Clean Up From Ferocious Storms In Franklin County. So Far, No Signs Of Any Tornado Touchdowns

Large trees snapped off in this yard along Maquam
Shore road in Swanton this morning. 

 The song of today in St. Albans and Swanton was the buzz of chainsaws. 

Large fallen trees and branches were everywhere, especially in St. Albans City and along Maquam shore in Swanton. 

Tree crews filled the streets cleaning up the mess. Homeowners in the two towns spent a good part of the day playing pick up sticks in their yards. 

The National Weather Service in South Burlington, in a Facebook post this afternoon, said they have not dispatched anyone to determine whether there was a tornado or not.

Part of the statement said, "There was brief radar indicated rotation between St. Albans and Fairfield, VT that prompted the tornado warning at 7:35 p.m. However, we have not received any reports of damage near Fairfield, nor anything to prompt us to go survey, so we will stand down on sending any teams out at this time."

As I noted this morning, I clearly saw rotation in the clouds last evening, but no sign of any real funnels or tornadoes. I live on the east side of St. Albans, kind of on the way to Fairfield, so I would have been close to the most intense rotation.

The National Weather Service noted that strong straight line winds of 60 mph, and locally in excess of 70 mph hit in some areas.  

I did my own little storm survey this morning. It seems like there were two concentrated areas of wind damage. One right through St. Albans City, and another worse one along Maquam Shore in Swanton.That area had many, many downed trees, mostly in a two-mile wide band near and north of Cohen Park, 

Almost all the trees along Maquam Shore fell in basically the same direction, so I'd assume that area got hit by a microburst. My guesstimate is winds in St. Albans City reached maybe 60 to as much as 70 mph in the most intense gust

The worst hit area of Maquam Shore easily had 70 mph winds. Probably more than that in isolated spots. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an isolated gust to 80 mph or more. I didn't go out to North Hero to look at the damage there. 

I'm glad the storms moved right along because the rainfall out of them was incredibly torrential. Jeffersonville picked up 2.09 inches of rain. Smuggler Notch reported 1.85 inches. Derby Line reported 1.59 inches. At my unofficial rain gauge in St, Albans, we collected 1.38 inches 

WHAT'S NEXT

I'll have a full report in the morning, but a couple things to point out. There were some thundershowers up near Montreal this afternoon moving generally southeast toward Vermont. Those storms were pretty much garden variety, and showed a weakening trend as they headed south toward the border. 

As of 5:30 p.m., those now light to moderate showers were on the Vermont border between Richford and Newport. Nothing scary will come out of these. 

It's now looking like some scattered showers and thunderstorms might develop tomorrow after all, mostly north. So far, it doesn't look like anything severe will get going,.

More showers and possible thunderstorms see like they're in the cards Thursday. Again, so far anyway, it doesn't look like we'll have anything dreadful like last evening.  

Fourth Year In A Row With Vermont Weather Trouble On July 9 or 10. Next Up, Pleasant, But Maybe Smoky, Then A Hot Flash

Torrential rains in St. Albans, Vermont during a strong
thunderstorm late Thursday afternoon. The same storm
 strengthened as it moved east, eventually causing
 substantial tree and power line damage
in the Northeast Kingdom. Flooding hit central Vermont

 It turns out we had weather trouble in Vermont around July 10 for the fourth  year in a row. 

The trouble hit a little early this year, on July 9, instead of July 10 like we saw in 2023, 2024 and 2025. But yesterday, we had flooding in and around Barre, and thunderstorm wind damage in the Northeast Kingdom. 

The core of the wind damage was in Lyndon and East Burke. Video showed numerous trees down along Route 114.  

Somebody in the video background suggests it was a tornado. Perhaps, but since all the trees appeared to fall in the same direction, at least as seen in the video clip, I suspect intense straight line winds.

Another batch of thunderstorms nearly stalled over central Vermont. It was enough to flood the streets of Barre, again. This was mostly poor drainage flooding and not quite as serious as in recent years. 

In Montpelier, nearly 2.5 inches of rain fell yesterday, including 1.75 inches within two hours. 

I guess we should be grateful over a trend line. The worst flooding hit statewide on July 10, 2023. In 2024, most of the destruction was across a broad band through central Vermont. In 2025, destructive flooding was limited to just parts of the Northeast Kingdom.  And yesterday, almost all of Vermont escaped unscathed, except in the Barre-Montpelier area and a small part of the Northeast Kingdom.

Even better, we're done with the rough weather for a little while, anyway. 

TODAY

It looks like the cold front as of 8 a.m this morning was draped across central Vermont, judging from a line of very light showers drifting southward.  The front is too weak to create any dangerous downpours or high winds. We'll have no major weather today. 

This morning started humid, but light north breezes will slowly dry the moisture out of the air. The sun will break through where it hasn't already, and we should make into the low 80s this afternoon.

WEEKEND

It's still looking like a terrific weekend if you love summer.  The humidity should remain low enough, and afternoon highs will reach the 80s under sunny skies. 

Dimmed sun, though. Smoke from wildfires in Quebec near James Bay will probably drift down into Vermont on those north winds. So the Green Mountains of Vermont might well be hidden by haze. I'm not sure whether we'd have enough smoke to trigger any air quality alerts. but we'll wait for more info on that.

NEXT WEEK

A heat dome is setting up in the western United States which will create record high temperatures in places like Montana and North Dakota, and other states.

A storm way up in central and northern Canada will pull a plume of that hot air eastward, arriving here Monday and Tuesday. The National Weather Service in South Burlington is calling it a "jailbreak heat," as it's escaping the heat dome where it originated. 

We should see highs near 90 on Monday and as high as the mid-90s Tuesday. Considering where the air is coming from, it will be pretty dry air.  The kind that doesn't feel quite as bad as most heat waves, but drains the moisture from your garden plants. You'll need to water.

The heat won't last long. If there's a northward bulge in the jet stream with the heat dome in the West, you need a southward dip in the jet stream in the East.

That will start to set up midweek. A cold front will come through Tuesday night or Wednesday. Probably with little fanfare. It won't get that cold, probably seasonably warm late in the week. 

As always, long range forecasts like that are subject to change. At least we have no scary storms or floods in our immediate future.

Final Days Of October Seem To Inspire Historic Vermont/Northeast Storms

Damage from this week's nor'easter in New England. Photo 
via Twitter from Michael Farragamo

The second of two major storms have just hit the East Coast within one week.  

The first a nor'easter with a peak wind gust of 94 mph blasted Massachusetts Tuesday and Wednesday.  Power is still out to some homes after the winds tore down innumerable trees and power lines. 

A second storm yesterday brought winds of up the 60 mph on the Jersey Shore and caused some damaging coastal flooding through the Mid-Atlantic states.  The flooding was among the worst on record, with some areas reporting among the top five storm surges in history 

Neither storm is having much of an effect on Vermont. The one that blasted the Mid-Atlantic States yesterday is forecast to dump an inch or more of rain on the Green Mountain State by tomorrow afternoon. Winds could gust over 40 mph in some areas, especially near the western slopes of the Green Mountains in this storm. 

So we get a fairly notable storm, but nothing extreme for Vermont. There might be a bit of minor flooding, and some isolated tree and power line damage. Luckily, this storm won't be as bad as it was further south yesterday.

This is history repeating itself, though.  There's something about the days around Halloween in the northeast that scare up some intense, historic storms. There's  been a ton of them.  Several of these storms cost hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars, not to mention lost lives.

Here's a bit of a trip down memory lane with these (mostly) recent October storms. 

The Perfect Storm, October 31-November 2, 1991:  This of course is the storm made famous by the book and movie about the sinking of the fishing boat Andrea Gail during the raging storm that resulted in five deaths on the boat, part of a total storm death toll of 13.  

A tropical storm teamed up with a another non-tropical system to produce an immense storm offshore of New England. The storm produced winds of 75 mph on the coast, but worse, caused a devastating storm surge that caused upwards of $200 million in damage.

Halloween Snowstorm, October 29-31, 2011

Damage from a massive late October, 2011 snowstorm in
Glastonbury Ct. Photo by Jessica Hill/AP

Much like this year, autumn that year was warm in New England and other parts of the Northeast.  That meant that leaves stayed on the trees late into the season.  

Then a strong nor'easter got going off the coast, and pulled down some very chilly air from Canada. The result was a stripe of very heavy snow from northeastern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey up through central and southern New England.

Northern New Jersey, southern New York, southern Vermont and New Hampshire and much of Massachusetts and Connecticut received 10 to 20 inches of wet, heavy snow. Peru, Massachusetts was smothered beneath 32 inches of snow. 

This all fell on those trees, the weight collecting on all those leaves still up there, and many of those trees collapsed under the burden. Over one million people in Connecticut alone lost electricity. Some people in the entire snow zone were without power for a week or more. 

Superstorm Sandy October 28-30, 2012

The sprawling storm, consisting of a hurricane making a transition to a non-tropical system took a weird path and made a left hand hook from the Atlantic into New Jersey on October 29, 2012.  It was one of the worst storms in American history. 

Superstorm Sandy killed 75 Americans, with an additional 72 deaths in the Caribbean earlier when Sandy was a hurricane. The storm destroyed 650,000 homes, and caused $70.2 billion in damage, mostly in New Jersey and New York.

Here in Vermont, we suffered just a glancing blow from Sandy, with power outages mostly across southern parts of the state.

Workers patch up a Milton, Vermont roof after a severe 
windstorm in October, 2017.

Bomb Cyclone, October 29-30, 2017

Another nor'easter developed explosively along the coast, causing widespread damage in and around New England.  

As we've seen in the past week, nor'easters often cause strong winds along the coast. If conditions are just right, these winds come way inland. And they did in this case.

Here in Vermont, strong, damaging winds are common right along the west slopes of the Green Mountains. This time, these downslope winds extended all the way to Lake Champlain, with destructive results. 

More than 150,000 Vermonters, one fourth the state's population, lost electricity.  Hundreds of Vermont homes suffered damage like lost shingles, sections of roofs gone, siding torn off or falling trees crashing into them. Winds gusted to 131 mph atop Mount Mansfield, 78 mph in Wells, Vermont and 63 mph in Burlington.

The storm also caused wind damage throughout New England, and destructive flooding in parts of New Hampshire and Maine.

Intense Vermont Flooding, Wind, October 31-November 1 2019

This tree uprooted and destroyed an SUV in our
St Albans, Vermont yard on November 1, 2019.

This storm, for a change, was not a nor'easter but still caused enormous havoc in Vermont. Parts of Vermont were declared disaster areas due to the worst flooding the state had seen since the devastating Tropical Storm Irene floods of 2011. 

Sections of two rivers in northern Vermont reached record crests. Numerous roads were washed out and dozens of homes and businesses were severely damaged by the flooding. 

Bridge replacement work continues to this day in Williston due to this storm.

The storm packed a one-two punch, first with the severe flooding and second with damaging winds. A number of properties in Vermont that escaped the flooding were damaged by the wind. This included my own place, where one of our vehicles was destroyed by a falling tree and our house suffered minor damage.