEN-TEMPERED

The other thing that made March, 2023 weird was its temperance. March is usually the wildest month of the year, with all kinds of abrupt swings from deep winter cold to late spring warmth and back to winter again. 

Oh, sure, March had a couple snowstorms to make things interesting. But as far as temperatures go, the goofy, capricious personality of March was missing in 2023.

Thawing creates patterns in the snow cover on March 18

The warmest it got in Burlington this March was 52 degrees, and the lowest 15 degrees. That's only a spread of 37 degrees. 

We occasionally have single days in March with that range. Heck, just yesterday, April 1, the spread between high and low temperature was 33 degrees, which was pretty close to the entire month of March. 

 I looked back through Burlington's weather records to at least 1930, and I found only one March - 1956 - that had a smaller range between high and low temperature than this year.

 In 1956, the range was 35 degrees. By contrast, 1938 had a high of 73 and a low of minus 24 for an incredible range of 97 degrees! 

BAD FORECAST

March helped prove why I don't love long range forecasts. In late February, much was made about something called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming would lead to a frigid, wintry March.  That didn't happen. 

Yes, we had some extra snow, including an immense winter storm on March 14-15 that dumped up to 40 inches of snow on southern Vermont and caused widespread power outages. But the frigid month certainly didn't come to pass. 

Spring will not be denied! Daffodil shoots poke
up through the snow on March 23.

One good contrast I'm seeing this year to many recent springs is we're heading into the growing season with enough moisture around. March precipitation was above normal. Not by much, but good enough. Groundwater levels seem good, and there was plenty of snow to melt into the soil.

Drought could always develop, of course, but right now, we're in great shape for spring planting. 

As much as I hate long range forecasts, we can look ahead to this April's weather, and conclude.....not much. 

April is almost as unpredictable as March.  It's beginning to look like this month will be in character.  Expect warm days, cold days, or cold weather and warm weather in the same day. 

Snowfall in April can range from a trace to a foot and a half or more. So far, little snow is in the forecast. But for the past two years, we've had snowstorms in the third week of April.  I'm kind of hoping we don't have a three-peat. 

But we're into spring now. Those little hints of green you're starting to see in sunny areas protected from the wind and cold are going to spread a LOT during this month. It'll be lovely. 

Climate: The "New Normal" Is (Mostly) Warmer Than The Old One

New average temperatures, based on newer data, have
gone up in most of the United States since the last update
a decade ago. The northern Plains have 
cooled off a bit, however. 

 Every decade, what is considered "normal" weather for all the weather stations in the United States get an update. 

The latest update just came through, and for almost everybody, normal is warmer than it used to be.

Normal is calculated by taking an average of what it's been like for the most recent 30-year period. Until this week, "normal" was the average for the period 1981 to 2010.  Now, it's the average of 1991 to 2020.

Climate change is of course in full swing, so these averages for most of us are toastier than they once were.   As the Washington Post reports:

"'We're really seeing the fingerprints of climate change in the new normals,' Michael Palecki, manager of NOAA's effort to update the climate normals said at an April news briefing. 'We're not trying to hide that. We're in fact reflecting that.'" 

TOASTIER UNITED STATES

The average temperature of the United States for a year is now 53.28 degrees. That's 1.7 degrees warmer than in the 1930s and approximates the pace of warming across the rest of the globe due to climate change. 

Most of the United States is warmer than it was under the new definition of normal announced this week. The areas seeing the biggest upward trend are the Southwest, southern and central Rockies, California, and the East Coast east of the Appalachians. 

The Southwest is also quite a bit drier than it used to be. The area was already pretty dry. The combination of higher temperatures and lower precipitation means the worsening droughts they have been suffering through will get even more extreme if these trends continue. 

The Northern Plains and parts of the Upper Midwest are actually a bit cooler under the new averages, especially in the spring for some reason. Scientists are studying why.  It could be a wavier jet stream than in the past that is bringing more frequent cold shots. Increased snow cover or an increasing cloud cover might be holding temperatures down. 

Or it could be changes in farm practices. There's more corn and soybean growing in these areas than in the past. What is known as "corn sweat" - moisture being given off by these plants - the evaporates. The evaporation has a cooling effect. At least in the summer. 

The Northern Plains are also wetter than they once were. So is much of the East Coast. 

WHY THE UPDATE

Members of the World Meteorological Society are required to update their climate averages once per decade.

Not everyone likes these updates every decade.  I'm not a fan of them. People smarter than me, like many climatologists, aren't thrilled by the updates, either. 

Here's some reporting from the Associated Press on that matter:

"Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said he prefers a constant baseline such as 1951 to 1980, which is what NASA uses. Adjusting normal every 10  years 'perverts the meaning of 'normal and 'normalizes' away climate change' he said in an email.

North Carolina's state climatologist Kathie Dello said, 'It seems odd to still call them normals because 1991-2020 was anything but normal climate-wise." 

A (MOSTLY) WARMER VERMONT

Here in Vermont, Burlington's average temperature took a decided swing uphill. The normal annual mean temperature is now 47.6 degrees, up from 46 degrees under the old "normal."

Interestingly, Montpelier's average temperature is marginally down and it's now 42.6 degrees. It had been 43.3 degrees. 

Even more dramatic than the map above is this one,
which shows how much "normal" temperatures in 
the United States have increased since 1901 

Vermont is now a wetter place, too. This is also consistent with climate change, as experts have long said warmer air is more humid, especially in this parts of the country, leading to more potential precipitation. 

This is probably the more worrisome of the new averages. Individual rainfall events have been trending heavier, despite occasionally droughty spells like we've had the first part of this year and much of last year.

This wetter trend means we are becoming more prone to flooding in the Green Mountain State.

Burlington's annual precipitation average is now 37.53 inches, up from 36.82 inches. Montpelier's is up to 38.7 inches, against the old figure of 37.27 inches. 

Burlington is snowier, too. The average for a season is now 87 inches, up from 81.2 inches. I think epic snow years like the winters of `1994, 2001, 2008, 2011 and 2019 really skewed the average. 

This discernible uptick in snowfall might also be related to climate change, believe it or not. Remember a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, which means more precipitation. It still very often gets cold enough to snow, so snowstorms are trending heavier. 

Digging deeper into the new averages, at least for Burlington, it seems every month is more or less equally warmer than the old data, with maybe the pace of warming in March and April a little slower.

Spring and early summer seemed to have gotten wetter the most, but mid to late summer has actually dried out a bit. November has gotten drier too.

There's probably not much rhyme or reason to those subtle changes. Probably natural variability mixed in with the climate change. 

With climate change continuing, all bets are the next update a decade from now will be even warmer than the new "normals" we have just been introduced to. 

The Way This Spring Has Gone, Yesterday's "Normal" Weather Was A Real Rarity

Just a few broken daffodils in my St. Albas, Vermont
garden from Friday's snow, but under what for this spring
is rare seasonable conditions, we have a nice recovery.

This spring in Vermont, it's really hard to discern what normal weather should be. Most of the time, temperatures so far this season have been well above normal.  

In the brief interludes where it hasn't been toasty warm, we've had plunges into the middle of winter. We've had drought, some heavy rain, some heavy snow, even a tornado! 

Well, now we have a brief interlude that tells you what normal really should be. Don't blink, you might miss it.  It'll get weird again soon enough.

 If you want some sort of guide as to what we should be experiencing this time of year, Sunday's weather was exactly normal for this time of year,

Both Sunday's low and high temperatures were right where they should be this time of year. There were times where it was cloudy, then it would get sunny.  A few places got some showers.  There was even a lightning bolt or two in some of the stronger showers. This is on the money what this time of year should be like.  

Today and tomorrow look kind of normal too.  Temperatures will be a little above normal this afternoon, but not by a whole lot. There will be more scattered showers and possibly non-severe thunderstorms.  The strongest storms might produce pea-sized hail in one or two spots. Tuesday will be seasonable, too.

Then, poof, it ends. We get back into bizarro world again Wednesday.  A vigorous storm will come by, and the exact track of it will determine what kind of weather we get.  There will be a sharp temperature contrast involved, which makes things tricky. 

To the north and west, it will be dark, rainy, cold, maybe even snowy.  To the south and east, it will probably be balmy.  Where this contrast sets up in or near Vermont is anybody's guess at this point. There might be some thunderstorms in the warm air to the south, who knows?

Not to scare you, but one run of the European weather forecasting model I saw had several inches of snow piling up in the northwestern half of Vermont toward Wednesday night, even in the valleys. That scenario is an outlier at this point, but it's still something to watch, and maybe shudder about. 

If the storm goes by a little more to the south and east, there could be spots that get quite a bit of snow.  Many if not most of us will probably see some snow showers Wednesday night. Winter still wants to keep trying, huh?

Thursday will be cloudy, cold and windy with snow showers, maybe mixed with cold rain drops. It'll be the March weather we largely missed out on back in March. 

Goodness knows what the end of April will bring to Vermont. Locusts? Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs? Volkswagen-sized hail?  

I guess weather excitement does keep things a bit on the interesting, if frustrating side.