Attempts At A Little Drought Relief In Vermont, But Some Of It Falls Short

Droughts tend to be self-perpetuating, and we see that in what's going on in Vermont now. 

A nice amount of water in my St. Albans, Vermont rain
gauge this morning from last night's weather front,
but most of Vermont missed out again. The drought
will not go away anytime soon, even where 
there were a few downpours last night. 

A wet weather front approached us Thursday and Thursday night from New York and actually held together enough to give a corner of northwest Vermont a decent soaking.  

It still had enough oomph left to deposit a healthy 1.16 inches of rain in Burlington and a glorious 1.3 inches here in St. Albans. So not bad! Not enough to end the drought, but it did wet us down a bit

As the front moved further eastward into Vermont in continued to run into a buzzsaw of dry air over the dusty Green Mountain State .  The rains quickly evaporated.  

Part of the problem was the front was just running out of gas and the contrast in temperatures in front of and behind it fell apart. That helped reduce the amount of rising air that manufactures rain. Plus, the sun had set, so the instability in the air was waning, which reduced the amount of rainfall. 

If the air had been more humid before last night's weather system got here, the rain might have held together longer and covered more of Vermont.  And had the ground been wetter instead of parched that would have translated a little humidity to the air to help with process of making rain. 

 Most of eastern and southern Vermont, which needed the rain even more than areas west of the Greens, only received a few hundredths of an inch of rain last night.  Not really even enough to get things vaguely wet.

We do have another shot at receiving rain, but it will be no drought buster. 

Before we get there, we have another dry, sunny day to get through. The clouds were clearing this morning. Though the air won't be as arid as it was Thursday, the sunshine and breezes should resume the drying process in northwest Vermont and continue it in the east. 

The forecast has been consisted for a second cold front to drop a decent amount of rain tomorrow. Let's hope that forecast holds up. 

Even better, if the predictions are correct,   this next round of rain tomorrow will hit eastern Vermont the hardest. Still, those areas should receive only a half inch to at most an inch of rain.  Northwest Vermont should receive an additional third to a half inch of rain Saturday. 

Saturday's rains will help somewhat, as it will be a steady soaker,  But you need several of those for the rest of the fall, and so far, that doesn't look like it's in the cards. 

Next week looks dry once again, with only scattered light showers or sprinkles at most. The weather pattern through mid-September and probably well beyond that features a series of big fat, dry, slow moving high pressure systems coming from Canada.  

That means cool outbreaks, then warm ups as the sunny highs with low humidity sit right over us for a few days, sucking away what little moisture we have left. Then, new cold fronts with new outbreaks of chilly, dry air come in, rinse and repeat.

Except there's no rinse. The cold fronts that will introduce each new dry high pressure system will probably be moisture-starved, and provide very little wetting. That's very bad news. 

DROUGHT IN PERSPECTIVE

The gold standard for measuring droughts is the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, which has been in operation since 2000.

According to the Drought Monitor data, our current Vermont drought is the most intense since at least 2000.  I remember a similar drought in the late summer of 1999, but it wasn't as bad as this, and ended abruptly with a very wet September. Which won't happen this year. 

Vermont faced persistent drought in the 1960s, but it was a sort of long lasting, low-key affair in which precipitation was mostly below normal, but it never really entirely shut off, like it did this August. Back then, we had problems with dry wells, and iffy crop yields, but the trees weren't turning brown in the middle of August like they did this year. 

There was also a spring drought way back in 1903, when Burlington got only 1.63 inches of rain in April, and just a trace in May, which is the driest month on record. But the summer of 1903 was wet, so that drought eased. 

It's going to take a lot to get out of this one. Vermont State Climatologist Lesley-Ann Duping-Giroux was quoted by VTDigger than the state needs six to eight inches of rain throughout a month to pull itself out of this drought. And the rain would need to keep coming after that, 

We're going to need a lot of wet nor'easters, stalled weather fronts and other inclement weather later this fall, through the winter and next spring to recover from this.  

Vermont is already feeling the economic effects of this drought. Farmers are running out of water for livestock.  They have to buy expensive feed because they're not growing enough of their own because the drought stunted yields. 

The drought might dull Vermont's famed foliage season, which could cut into the revenue we get from the annual influx of leaf peepers. 

If this keeps up, the ski industry might be in trouble, since resorts use a lot of water to make snow. 

It's hard to pin a drought like this directly to climate change, but it's consistent with it.  With climate change, there's a lot of weather whiplash -  everybody goes from one extreme to another.  The summers of 2023 and 2024 in Vermont were disastrously wet, with extreme flooding and destruction. 

Suddenly this year, the rivers are dry, the lawns are brown and the wells are empty. The only consistent thing between these summers is it was unusually hot. 

The hot weather patterns of 2023 and 2024 were accompanied by high humidity and plenty of storm systems to wring out that excess moisture into flooding rain. The warmth and heat of 2025 has often been dry, and there's been precious few storms to wring out any water in the air to give us rain. 

Yes, It'll Be A Nasty Cold Wave, But Far From The Worst It Could Get

Lots of dark blue on the forecast map for this coming
Tuesday, January 21. That means most of the 
Lower 48 is going to be shivering in Arctic air,
but this one won't be nearly as horrible as
some historic past cold waves. 

 A big Arctic outbreak is making its way into the United States and will dominate the weather headlines for a few days.  

It will be brutally frigid, colder than a room full of ex-wives at a wedding. But    this won't be a record breaker, despite the huge area of the nation it's about to hit. 

It follows a general trend in which cold waves are losing some of their punch in the age of climate change. That's not to say we will never see intense, dangerous, record cold again - it's just that it's getting less and less likely.

The Arctic outbreak coming in now would have been considered pretty routine, say in the 1960s or 1970s. 

In this one, temperatures up in parts of North Dakota and northern Minnesota could get into the low minus 30s.  But record lows this time of year, which is on average the coldest part of winter, are in the 40s below.

This cold wave could bring freezing temperatures and perhaps a little snow and ice as far south as Houston, New Orleans, and perhaps Tallahassee, Florida by the middle of next week. The prospect of snow in these areas is pretty uncertain, though. 

It doesn't snow often in these locations but they have had snow in the past. In Texas and surrounding areas, this cold snap won't be nearly as bad as the epic freeze of 2021, during which record cold temperatures and an ill-prepared Texas left the state with a collapsed power grid. The disaster killed nearly 300 people and caused $27 billion in damage. 

Inauguration Day in Washington DC is forecast to be the coldest since 1985, when Ronald Reagan's festivities were forced indoors by wind chills in the teens below zero and actual temperatures in the single numbers.

It won't be quite that bad with Trump's inauguration as temperatures are forecast to be in the mid-20s when he takes office. 

The cold wave will last about a week or less, but linger longest in the Southeast. Afterward, temperatures might not get terribly warm, but they will be more seasonable across most of the nation by next weekend. 

VERMONT EFFECTS

We'll certainly notice the approach and grand entrance of this cold wave in the Green Mountain State, but this won't be one for the record books for us, eithereither. 

Saturday will be warm and windy - very gusty in the Champlain Valley in fact.  Gusts could reach up to 50 mph in the windiest spots which opens up the possibility of a few scattered power outages. Nothing widespread, but something to keep an eye on.

Before temperatures get above freezing, there could be a lot of blowing snow around, too, which would leave us with some spots with poor visibility and sudden slick spots on roads here and there. 

Precipitation with the cold front will be very light, with just a few snow and rain showers here and there. The expected highs Saturday in the 35-40 degree range in the valleys will be the last mini-thaw for awhile. 

Temperatures will drop Sunday, and we'll be in the thick of the cold for a few days. 

There's one interesting little twist to this cold front.  A trailing storm is expected to form in the Southeast and head northeastward.  Originally, it was scheduled to pass too far to the south and east of Vermont to have any effect on us. 

Now, forecasters aren't so sure. It could pass close enough to give us a quick shot of snow late Sunday night and early Monday. It looks like this thing will whip by too quickly to dump a lot of snow, but we could still see some out of this after all.  Not sure on that one yet. 

True to form with 21st century cold snaps in Vermont, this one will be pretty brief, with the worst of it lasting from Sunday night into Wednesday. We haven't had a long lasting bitter cold wave in a long time.

That's not to say we will never again have seemingly endless winter frigid spells, but the truly deep, horrible, long lasting ones almost seem to be a thing of the past. 

Overnight lows in Burlington Sunday night through Wednesday night are currently forecast to each be within a few degrees of 0.  I'm almost sure a couple of those nights will be below zero.  Then the weather will turn seasonable again.

Compare that to January, 1968 in Burlington, when 14 of the first 17 days of the month got below zero, with five consecutive days in the minus 20s.  Or January, 1970, when 24 days were below zero, and all but one day in the ten day period from the 15th through the 24th were at least 11 below.

Or February, 1979, when nine out of the ten days fro the 9th through the 18th were at least 17 below, with the coldest being 30 below.

This winter is proving colder than recent ones, but they're a far cry from past bitter Arctic outbreaks we've had.  

Shocking: It's Already Been 25 Years Since Vermont Ice Storm Mega Disaster

Trees on the University of Vermont campus in Burlington
badly damaged by the Great Ice Storm of 1998.

 The weather is pretty unremarkable this weekend. 

Just the usual January chill, though with less snow on the ground than usual, part of a mild winter.  

The winter of 1997-98 was mild, too, temperature wise. But it did bring Vermont, and much of rest of northern New England, parts of New York and especially Quebec one of its biggest disasters on record. 

That disaster was ice. 

Yep, time flies. It's the 25th anniversary of the Great Ice Storm of 1998.The storm lasted from January 5 to 9. During that time period, it was responsible for 16 deaths in northern New England and New York, and caused $1.4 billion in damage in 1998 dollars. (Adjusted for inflation, the cost is $2.5 in current money).

To my knowledge, the ice storm is only one of two billion dollar damage storms that has affected Vermont. The other billion dollar disaster was 2011's Hurricane Irene.

Remarkably, Vermont wasn't the most afflicted region.  Ice accumulations in parts of northern New York and souther Quebec reached an incredible four inches. But Vermont was surely badly affected. In Vermont, the worst ice accumulations amounted to two to three inches in the northern Champlain Valley. 

Generally speaking, during ice storms, you start to see minor trouble with trees and power lines if ice accumulations reach a quarter inch. Once you get to a half inch, you're getting in trouble. Large areas of northern Vermont had one to two inches of accumulation. 

The disaster was created by what was in essence an atmospheric river from the Gulf of Mexico - a train of deep moisture that ended up colliding with a layer of dense cold air from high pressure over northern Quebec.

This setup lasted for four days. During that time, the warm air was forced to rise up over the layer of cold air near the surface. It was a relatively thin layer, so rain falling from up above didn't freeze until it hit the ground. Sleet would have been bad enough. Freezing rain was exponentially worse. Especially this much.

Rain and freezing rain from January 5 5o 9 amounted to 3.52 inches, including 2.11 on January 8 alone.  That amount is about normal for the entire month of January.  Numerous towns along and north of Route 2 reported more than four inches of precipitation from the storm, an incredible amount for a winter storm. 

At the time of the ice storm, Green Mountain Power had 83,000 Vermont customers.  About 40,000 of them lost power, some for more than a week. 

 For those of us who still had power, the whole New England power grid had to be rejiggered. In Quebec, which was hit even harder than Vermont, massive Hydro-Quebec transmission towers collapsed under the weight of the ice. 

Front page of the Burlington Free Press, January 9, 1998

This cut off much of New England's power supply from Canada.  Engineers had to do a quick switcheroo to increase power supplies from south of the region. 

The days during the ice storm were pretty surreal.  The ice devastated some towns, while leaving others unscathed.

At the time, I lived in Richmond and worked at the Burlington Free Press.  It just rained in Richmond. A lot. But not a bit of ice accumulated on anything.

 As I reached French Hill on the way to Burlington, the ice-free landscape suddenly turned into a frozen, awful scene of drooping, breaking trees and snapped power lines all the way to downtown Burlington.

Oddly, the main roads were not especially ice covered and were not overly slippery. Jim Cantore was camped out in the parking lot of Staples Plaza, reporting the storm for The Weather Channel. You know you're in trouble when extreme weather fan Cantore is in town. 

As I worked in Burlington after dark during this crisis, blue power flashes flickered in the sky as power lines and transformers broke.  Each breaking tree sounded like a gun shot, and there were a lot of them. It really felt like a war zone.

Those falling trees were dangerous. A man died in Colchester when a large tree fell on his truck as he was driving along Route 7.  While reporting on the storm in Colchester, I was interviewing officials in the parking lot of the town offices when a large tree branch close by snapped, bounced off the power lines and crashed to the ground next to us. 

We decided to continue the interview indoors. 

The Champlain Islands were cut off, with too many fallen trees blocking the roads to gain access. Cattle died as they could not be milked easily without electric power. Sugarbushes were decimated from the southern Green Mountains to the Canadian border and well beyond. 

The tree damage saddened me the most.  Across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, 17 million acres of forests were damaged, including close to a million acres in Vermont. 

Between one fifth and one quarter of the affected trees were severely damaged or killed. So many trees collapsed or had many of their branches sheared off.  Or they just collapsed entirely. The damage was apparent for years afterwards. 

I remember the sense of relief I felt on the evening of Friday, January 9.  After an afternoon of wildly out of season lightning strikes and more collapsing trees, the temperature abruptly spiked above freezing. Water from melting ice poured off the trees, and remaining branches began to spring back into their normal positions. The storm was over. 

Even now, if you look closely, you can see trees with a spray of branches that launch from a point roughly halfway up the trunk.  That's where new growth started in the subsequent spring after the ice storm. 

To this day, when I hear forecasts of freezing rain, I fret a little bit that we'll see another round of tree and forest devastation.  After all, the weather has gotten weird with climate change, and 1998 seemed to be a turning point. Luckily, all of the ice storms we've experienced in the past 25 decades after that storm have been super mild by comparison

ICE STORM AND THE YEAR 1998

The year 1998 turns out to be a bit of a watershed year in terms of climate, both locally and in the world in general.

The '98 ice storm set the tone for the weather year in Vermont. It turned out to be the wettest year on record, with 50.42 inches of rain at Burlington.  (That record was eclipsed in the even more stormy, destructive year 2011 when 50.92 inches accumulated).

In 1998, disastrous floods struck Vermont in June and July, a tornado swept through parts of Bennington County in late May, and what had been until recently the biggest December heat wave brought Vermont temperatures into the upper 60s. 

A big El Nino helped fuel the stormy 1998 weather both locally and worldwide. The El Nino boosted world wide temperatures. That year turned out to be, at the time, far and away the hottest year on record for the globe.  

The temperatures and disasters of 1998 helped focus the public on the dangers of climate change. 1998 was billed as a preview of what climate change would look like.

Indeed it was.  It's gotten a lot warmer (and arguably stormier) since 1998 locally and across the world). The year 1998 is no longer even in the top 10 list of world's warmest years. All of the top 10 years have been since 2010.  Data for 2022 isn't in yet, but almost everybody expects last year to join the top 10 warmest list.

The year 1998 also used to be listed as the warmest year on record in Vermont. However, since then, six years have been even warmer in Vermont than 1998, including 2022. 

Though we haven't seen anything anywhere near the severity of the 1998 ice storm in the 25 years since, weather events have gotten more extreme.  We've seen an increase in record breaking heat waves and more frequent floods. Two storms in December each cut electricity to about as many Vermont houses as did the 1998 ice storm. 

We probably won't see another 1998 ice storm anytime soon, knock on wood, but the weather and climate are in some respects more dangerous than they were a quarter century ago.