Flash Heat Wave Monday, Questions About Heat And Storms Today, Then Sharply Cooler Late Week

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center still extends their
slight risk of severe thunderstorms into Vermont.
(Everything in yellow is a slight risk).

That was a wild weather ride on Monday! 

Northern Vermont in particular endured the day's weather whiplash. As I noted in yesterday morning's post, the day began stormy and cold with fitful downpours, local gusty winds and even a rumble or two of thunder. 

Burlington reached 90 degrees by late afternoon, after a rainy early morning low of 51 degrees. By afternoon, we were sweating in a brief May heat wave that is already over-performing. 

I saw somewhere on social media where somebody in Vermont said they ran their furnace in the morning and air conditioner in the afternoon.

I'd call it a flash heat wave. Like a sudden flash flood, only hot air, not water. 

The day featured a rare temperature stat: Burlington had its first 80 degree temperature of the season Sunday. And only a day later, the first 90 of the season hit.  The same thing happened in April, 2002, but I wonder if this week and 2002 were the only times something like that happened. 

There has always been the occasional May in Burlington in which the temperature hit 90. But probably at least in part due to climate change, 90 degree May days are getting more common. In the 109 years in Burlington ending in 2009, we had 14 Mays that reached at least 90 degrees.

But in the 16 years since 2010, there have already been eight such days in May.  

Elsewhere in Vermont, the high in Bennington Monday was 89 degrees. Montpelier reached 86 degrees after a morning low of 46.  A temperature change of 40 degrees in just one day is pretty wild. 

The heat isn't only a Vermont thing, of course. Philadelphia reached 96 degrees Monday, a record for the date. It was also the second hottest May temperature on record.  In New York City, a high of 95 is expected today, followed by an incredibly stuffy overnight low tonight of 77. It should hit 90 degrees in the Big Apple again tomorrow. 

Heat advisories are in effect for much of southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Hartford, Connecticut had its second day in a row of 90 degree temperatures Monday. Today's forecast high there is a whopping 96 degrees. The forecast high in Springfield today is 97.

VERMONT FORECAST

Back here in Vermont, the degree of heat today will depend on the level of cloud cover.  Severe thunderstorms are also possible, but there might be factors that allow us to luck out and avoid the worst of the storms. Maybe. 

We're certainly off to a very warm, muggy start. It looks like the low temperature this morning in Burlington was 71 degrees, so if you didn't sleep well in the Champlain Valley, that's why. If that low temperature holds through midnight, it'll break the record for warmest low temperature for the date. (The current record holder is 67 degrees way back in 1903.  

As the day goes on the valleys of southern Vermont have the best chance of reaching 90 degrees today, as they'll have the most sun.  The National Weather Service forecast for Springfield, for instance is 92 degrees.

I think clouds might prevent another 90 degree day in Burlington today, we'll see about that. There was already a batch of clouds and light showers in central and western New York early this morning. Those clouds might not clear out fast enough to allow another 90 degree day. Though we're starting out pretty warm, so it's still possible. 

The next question is severe thunderstorms. 

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center still has a slight risk - level 2 alert on a scale of 5 - for the northwest half of Vermont and a level one marginal risk for the southeast. 

The amount of instability in the atmosphere over us isn't huge over us today, which is a limiting factor for storms. But there is a subtle disturbance in the atmosphere due by early afternoon. That, combined with rising air near mountains could trigger some storms.

Also, cool air coming off of Lake Champlain sometimes creates these teeny tiny miniature cold fronts which are boundaries between the cool lake air and the warmer inland air. Those could be triggering spots for storms. After that, cool winds blasting out of thunderstorms could set up additionally teeny tiny little cold fronts elsewhere, which would trigger more storms. 

Bottom line: Some of us will see showers or storms, some of us will stay dry.  A small number of us could experience strong, even damaging winds from storms. This won't be a widespread severe storm event. 

We don't know who, if anybody will get those rambunctious storms. Pay attention to the skies if you're outdoors, and have a way to receive severe storm warnings, just in case. 

TONIGHT/TOMORROW

After another stuffy night coming up, Wednesday will bring another big change. A cold front will stumble through, in the morning north, afternoon south and east. The timing of it means the north will probably just see some scattered showers in the morning, with clearing skies and highs in the 70s during the afternoon. 

Southeast Vermont could see some thunderstorms but severe ones seem unlikely, at least for now. Highs in the south look like they want to get up into the 80s

THURSDAY/FRIDAY

More big changes in a roller coaster of a weather week. We'll wake up to sharply colder temperatures Thursday morning with lows in the 38 to 45 degrees. Under at least partly sunny if not clear skies, temperatures should only get into the mid and upper 50s north,  and some 60s south. 

Since it will be so cool, there might be some frost Thursday night and early Friday in areas of Vermont away from the Champlain Valley.

MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

A toss up on how the holiday weekend will turn out. The American weather model keeps showers at bay Saturday and Sunday, leaving us with partly sunny skies and cool highs in the 60s.  The European model brings showers into our area Saturday and Sunday. Both models give us some showers on Monday, Memorial Day. 

At Least Eight Dead In Tornado Outbreak, More Severe Weather Due

Enormous tornado seen shredding a 
neighborhood on Friday across still
partly frozen Union Lake in 
Michigan Friday. 

Tornado season in the United States is off to an early and tragic start. 

So far, at least eight deaths have been reported in tornadoes over the past two days that struck from Texas to Michigan.

As mentioned in an earlier post, a woman and her daughter died in tornado in Oklahoma on Thursday night. 

On Friday, powerful tornadoes unexpectedly struck southern Michigan, killing four people. It was the deadliest day for tornadoes in Michigan since 1980.

Social media has been full of images of a huge tornado chewing up houses in Union City, where three people died. Another tornado hit Three Rivers, where it shredded commercial buildings and houses.  .

Videos are at the bottom of this post.  

Although the forecast indicated there was a small possibility of a  brief, weak tornado in southern Michigan, nobody expected anything like this. This will likely be the earliest on record that twisters of that strength have been seen in Michigan.

Normally, Michigan gets about 13 tornadoes a year, and on average gets just one per year in March.  The only comparable March tornado I can think of off hand was an EF-3 in Dexter, Michigan on March 15, 2012, which destroyed about a dozen homes. 

The Washington Post explains it well:

"The afternoon tornado was particularly striking because it passed over several frozen lakes, including Union Lake. And it did so in an area that may not have been expecting it - the National Weather Service forecast Michigan to have a marginal (1 out of 5) severe weather risk. Only weak, low-end tornadoes were considered plausible, and the main focus of potentially damaging tornadoes on Friday was on the Plains and mid-Mississippi Valley."

Those area were indeed hit later on Friday.  More on that coming up. 

 One persistent supercell thunderstorm swept across southern Michigan, but it's unclear whether that storm produced one tornado with a long path or several tornadoes in succession. The storm formed near a warm front working its way northward. As WaPo noted, meteorologists advise that we should never trust warm fronts in the spring. They often bring unpleasant surprises. 

The first spot that suffered extensive damage was Three Rivers, Michigan, population 7,900.  Video shows the twister crashing into Menard's which issort of the Midwest version of Home Depot or Lowe's 

With shoppers and employees inside, the roof flew off, one end of the store collapsed and much of the front entrance was torn away, Cars were thrown around the parking lot, Amazingly, nobody at Menard's, or anywhere else in town for that matter were seriously injured. 

A still from a video showing a tornado tearing the roof
off of a Menard's in Three Rivers, Michigan, 

One lucky person was the guy unwisely videoing the tornado chaos outside the window of the retail store he was in Despite a giant flock of debris crashing into the store, the window the man was up against did not break. 

Judging from photos of the damage, this tornado might have been an EF-3

As the supercell continued on northeastward, the tornado either continued on northeastward or lifted temporarily before reaching Union City. The tornado that hit this town appeared to be much bigger and likely more powerful than whatever hit Three Rivers

Video showed the tornado roaring through a neighborhood on the north edge of mostly frozen Union Lake. This is where those three people died. A fourth person died elsewhere in southern Michigan, presumably from the tornado.   The broad, wedged shaped tornado could be seen flinging houses and trees into the air.

OKLAHOMA AGAIN

The action shifted back to Oklahoma and surrounding areas toward evening, the part of the nation that was forecast to be at risk for strong tornadoes  

It was the second day in a row tornadoes took the lives of Oklahomans. I mentioned the mother and daughter who died Thursday night in that twister northwest of Oklahoma City. 

Friday night's storms focused in eastern Oklahoma, especially near Tulsa. Two people died when a large tornado mowed through the tiny city of Beggs, south of Tulsa. That tornado wrecked homes and badly damaged a school .

Another tornado caused damage on the north side of Tulsa. 

It's not unheard of to have a tornado outbreak this early in the season, but it's on the rare side, especially considering now widespread the tornadoes and the threat of twisters is with this one. 

So far, we've seen 31 reports of tornadoes since Friday.

It's possible more tornadoes could touch down today somewhere in a band from northeast Texas to western New York. The most likely place for tornadoes are western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, where a tornado watch is in effect this afternoon. 

Another outbreak of severe weather and possible tornadoes seems like this coming Tuesday and Wednesday in the Plains and Midwest. 

VIDEOS

The Union City, Michigan tornado, as seen from across Union Lake. Click on this link to view or if you see the image below, click on that:

A guy in Three Rivers video'd the tornado as it approached the business he was in. He's damn lucky the window didn't shatter when the wave of debris and high winds hits. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

 

 

Weird Vermont August Temperatures Continue; Brief Return To Summer About To Start

Skies clear out in Vermont last evening, as this sort of
autumnal looking photo taken near sunset in St. Albans
shows. We woke up to cool, clear dawn this 
morning setting up three more sunny, dry days. 

 Temperatures got weird again in Vermont Wednesday, following a trend we've already seen a few times this month already.  

There's usually not much a temperature range during a Green Mountain State summer, but you still almost always find readings a little cooler to the north, and a little warmer in southern valleys. 

Not on Wednesday! The range was big and backwards. At 2 p.m. Wednesday, the temperature was 74 degrees in Highgate, up near the Canadian border. 

At the same time it was just 58 degrees in Bennington. Which is damn chilly for an August afternoon in Vermont. 

The reason for all this was the distribution of clouds and sun. As expected, a nice soaking rain missed us, going by to the south.But the clouds from that rainy patch blotted out the sun in far southern Vermont. So it stayed nippy for folks within easy reach of Route 9. 

Up north, further from that little weather system in Highgate, the sun was able to break out, allowing temperatures to reach the 70s.   

This is the second time in a week that we had strange temperatures in Vermont. On Sunday, it was the opposite of yesterday. A sharp southward moving cold front had simultaneous afternoon temperatures in the upper 50s in northern border towns like Highgate, and in the mid-80s in places like Bennington and Brattleboro.

That was quite an unusual event for August. 

We also had our Death Valley heat wave on August 9-12 that brought 90+ degree heat and desert-like low humidity. That was again, a practically unheard of event in a Vermont August, as heat waves here tend to be quite humid. 

A big part of the reason for the odd temperatures, and the relative big ups and downs we're experiencing and expecting is the jet stream has been wavier than usual for late summer. There's bigger northward bulges than we usually see, and deeper dips. This state of affairs should continue for awhile yet. 

This arrangement might even eventually provide us with some needed rain. 

DRY FOR NOW, BUT HOPE?

That rain that missed us even disappointed far southern Vermont, which stood a chance of a decent soaking.  One forecast I saw for Bennington called for 0.81 inches of rain. Instead, they received only about half that. 

Go just a short distance north and rain really tapered off. Springfield and Rutland both managed just 0.07 inches. North of that....nothing.  

No rain is coming today, tomorrow and Friday. Instead we have a warming trend that will bring us plenty of sunshine and temperatures warming back up to normal summer levels, 

The humidity will stay low, so we get to enjoy a trio of really nice, comfortable late summer days. The Captain Obvious downside is our drought will keep getting worse.  

However, if we're lucky, that wavy jet stream might give us just a little drought relief toward Sunday and Monday. 

Another unusually deep dip in the jet stream is coming for the eastern U.S. At first, the axis of the southward dip will be a little to our west. That will slow down a cold front coming at us and allow moist air to stream north toward New England, 

If that happens, we could get some pretty soaking showers and maybe thunderstorms Sunday and Monday.  Early guesses on precipitation don't exactly look overwhelming, maybe a half inch to as much as an inch if everything works out right. We'll take what we can get. But the way our luck is running, it's still possible the bulk of the rain could go off to our west or to our east. 

We'll have to check out updated forecasts in the coming days as the cold front approaches. 

Whatever happens, it won't be enough to cure our incoming drought. That dip in the jet stream will keep us pretty darn cool for late August through much of next week. The cool air might generate some light showers from time to time, but not give us the repeated soakings we need. 

Extended forecasts -  which I admit are a little less accurate than forecasts for the next couple days  - keep us generally on the cool, and unfortunately dry side into the opening days of September. 

Startling, Weird Desert-Like Heat Wave Instantaneously Dries Out Vermont, Rest Of New England, Canada

Temperature sign in downtown Burlington, 
Vermont on Monday says it all. 

 I don't think I've ever seen a weirder heat wave, and such a rapid drying in Vermont.

Temperatures are near record highs, but we've seen that before. Climate change has us breaking high temperature records all the time, it seems. 

This heat wave is different, though.  Usually, summertime hot spells in New England are humid, oppressive, tropical. This time the air is desert dry.   Monday somehow managed to turn out even a bit drier than dusty Sunday.

The temperature peaked at 96 degrees in Burlington Monday. Not a record high because it fell on the anniversary of the city's hottest reading ever, which was 101 degrees in 1944. Montpelier did reach a record high of 91 degrees. Plattsburgh, New York also had 

Monday's dew point was in the mid-50s, reading to a relative humidity of just 27 percent. That's remarkably arid for an August hot spell.  This extreme heat and dry combo will continue today. More on that further down, but I'm still agog at how fast we went from wet to parched.  

I've seen Vermont get this dry in some past droughts, but not nearly this fast. Within just a few days, leaves on some of the trees along Interstate 89, the ones on thin soil above rock ledges, wilted like lettuce left on a hot stovetop. 

Lawns turned from green to brown seemingly overnight. Even the weeds on parts of my property shriveled up and died. 

I couldn't keep up with the watering on Monday.  I'd notice some perennials wilting in the arid heat, the same ones I'd thoroughly soaked the day before.  I'd water them, then move the sprinkler somewhere else. Those  perennials I'd just watered early in the afternoon were thirsty again by sundown.  

The only plant I have that seemed happy was a cactus in one dry, sandy corner of my gardens. Today will be another 

RECORD HIGHS 

Wilting goldenrods and parched ground in St.
Albans, Vermont this morning amid our
developing flash drought. 

Some places did have record highs Monday.  Montpelier reach a record high of 91 degrees, beating the old record of 90 in 2016. Montpelier's records only go back to 1949, which is why that 1944 heat is missing from Montpelier's data. 

Plattsburgh, New York also had record high of 91 degrees Monday. 

I don't know for sure whether the summit of Mount Mansfield set a record high but it must have, having reached an incredible 86 degrees, pretty remarkable for a Vermont weather station at about 4,300 feet in elevation. 

The summit of Mount Washington was 66 degrees at 3 p.m, - very hot for them. 

The heat and drought if anything  has been crushing in southeast Canada. Bathurst, in northern New Brunswick set their all time August record high on Sunday, only to have that record beaten Monday with a high of 99.5 degrees.  It was 95 degrees in both Montreal and Ottawa. 

In Nova Scotia, record highs included 99 at South Ingonish Harbor and 36.2 at Ingonish Beach. So much for a cool, refreshing vacation in the Canadian Maritimes!

Here in Vermont, more record highs will be broken today, as we'll have almost exactly the same weather as yesterday. The record high in Burlington today is 93 degrees, so we should get past that. A heat advisory is still in effect for the Champlain Valley, but really, it will be hot everywhere in the (slightly less) Green Mountain State today. 

The rapid drying should continue. As you might imagine, the forest fire danger in Vermont is very high. That's also true across northern New York, northern New England, southern Quebec. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland remains very high and dangerous. 

HEAT RELIEF, AND A LITTLE RAIN?

Tomorrow will be the day we're waiting for as that cold front is still expected to come through. It will be one more hot day, especially in southern Vermont, which will see the clouds and showers from the front later in the day. It will also be noticeably more humid for just one day. 

It now looks like many of us will get some rain Wednesday. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington is thinking about 75 percent of Vermont will see some rain tomorrow. 

Most of us won't get all that much, and whatever comes out of the sky won't solve our new drought problems. But at least we'll get a break.

Some unlucky towns won't get any rain at all, which is bad news. Some areas will see a nice if brief torrential downpour. In general, the northern Vermont will do a little better than the south.  In the northern half, rainfall for most people (but not everybody) should be in the quarter to half inch range, with a few lucky devils seeing three quarters of an inch or so.

Southern Vermont should get somewhere between practically nothing and a quarter inch. With a few pinpoint spots seeing a little extra. 

All this will help with the dry weather temporarily but will be no cure. As I keep saying, we need several day long, soaking rains, which are not in the cards for now. 

A few of Wednesday's thunderstorms might be on the strong side, but the atmosphere doesn't look like it will support any widespread severe weather.

RETURN TO DRY

Thursday and Friday will give us a break from the heat, but the humidity will be at rock bottom again, so the drying will resume.  It might be briefly warm to hot, but dry Saturday before another cold front arrives Sunday. 

So far, that Sunday cold front does to look that impressive, so don't count on a lot of rain with that. 

The weather pattern is looking like it will shift into a new configuration after this coming weekend. But it's not one that will help with the dry conditions.  It's a change from previous forecasts that indicated it would stay very warm through the end of the month. 

The latest extended forecasts favor mostly cool,  maybe sometimes almost autumn like weather through the end of the month . But with an air flow from the northwest, weather systems might tend to be moisture-starved because the overall air flow would prevent deep moisture from moving up from the south. 

The blast furnace heat will end after today but a drought looks like it might want to continue to develop and deepen.   

Saturday Morning Vermont Weather Update: Flood Threat Disappears Amid Odd Weather Pattern

Unexpected wind gusts of over 40 mph overnight sent
some of our deck furniture askew, and, not shown
here, knocked over a few plants. We're still expecting
showers today, but rainfall will be much 
less than originally expected. 

Aside from some unexpected winds in the Champlain Valley of Vermont and New York and rains mostly limited to near the Canadian border overnight, the weather might not have seemed all that weird to you overnight and early this morning. 

But from a meteorological standpoint, it got strange. 

The unexpected overnight gusts were a symptom of the odd conditions overhead.  Before you get nervous, our "weird weather" does not mean anything scary for everybody just living their lives today. 

Most of us are still expected some showers today. But trends on rainfall amounts keep dropping. 

 A few days ago we were worried about flash flooding in northern Vermont today.  Now, the chances of such an event are pretty much nil.  So that's good news.

THE WEIRDNESS

It was supposed to grow increasingly humid overnight as south winds drew wetter air northward.  But a funny thing happened to that on the way moment.   Something called a low level jet got cranking a few thousand feet overhead last night. A low level jet is a ribbon of higher speed air, in this case created by a storm system over Ontario.

As the National Weather Service explains it, that high level wind was able to mix downward, especially into the Champlain Valley, which created overnight gusts as high as 45 mph. That's pretty unusual for late June. Even weirder, that gusty air that was pulled down from aloft is quite dry.

So instead of increasing humidity, the air got super dry for this time of year, especially in the Champlain Valley. The dew point, a rough measure of the humidity in the air, dropped from the mid-50s yesterday afternoon to around 40 degrees before dawn today.   That's super low for summer.

The dry air evaporated showers coming in from the west, so there was little or no rain in Vermont, except for those of us near the Canadian border.  

The expected conveyer belt of showers and some storms did move west to east across southern Quebec and far northern Vermont overnight.  The heaviest stuff was in Quebec, but places right near the border in Vermont probably got a half inch to three quarters of an inch of rain, based on radar estimates.

Here in St. Albans, I have been on the southern edge of the activity and had picked up 0.31 inches of rain through 6:30 a.m today. 

REST OF TODAY

The showers that have been trying to come out of New York and drying up before reaching Vermont will probably finally overcome the dry air and drop a little rain on places like Burlington, ensuring that we do officially end up with the 28th weekend in a row with at least a trace of precipitation 

However, the showers will not amount to much. There might be a local downpour here or there in Vermont today especially in southern Vermont where the more humid air will reach. But this system, which we originally thought would have some real oomph, is turning out to be very, very, well, "meh."

So, it'll be a mixed sort of day. We'll have an ever-present risk of showers, but there will be dry periods in between.

After such a wet May and what had  looked like was going to be a wet June, it's actually getting sort of dry in northern Vermont.  For instance, through yesterday, Burlington has had only about two inches of rain so far this month, which is roughly half of normal. 

We're still far from any drought worries, but I kinda want the rain to get a little more consistent for the rest of the summer.  

Without overdoing it, of course. We don't need any more flooding, which is why I'm relieved today's weather system turned out so blah. 

It's been much wetter this month in southern parts of the state than in the north, so no dryness worries there!  

LOOKING AHEAD

Sunday still looks like we'll have a lovely summer day in Vermont. Chamber of Commerce weather, really, with highs within a few degrees of 80 with blue skies dotted by a few clouds here and there for the pictures. Humidity looks like it will be fairly reasonable, too.

We're still looking at a quick squirt of hot, humid air Monday, which will take afternoon temperatures into the mid 80s in the "cool" spots and low 90s in the Champlain and lower Connecticut River valleys, and lowlands of southwest Vermont.

It still looks like some showers and storms will come through Tuesday, but at this point rainfall doesn't look like it will be all that impressive. We might have to be on the lookout for some strong storms that day, so we'll watch that.

As we head through the rest of next week,  we should have some pretty uneventful weather, and it might be slightly on the cool side by the time we hit the Fourth of July.  

Deadly Texas Tornado Seemed More Chaotic Than Most

Image from Val and Amy Castors' live stream as they
drove in Matador, Texas immediately after a 
powerful tornado passed through. 

 Maybe it's because of the wide availability of immediate social media images, but the tragic tornado that struck the small town of Matador, Texas seemed especially chaotic and scary. 

The tiny town of about 570 residents was slammed Wednesday by a huge tornado coming in from the north. The storm killed four residents and left 10 others injured. Most of the western half of Matador was leveled.

The twister was wrapped with a thick curtain of torrential rain and hail, making the whole thing seem especially apocalyptic. 

The National Weather Service office in Lubbock, Texas said the parent thunderstorm developed explosively north of Matador and soon produced the tornado that trashed the town. A post-storm investigation revealed the tornado was a strong EF-3 with top winds of 165 mph.

The tornado was about a quarter mile wide and traveled 9.4 miles. Honestly, it was just badly located. 

The tornado had to be intense. The engine of a car was torn out of the vehicle and entire houses and buildings were leveled. Grass was scoured out of fields.

As a side note, I'm a little perplexed by whether people on Twitter upset and angry that the Matador tornado didn't get a higher rating.  Tornadoes are rated from EF-0 to EF-5, with EF-5 being the most intense -and rare.

The critics say they think the damage warranted an EF-4 or EF-5.  But the National Weather Service office in Lubbock worked with Texas Tech University National Wind Institute to estimate tornado wind speed based on structure damage in Matador. 

Of course, the rating doesn't really matter to the people in Matador who had to deal with the twister. 

 Adding to the chaos was large hail that accompanied the huge storm. Hailstones were as large as 4.5 inches in diameter, or about the size of a grapefruit. 

Video taken just as the tornado was leaving Matador appeared to show breaks in the clouds and winds and rain diminishing. That's pretty common in the moments immediately after a tornado passes.

But that was only a very brief interlude. Within perhaps two minutes, another supercell thunderstorm  intense hail and blinding, wind driven rain arrived just as rescuers began attempts to pull people from the wreckage. That turn of events is rather unusual and made the aftermath all the more hellish.

The second storm finally left Matador around 10 p.m, around two agonizing hours after the tornado hit. 

 Large tornadoes are common in the Texas Panhandle, but it's rare for two twisters within a month, never mind a week, to cause deaths in the region. 

A twister hit Perryton, Texas on June 15, killing three people and injuring about 50 others. 

The four deaths in Matador were the most from a single Texas tornado since 2015.

The Texas Panhandle has vast tracts of open land sparsely dotted by small towns and two larger cities, Amarillo and Lubbock.   t's very easy for a tornado to travel ten miles in the Texas panhandle without hitting anything important. So the Matador tornado was very bad luck. 

This isn't the first time a destructive tornado marauded through Matador. A twister in May, 1984 destroyed about 30 homes in Matador. 

Video: KWTV storm chasers followed the tornado into Matador, and were stunned to see the damage when they arrived in town. Very dramatic video. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that: 

Wildfire Smoke And Record Heat Loom In Vermont This Week

One of the large wildfires burning in Nova Scotia on Monday.

 Ahh, yesterday, Memorial Day, was much better than Sunday in Vermont weather, at least in my opinion. 

Both days featured wall to wall sunshine, but as expected, Monday was quite a bit cooler.  Highs made into the 70s instead of the upper 80s, and a breeze kept the dry air refreshing. That near constant wildfire smoke up in the atmosphere from Canadian wildfires was at a minimum, too.

So much for that. It's back to possible smoke and definite heat for the upcoming week. 

Today won't be so bad, as temperatures climb into the low 80s amid more sunshine and dry air.

The weather pattern is frankly wonky, so things won't be acting the way they should during the middle of the week. We normally expect weather systems to move generally west to east in our neck of the woods. 

But this being a weird spring, we can't have that!  So, we face the risk of smoke coming in from the east, and record heat moving north to south from, yes, chilly Canada of all places. 

SMOKE

First, the smoke risk. It's not as definitely in the forecast as the heat, but it's still pretty likely.  As you might have heard on the news, there's some terrible wildfires in New Brunswick and especially Nova Scotia, Canada. 

Two large wildfires are burning in Nova Scotia. One, west of Halifax, has forced the evacuation of 16,000 people and damaged or destroyed at least 200 homes and other structures so far. 

Another, larger fire was burning in the a less heavily populated area near the southern tip of Nova Scotia. 

Large smoke plume seen on satellite photos
on Monday coming off of Nova Scotia. The smoke
eventually turned east toward New England.

At last report both fires were still out of control. A third large fire also reportedly broke out in Nova Scotia Monday. 

Amid a normal weather pattern, all that smoke from Nova Scotia would head eastward out into the open Atlantic.

Instead, there's warm high pressure over southeastern Canada. That's creating east winds on the southern edge of that high pressure to propel the smoke eventually toward New England. 

It looks like it will hit southern New England today, then slowly curl northward into northern New England, including Vermont later tonight and tomorrow. 

For most of this month, the smoke we've seen from even bigger fires up in Alberta, Canada have been high aloft. It created hazy skies, but no real air pollution problems from us down here on the ground. 

The Nova Scotia smoke will be closer to the ground, so you might actually smell smoke and we could see some air quality problems. The smoke looks like it will be more dense in southern New England and dissipate somewhat once it gets here. 

The smoke will tend to clear out at least somewhat by afternoon, which leads us to the heat wave.

RECORD HOT?

Temperatures should soar to the upper 80s Wednesday afternoon. Both the ground and the air are very dry, so that tends to make hot spells over-perform. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a few more 90 degree readings than currently forecast. The record high tomorrow in Burlington is 91 degrees, so we'll come close. 

Thursday looks to be the hottest day. The record high on Thursday in Burlington is 90 degrees, set in 2011 and tied in 2013.  The National Weather Service office in South Burlington gives us about a 90 percent chance of breaking that record.  

Friday looks hot, too, with an expected high near 90 degrees.

As mentioned, this is a weird hot spell. The hottest air has built up inside a persistent stubborn, strong heat ridge in southern Canada. The core of the hottest air will ride the northern edge of this ridge, then come down on us from Ontario and Quebec. This, of course, is normally where our cold spells come from.

Also, unlike a "normal" heat wave, the air will be quite dry, which will help exacerbate the building drought conditions we're experiencing. 

Go figure. A cold front later Friday should touch off some showers and thunderstorms. But they will be kind of scattered, and not last long in any given area. So we won't get much needed rain out of this. 

By the way, it's not just Nova Scotia that is at risk for more forest fires. There's a high fire danger in Vermont all week due to the dry heat we're experiencing.  So be careful with any flames, please! 

April Heat Wave Finally Ending; We Might See Highs Like That Again Until Summer

It was hot again in northwest Vermont for one last day on 
Sunday. Also a bit more humid than on previous days,
so we saw a few of those billowy cumulus clouds
that are common in mid-summer, but less so now 

 It felt like a balmy summer morning in Vermont this Monday as the lingering effects of our record April heat wave remained. 

If you missed the warm weather this morning, you're (mostly) out of luck for probably the next several weeks. 

The heat over-performed in northwestern Vermont again on Sunday. Temperatures reached 83 degrees in Burlington. 

That wasn't quite a record high, but still a full 27 degrees above normal. Sunday's high and low temperature, combined with somewhat higher humidity than previous days, made it a perfectly average day - for mid-July. 

There were even those puffy, sort of towering cumulus clouds that are most common in mid-summer. I saw a couple isolate small air mass thunderstorms tower up in the Adirondacks, too.  You can get thunderstorms in April every once in awhile, but these partly heat generated ones are something for this early in the season. 

The cooling will start today as rain moves in.  High temperatures for the day will be this morning, with mostly of us getting into the 60s.  Which won't be hard to do since many of us were already there at dawn.

Temperatures will probably drift downward into the 50s this afternoon.   A cold front this evening will ensure we  go down further. 

By tomorrow and Wednesday, highs will only be in the 45 to 50 degree range. That's somewhat colder than normal for this time of year. It will feel like yet another shock to the system. Northwest winds will make it feel even colder.

Mountain tops will even get a little snow. That's not at all odd for mid-April, but it's definitely a change in the weather, 

We need rain after that weird hot spell, but I'm not impressed with the amounts forecast. Northwestern Vermont looks like they might get between a half inch and two thirds of an inch. The rest of the state seems destined to see a half inch or less.

The rain will dampen the tree pollen, which has been sky high in recent days, as anyone with allergies knows. Everything started bursting forth with flowers and buds and leaves all at once. The allergen onslaught was impressive. 

The hottest temperature - at least in Burlington - during this bizarre heat wave was 88 degrees. We might not see temperature that warm until June or July.  

The weather patter has shifted to one that will mostly keep us chilly for the next couple of weeks at least. We might one last brief, quick squirt of warm air Friday, but that might be it for awhile.  

Snow Cover, Terrain Cheated Champlain Valley Out of A Gorgeous Spring Day Today

Bare ground around Bennington, Vermont helped 
temperatures warm up to 61 degrees there Wednesday afternoon.

 You start to get these days in March. Where it really warms up and you think spring is on the way. 

It was 61 degrees in Bennington. Rutland was 55 degrees. Even in northern Vermont, Montpelier managed to reach 50 degrees. All these readings were warmer than forecast. 

The Champlain Valley, though, was stuck in the low 40s all day. Though that's not terrible, the Champlain Valley is usually a banana belt region of the state, Is usually not the ice box of Vermont. What happened?

It was mostly a mix of snow cover and terrain.

The snow is pretty much gone in Bennington. Around the valley floor in Rutland, the snow cover is  patchy at best. In the Champlain Valley, there's certainly bare patches. But there's still quite a bit of snow on the ground, and parts of Lake Champlain are frozen. 

The Montpelier area still has quite a bit of snow on the ground. But the chillier air hugging the ground in the Champlain Valley couldn't quite make it over the mountains to Montpelier, so even they were relatively warm. 

Several thousand feet above us, winds were from the south today.  That warmed the atmosphere, making it possible for low elevations in much of Vermont to warm up. Especially where snow cover is lacking. 

Bare patches are forming, but snow cover in the northern
Champlain Valley was one ingredient that helped
that part of the state stay chiller than the 
rest of Vermont. 

Meanwhile, dense cold air hugging the ground in Quebec was able to easily flow southward into the Champlain Valley. 

It was partly the weight of this dense air that prompted north winds that pulled the chillier air into the space between the Adironadacks and Green Mountains in northern Vermont, 

Strong March sun would have heated bare ground, helping to beat back the cold air from Quebec. 

But the snow and patches of lake ice reflected the sun's heat to some extent, so the northern Champlain Valley could only reach the low 40s. 

It was still nice, but it was not the gorgeous snow melter that at least I hoped for. 

The snow cover outside my St. Albans, Vermont home is interfering with outdoor work I want to get going on. Today's insistence on relatively chillier air is, in my worst moments, has me thinking the snow cover here in permanent. (Not really) Especially since we have a chance of more snow this weekend. 

This cold dense air might have some implications late tonight as the next storm moves in. As I noted this morning, the precipitation should be exclusively rain. But lingering cold, dense air could open the door for a bit of freezing rain in the pre-dawn hours Thursday. 

This won't amount to much, and stiff south breezes should scour out the cold-ish air out of the Champlain Valley by daybreak. 

Weird Nor'easter Continues To Harass, But Leaves Some Needed Rain

Thunderstorm dumping a small footprint of heavy rain on
part of St. Albans, Vermont Tuesday. 

 Tuesday turned out to be an interesting weather day in some parts of Vermont.

As expected, scattered showers and thunderstorms developed, and oddly moved east to west over the state.  

While many places, especially south of Route 4 saw little or no rain, a few spots got some surprisingly strong thunderstorms

The strongest storm in the state bullseyed my area in St. Albans, Vermont , and especially up in nearbyHighgate Springs. 

Before the main storm arrived, a small but beautiful storm erupted right over the northern part of St. Albans and drifted southwestward on a path toward Plattsburgh. It cracked with lightning and had a narrow but intense rain shaft, as you can see in the photo in this post. The storm dissipated over Lake Champlain before reaching the Plattsburgh area.

This was followed by a larger and more intense storm.  There was continuous thunder for nearly an hour at my place from the slow moving storm. When it hit, I got 35 mph wind gusts, hail a half inch in diameter and a half inch of rain in less than 25 minutes.

Thunderstorm developing east of Fairfield, Vermont 
Tuesday afternoon. The storm became quite strong as
it moved the "wrong way", westward toward St. Albans.

The hail just caused very minor damage to my gardens, no biggie at all. The same storm dumped 1.1 inches of rain on Highgate Springs within a half hour, and produced penny sized hail there. The storm then began to dissipate as it headed southwestward across Lake Champlain.

Today, the backwards weather will continue in Vermont. But instead of Tuesday's picturesque showers and thunderstorms, we'll just increasing clouds with a rising threat of relatively light rain.  Again, the rain will be moving the wrong way, east to west instead of the normal west to east thing. It's that pesky odd nor'easter off the coast still up to its tricks. 

The storm was well east of the southern New England coast early this morning. Some rain was working its way into that area, which is suffering a nasty drought, but it won't be nearly enough to solve the problem. 

The whole storm is actually about to head the "wrong way."  They usually continue on toward the northeast, but this one is forecast to make a left hook and actually come ashore in Downeast Maine. 

This will be close enough to produce at least a little beneficial rain to Vermont.  And it won't be hit and miss, either. It's not a huge rain storm.  The National Weather Service in South Burlington is forecasting generally a quarter to a half inch of rain west of the Green Mountains and a half to three quarters of an inch along and east of those mountains. 

A mix of very heavy rain and small hail during a 
thunderstorm Tuesday in St. Albans, Vermont

The clouds and rain will  keep things cool.  It'll only get into the 70s today. Many places, especially east of the Greens, won't get out of the 60s  under the cloudy skies tomorrow. 

The bulk of the rain will come from early this evening to Thursday morning, with lingering showers tapering off during the day Thursday.  

All in all, the rain, though not impressive, is turning out to be a nice surprise, if we actually receive it. 

It's still looking like we're back to normal weather starting Friday and going into early next week at least. We'll resume the normal west to east path of weather systems, and it will warm up to feel like summer again.

The next chance of any rain after tomorrow looks to be early next week. So far, I'm not feeling bullish on a lot of precipitation Monday or Tuesday, but at least the chance is there. 

Jet Stream Meanderings Responsible For Weird Weather, Areas Of Record Heat

A quick morning downpour today precluded breakfast out
on the deck, but gave the plants a nice watering. 

The weird weather pattern since yesterday has pretty much worked out as forecast.  Which is an accomplishment.   When the weather is odd, the chances that a forecast will be dead wrong go way up. Not on this case, so far. 

Batches of showers and thunderstorms have been heading due south from Canada, mostly moving through New York and Pennsylvania, and for the most part bypassing Vermont.

One patch of showers did wander into Vermont this morning, dropping a quick quarter to third of an inch of rain to some areas, just to water the gardens a bit. w 

The conga line of storms and showers will renew themselves later today and tonight, again proceeding south through New York and Pennsylvania.  These repeated rounds of heavy rains could lead to local flooding in both states.  Vermont looks safe from that, anyway, but it does remain cool for the season. It will stay on the cool side until Friday. 

Meanwhile, western and central Europe is recovering from the opposite problem - a record breaking heatwave. Some cities reported all-time record highs, and others set records for the entire month of June. 

Examples cited by the Washington Post include:

The French cities of Biarritz (109.2 degrees), Rochefort Saint-Aignan (105.1 degrees) and Tarbes (102.6 degrees) set all time record highs over the weekend. Roughly 200 cities in France established new record highs for the month of June.

In Spains's Basque area, San Sebastian reached 111 degrees, breaking its all time record high by a wide margin.  

The Czech Republic established a new record high for the month of June with a Sunday temperature of 102.2 degrees in Husinec.  

Poland set a new June record with a high of 100.9 degrees in Slubice. Switzerland also established a new June record high of 98.4 degrees in Beznau.  

Meanwhile, the record heat also grinds on in the Midwest and South in the United States. Minneapolis hit 101 degrees on Monday, a record high and their first 100 degree temperature since 2018. record highs of near 100 degrees are in the forecast for southern cities like Atlanta.

The heat in Europe and the middle of the United States, and the cool, weird weather here are all related. 

The jet stream, which guides weather systems generally west to east across the Northern Hemisphere  normally has lots of bumps to the north and dips to the south. It's usually hot under the northward bulges and cooler under the dips. 

In the summer, the dips and bulges in the jet stream aren't as pronounced and big as they are in the winter. So, more often than not, the hot areas are only kind of hot and the cool areas are just kind of cool.

But the jet stream in the past few days has featured huge northward bulges and big plunges to the south, which is odd for this time of year. So, the extremes have been pretty extreme. On top of that, the bulges and dips haven't been moving around much so everybody gets stuck under roughly the same weather day to day. 

That's why there's a flood threat in New York and Pennsylvania. Those storms from Canada keep going over the same spots. 

Climate change is a factor, too.  The heat under those northward bulges in the jet stream in central North America and Europe is given an added boost by global temperatures that have risen in the past several decades.  Temperatures that would have just missed hitting a record high, say, in the 1970s are now smashing records.

These bigger than normal summertime bulges and dips in the jet stream might also be related to climate change. The science is still uncertain with this. But some experts think that because the Arctic is warming faster than the mid-latitudes, there's less of a north to south temperature contrast.

The jet stream thrives on a big contrast and in those conditions behaves itself. The theory goes that the relative lack of a contrast between the North Pole and down where we live is making the jet stream meander more than it would otherwise. 

That meandering jet stream gives us those big bulges northward where they had the heat waves, and those big plunges south, one of which has given us the past week's worth of cool, odd and unsettled weather. 

The jet stream looks like it will untangle itself a bit in the coming days,  hopefully resulting in more or less average summer weather for most of us. 

Wrong Way Cold Front Is Here; Weird Temperature Ranges, Uncertain Rainfall Predictions Result

The "wrong way" cold front shows up nicely on
satellite photos today as the northwest to southeast
cloud band. Most of the clouds are north of the
actual front, which has already made its way into
parts of Vermont.

 The back door or wrong way cold front we've talked about for the past few days is in Vermont this morning, and temperatures will be all over the place in the Green Mountain State today. 

Basically, we can expect highs in the mid 60s to mid 80s today, which is quite a range.

Luckily, we can sort of pinpoint who will be warm and who will be relatively cool so that you can make your plans, but this forecast won't be perfect.  The northern Champlain Valley and parts of the Northeast Kingdom will be coolest, with low humidity. Meanwhile low elevations in southern Vermont, like Bennington and Brattleboro, will be warmest. And also on the humid side. 

The trick will be who gets what temperature in the middle? It depends upon when the front moves through. As of 7 a.m., it had already gone through St. Albans, but was just reaching Burlington.

Interestingly, Burlington had an odd, brief warmup before dawn before the cold front arrived. It went from 68 to 77 degrees between 2 and 4 a.m., which is the opposite way temperatures should go in the wee hours of the morning.

Then, once the sun came up, temperatures started falling again, which of course is opposite of how things should go. 

All this means is I'm not super confident in what temperatures will be anywhere in Vermont today. It's a shallow layer of cool air coming in, with a warm layer above it.  The sun is nearing its highest intensity of the year. Will that allow some of the warmer air aloft to mix down?  Probably not much, but enough to make the forecast challenging.  

Parts of central Vermont might see temperatures quickly rise this morning, then settle back this afternoon as the wrong way cold front slowly makes its way southwestward toward Bennington. 

Most of the clouds with this cold front are to its north and east, so we will stay partly sunny today, so no matter what the temperature is, it will be pleasant enough with the sunshine.  Skies might look hazy at times due to wildfire smoke high overhead. Yeah, that's starting again. 

Don't be surprised if some places in the north stay in the low 60s will other pop up into the 70s. It will be that kind of day.

In the warm humid air south, mostly south of Route 4 a couple thunderstorms might pop up this afternoon. One or two of those might be on the strongish side, but most people will escape anything major. 

The lingering front makes Wednesday's forecast tricky, too.

Clusters of showers and thunderstorms will be diving northwest to southeast along or near this stalled wrong way front. The thunderstorms might tend to die out as the hit the cool, stable air over most of Vermont. 

This is where the National Weather Service in South 
Burlington predicts today's "wrong way" cold front
will be at 2 p.m. Warm and humid south of the front,
cool and dry north.

But remember, there's that warm layer just above the shallow chilly air.  That warm air aloft could maintain some thunder, and more importantly some locally heavy downpours early Wednesday and again Wednesday afternoon. 

Most if not all of Vermont will see some rain, but this weather situation makes it almost impossible to tell in advance who gets the heavy downpours and who sees just light rain and sprinkles. 

Some places could see more than an inch of rain out of this.  There's a chance a few spots could see enough rain to cause a few flooding issues.  That's a big maybe but something to watch. All this will be happening under gray skies and cool temperatures. Highs will barely make it 60 north. People in southern valleys will be lucky to see 70.

After Wednesday, we settle back into a period of typical June weather. We'll have a chance of showers almost every day for the next week, but most if not all days won't be washouts. Sunshine will burst out most days, and temperatures will be near normal (highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s most of the time).

MINNESOTA STORM

As expected, Minnesota, and parts of South Dakota were blasted by severe weather. Only a handful of tornadoes have been confirmed so far.  I think as meteorologists pick apart which areas had strong straight line winds and which areas had something else, the confirmed number of tornadoes will go up. 

The lakeside town of Forada, Minnesota, which is very much like the fictional town of Lake Wobegon from the old Prairie Home Companion radio series, was hit hardest, with dozens of homes destroyed or severely damaged. 

Today, we have a threat of severe weather in a band from northern Texas to Michigan.  That moves to western and central New York tomorrow on the warm side of the "wrong way" cold front that's pestering us today. 

Feeling The Season Way Ahead Of Schedule Agaiin

Really early for this. Yesterday, March 23, I got to work 
expanding a perennial bed while daffodil shoots 
were poking up nearby. Springs in general do seem
to come a lot earlier than they used to.

 This is anecdotal, but honestly, spring keeps coming so much earlier than I remember as a kid in Vermont. 

The setbacks to the season seem harsher as a result, but there's no denying spring ain't what it used to be  - like in my childhood memories of spring in Vermont during the 1960s and 1970s. 

I was out in my yard in St. Albans, Vermont yesterday. What I was seeing was probably what right about April 10 looked like a few decades ago. It certainly didn't seem like March 23. 

Lots of early perennials were poking up, some already two inches or so tall.  The yard was completely free of snow and the grass in protected corners seemed to have a new sheen of green.  Robins were engaging in ongoing turf wars. The ooze from mud season was just starting to ease a bit. I was actually able to begin work on expanding one of my flower beds. 

I have no illusions it will just be flowers and butterflies and warm breezes through the rest of the season.  Brief excursions back into winter are inevitable, and are in the forecast. (Mondays lows should be in the low teens, highs in the 20s. Brrr!) 

Some springs are, and will always be warmer or colder, earlier or later than others. We'll even have a daily record low temperature here and there, though those are, and will be more rare than record highs. 

Spring, in general, is warmer and earlier than it once was.

I might eat my words, but we'll probably never again have an April like 1972, when only five nights in Burlington stayed above freezing and it got as low as 2 above, still the coldest reading for April on record.. (For comparison, so far this March, nine nights remained above freezing in Burlington).

We also, thankfully, probably will never have a May like 1966, when 11 of the first 14 days of the month saw subfreezing temperatures. 

I wonder, though, what the next weirdly warm spring month will look like.  Will we outdo March, 2012, when we had a week of temperatures in the 70s and low 80s? 

Will we someday have some of the first leaves on the trees in early April?  When I was a kid, the first trees to turn green didn't do so until early May. Now, that usually happens around the third week of April, at least in the banana belt Champlain Valley. 

Sometimes, global warming is referred to as "global weirding."  The extremes get, well, more extreme, or at least more odd.  We've certainly seen that in recent Vermont springs.

In late February, 2017, we saw temperatures in western Vermont reach the low 70s, far higher than anyone had seen so early in the season.  Then, two weeks later, the Pi Day Blizzard dumped close to three feet of snow on those same "mild" towns. 

On April 9, 2019, I saw trees around my  yard sag under the weight of freezing rain. In 2020, another warm spring was interrupted by a snowy Mother's Day.

Last year, spring was way early, with flowers blooming all around my yard on April 20.  By April 21 and 22, five inches of snow had smushed the flowers into the ground and blinding snow squalls swirled around my house.  Two days later, it was warm, snow-free, as if nothing wintry ever happened.

All these changes of course have far broader implications than me just saying "Gee whiz'" to myself in the gardens. 

This is another screwed up maple sugaring season. It started early, but I'm not sure all sugarmakers were ready for it in February.  Then a long warm spell last week probably at least deteriorated the quality of the season, at least for some producers.

Early springs lead to premature blooming of apple trees and grape vines and such. Those crops end up vulnerable to late frosts, which still regularly interrupt these milder springs. 

I've always been particularly in tune with nature, the change of seasons, how the landscape changes day to day.   At the risk of having my Vermont card revoked, winter isn't necessarily my favorite season. The honors go to spring.

The weird springs give me mixed emotions, but most of those emotions are tinged with misgivings. Sure, who doesn't love hints of greenery in a Vermont garden in mid-March?  But then you worry the flowers are coming up too soon, and will get wrecked, like my too-early lilacs did during last April's brief snow and cold.

Flowers around my house are the least of anyone's worries, including mine. Climate change is now affecting everyone.  It will hit is harder in the years to come. How hard is too hard?

 

Temperature Records Smashed Sunday In Weird Temperature Gyrations; An Icky Monday Follows

Big changes to the March landscape with yesterday's
record warmth. This is a view of my St. Albans 
backyard at 11:40 a.m. Sunday.........

Record highs were obliterated in and around Vermont during yesterday's brief squirt of unseasonably warm air.  It was a strange Vermont weather day all around. 

Some of the records blew past previous record highs by 10 or more degrees, which is really impressive. Montpelier reached 68 degrees, blowing away the previous record of 55 degrees set in 1974.

Plattsburgh, New York shattered the previous record high by 10 degrees when readings there got up to 69 degrees Sunday.

Burlington had a record high of 64 degrees, besting the previous mark of 61 degrees set way back in 1894. That previous record was among the oldest standing records in Burlington's record books.

Other high temperatures in the region yesterday included 68 degrees at Springfield and 67 in both Rutland and Bennington.

The strange temperature gyrations and contrasts were at least as impressive as the records themselves. 

A warm front crossed most of the area from west to east at or  before lunch time.  However, Montpelier hit record highs before places further west, that should have warmed faster. It was 39 degrees at noon in Montpelier, then 48 degrees at 1 p.m. By 2 p.m. the temperature there had shot up to 63 degrees after the skies had cleared. 

Meanwhile, Plattsburgh, New York was at a relatively mild but unspectacular 50 degrees shortly before 2 p.m. The wind at 2 p.m. there was from the south or southeast, off Lake Champlain, which kept the temperature down a bit compared to other towns.

By 3 p.m., there had been a wind shift to the southwest at Plattsburgh, and the temperature there rocketed to 69 degrees.  It looks like winds were coming down the slopes of the Adirondacks into Plattsburgh.  The air in that flow compressed as it flowed downhill, and compressed air warms.  That and the fact that the wind was no longer coming off Lake Champlain probably explains the leap in temperatures.   

....and the same view of my yard just five hours later,
at 4:40 p.m. Sunday.

Burlington lagged behind with these temperatures. At 2 p.m. Burlington was already up to 54 degrees, but at 4 p.m., it was still only 57 degrees. That was still below the record high for the date and cooler than in  most places in Vermont. Which is odd, because Burlington is usually a hot spot.

I think there was a fetch off Lake Champlain that kept Burlington's temperatures in check. 

As the sun set and most places started to cool a bit, a surge of west winds with the cold front brought a gust to 52 mph into Burlington and caused temperatures to spiral up.  Warmer air aloft mixed down to the surface  allowing Burlington to reach its high of 64 degrees. 

It was also amazing to watch the landscape and sky change so rapidly during Sunday. My St. Albans, Vermont property went from completely snow covered at 11 a.m. to almost free of snow by 4 p.m. 

The sky went from rainy and gloomy in the late morning, to completely cloudless by early afternoon, to a turbulent looking sky that seemed to want to develop into showers and storms.

That never happened in northern Vermont. Things just didn't come together. But near and after sunset, some fast moving, gusty thundershowers raced eastward across Rutland and Windsor counties.  

Quite an amazing day for this weather geek. 

TODAY'S RAIN AND MIX

It was certainly back to reality early this morning under a thick overcast and cooler weather. As expected, last night's cold front stalled to our south and a new storm is riding northeastward along it. 

This storm should go near or right over northwestern Vermont by evening.

Out ahead of it, rain will spread it, but there's a decent chance it could be mixed with some freezing rain and/or a little snow, especially north and west. 

Still, it will be mostly a rain event, especially along and south of Route 2.

A flood watch is in effect through Tuesday morning in the northern half of Vermont.  That brief but huge heat wave yesterday really sent a lot of snowmelt water into streams and rivers. Since ice jams are still around on some rivers, the surge of water, aided by today's rain, might move them around. 

As that happens, new ice jams could form, causing local flooding. Other waterways could go into minor flood just from the runoff. 

Rain will turn to snow tonight for most of us before ending, but it won't amount to much. You could wake up tomorrow to an inch or two of fresh snow.

The weather after that looks benign until Friday and Saturday, when some type of storm is expected to come through. It's too early to know whether it will be mostly rain, or snow, or some horrible mix. Stay tuned!