Hot Weekend Here, But Elsewhere In The World, Ridiculous! Our Time Will Come, Though

People in Tokyo's Ginza district use umbrellas to shield
themselves from the intense sun during a record heat
wave last Saturday. Photo from AFP-JIJI

We had our first spell of 90 degree weather in the Champlain Valley over the weekend, but it wasn't as hot as it could be. We didn't set any real record highs.  

If you don't like heat, we got off easy. Especially since the hot spell in Vermont was brief, and it wasn't all that humid during this episode.

Elsewhere in the world, though, we're already having another summer of insane record high temperatures. I've already posted about the extreme European heat of a week or two ago, but since then, there have been other incredible hot spots. 

So let's dive in and look.

As the Associated Press reports:

"In China's northern Henan province Friday, Xuchang hit 107.8 degrees and Dengfeng hit 106.9 for their hottest days on record, according to global extreme weather tracker Maximiliano Herrera. And in Japan Friday, Tokamachi and Tsuanan set a time heat records while several cities broke monthly marks, he said." 

No fewer than 25 cities in China recorded their hottest temperature on record for any date of the year Froday. Beijing roasted at 102 degrees.

Tokyo, Japan just tied its record for the hottest June day with a high of 97 degrees, which was also hottest for so early in the season. At least nine other Japanese cities established new all time highs for June. 

Isesaki, a city about 50 miles north of Tokyo, reached 104 degrees Saturday, setting a new June record high for the entire nation of Japan.  

 Way up in Siberia, The town of Tazovskoe set a June record of 90 degrees. Some Arctic islands way up near the North Pole, near 80N have lost all of their snow, the earliest on record that it has disappeared in the summer. 

Parts of the Middle East and central Asia area also baking.  The port cit of Bander-e-Dayyer in Iran reached a whopping 127 degrees this past week.  The temperature reached 113 in Turkmenistan and 112 in Kazakhstan.  

The heat in the United States hasn't set all time records, but it has certainly been widespread.  No fewer than 15 states reported high temperatures of at least 100 degrees on Thursday. 

The hot weather is temporarily easing in the U.S. for the next couple of days, though heat advisories remained in effect for the Pacific Northwest through Monday.  No really extreme heat waves are in store for the nation at least through July 1.

But remember, there's plenty of time for renewed heat waves in July and August throughout the northern hemisphere.

The heat records I mentioned above have been coming fast and furiously.  Same has been true in the last few years, as I've noted above.

Of course, records are made to be broken, so you're always going to see a few record highs and a few record lows broken from time to time. But the fast pace of these heat waves - especially monthly and all time - is a hallmark of climate change.

Climate change is super charging heat waves. What would otherwise be forgettable hot spells have become unprecedented blasts of torrid conditions.

It can happen anywhere, anytime. I've said that so far, we in Vermont have had a Goldilocks summer. Sure it was hot this past weekend and chilly the weekend before, but we haven't had any kind of unprecedented weather so far. 

Overall, this summer is at least starting out cooler than recent ones. But there's nothing stopping us for experiencing heat Vermont has never seen before. It's really a matter of time with climate change. 

I don't know if that will happen this summer, next summer or a few or several summers from now. But eventually, Vermont's all time hottest reading of 105 degrees, set way back in 1911, and Burlington's all time record of 101 set during the World War II year of 1944, will seem quaint and cool. 

 

Hot Summer Weekend In Full Swing; Heat Won't Last Long

Very similar photo to yesterday's post, except now we have
the addition of the kiddie pool to cool off in if I 
get overheated digging in the dirt. 

I suspected today would bring the first 90 degree temperature of the summer to Burlington, Vermont, but I was wrong! 

The warmth on Saturday over-performed, and it did get up to 90 degrees in the Queen City. We have another go at it today, with even hotter weather still in the forecast. 

The National Weather Service in South Burlington is running with an expected high of 93 degrees in Burlington this afternoon.  Most valley locations in Vermont will be at or close to 90 degrees this afternoon, too.

The NWS usually pulls the trigger and launches a heat advisory if the heat index is expected to get to 95 degrees or above for at least a few hours in the afternoon.  But there's no heat advisory today. The humidity is only moderately high. Plus, some drier air is forecast to mix down from aloft during the hottest part of the day. 

That'll keep us from feeling that hot. But it will be pretty nasty out there for vigorous exercise. Take it easy and take a lot of breaks. 

If I do anything outside in my gardens in St. Albans, Vermont today, I'm prepared. A few years ago, we bought a cheap kiddie pool for the dogs to splash around in if they got too hot. The pups are not interested. So I settle into the kiddie pool when it gets too hot to keep digging around in the dirt.  You gotta find a use for everything, right?

I'm also very prone to frequent "clumsy accidents" with the garden hose during hot weather, so I'm sure I'll have a few of those today.  I would encourage everyone to suffer those "clumsy accidents" today. Perhaps the kids will "mis-aim" the hose when you're on your veranda with your gin and tonic. Don't say you read that here, kiddos! 

Today is also a great beach day, with a few caveats.  The sun is at its strongest of the season, so really smear that sun screen on.  The water temperatures in the lakes is still a bit nippy, so watch out for that. And on the broad Lake Champlain, gusty south winds will cause some choppy water and hazards for canoes, kayaks and things like that, so be careful.

That cold front is still forecast to come through overnight. Most of us will see some showers and thunderstorms on this upcoming muggy night. Forecasters are not expecting anything severe, other than some brief torrential downpours in spots.

You'll notice how much cooler and less humid it will be by Monday afternoon.  It should be a nice week overall. Tuesday will be a little cool for this time of year - in the 70s. Very nice, with low humidity. Can't complain about that! 

The week will gradually turn warmer and somewhat more humid, but again, nothing all that extreme. The hottest day looks like it might be Friday. If there's enough sun, we'll get back up into the 85-90 degree range. But another cold front will be on our doorstep to cool us off again. 

We're still looking at no long lasting heat waves at least into the first ten days of July.

June So Far Relatively Cool, But A Rather Hot Weekend Is Upon Us, For A Change

The yellow wheelbarrow signals more garden work for
me this weekend in my St. Albans, Vermont yard. But
expected hot weather means I'll need to take frequent
breaks, and probably retreat to a cool room 
for a good part of Sunday afternoon. 

 After a cool, springlike or autumnal week, whatever your perspective, Friday was actually a re-entry into summer in all respects.   

The sun was out most of the late morning and afternoon, many of us reached 80 degrees and there was a bit of humidity in the air. Not much, but the crispness of the previous week was gone. 

Now, we're set up for a hot summer weekend. Today will be quite a contrast from the chill of last Saturday. It will be a good 30 degrees warmer this afternoon than last Saturday.  Which means it will be in the mid 80s. There will be a decent amount of sunshine, too, and a moderate amount of humidity. 

Sunday gets even hotter. Depending upon the amount of sun we get, Burlington might finally see its first 90 degree reading of the year (Montpelier and St. Johnsbury managed 90 degrees during a period of record heat in mid-May).

For what it's worth, forecast trends have turned up the heat a bit on Sunday, which would improve chances of it hitting 90 degrees. On the other hand, if an approaching cold front is a little faster, that could throw extra clouds in to limit temperatures. Another round of somewhat gusty south winds could limit the chances of 90 degrees.

I'd say the chances of a 90 degree reading Sunday in Burlington are better than 50/50.  Whether it's 90 degrees or not where you live won't matter much. It will feel hot. 

It'll be more humid on Sunday, too. Which means you won't want to overexert yourself. Take frequent breaks, and if possible, get your butt into an air conditioned room whenever you can. It hasn't really been super hot in over a month, so we're not used to it. 

 Last weekend was probably too cold for hiking safely. This weekend might be too hot to do the same. 

That cold front coming in from the west will likely spread a good swath of showers and thunderstorms through Sunday evening through Monday morning, west to east.  Some showers and storms will produce locally torrential rain.  That could raise a few local flash flood issues in northern New York, where it was so wet last week.

In Vermont, it's been drier, so I don't think Sunday night's rain will do much other than give gardens another nice drink. 

This heat won't last long, because we're still in a weather pattern that doesn't promote a lot of hot weather in New England.  It'll be dramatically cooler Monday. Nothing out of the ordinary like last weekend, just seasonable. 

It'll get on the warm side again by the end of the week, but that warming trend will get cut off at the pass by another cold front. I still don't see signs of any long lasting heat waves through the first week of July and probably beyond.  

Spongy Caterpillars Again Laying Waste To Swaths Of Vermont Forest

A gloomy January day or mid-June. This is part of 
Colchester, Vermont where trees are under siege
from the defoliating spongy caterpillars.

 As I'm sure many of you have noticed, large sections of Vermont woods are defoliated for the second year in a row by those awful spongy caterpillars. 

The name of these caterpillars might not be familiar to you, but the destruction sure is.  Until recently, these awful bugs had a name that was a slur agains the Roma ethnic group. 

We had the same problem last summer, of course. Eventually, a fungus that kills these things helps ease the outbreaks. But apparently, this spring wasn't wet enough to make the fungus thrive, so the caterpillars did instead. 

Some places, like parts of Chittenden and western Rutland counties, are getting hit for the second year in a row. Other places, like much of Franklin County, don't have it as bad as they did last year.

Most trees survive these defoliations, even if they hit two years in a row. At least as long as the trees can put out some new leaves in the second half of summer, once the caterpillars stop eating.

I did notice, though, that this spring, the defoliation in some places started as soon as the trees began leafing out. Last year, most affected trees had leaves into at least early June which helped them withstand the onslaught a little better. 

I do think we will see dead trees in the hardest hit areas of Vermont after this second season of the scourge. Sure, most of the affected trees will live, but not all of them.

In the hardest hit areas, like in parts of Colchester, it looks like the dead of winter the defoliation is so complete.

Although this situation isn't widespread enough to noticeably affect the weather overall in Vermont, the areas that got really nailed by the caterpillars are probably seeing their local conditions affected and will continue to see that unless or until the leaves come back.  

Summer days will be hotter in these defoliated zones, since the sun is baking the ground. Leaves are no longer in place to provide shade. so the heated ground will in turn heat the air. Also. leaves have a cooling and cleansing effect on the environment. That's gone, so the heat is on.

If we have any dry spells, the defoliation can contribute to highly local droughts. The ground dries out much faster in areas with no foliage.  The lack of foliage also heightens the risk of small brush fires since leaf litter and branches and stuff  get super dry super fast without leaves overhead. 

The biggest negative effect is probably psychological. We still have our long winters here in Vermont, so we look forward to the lush green, leafy landscape of the relatively short summers. The spongy caterpillars are taking that away from at least some of us. 

It's unclear how many more years of this we have to go through before the spongy caterpillar boom finally ends. We can hope for a wetter, foggier, cloudier and more damp spring next year to encourage that fungus. 

Video:

Extensive defoliation of trees in Colchester, Vermont last week.  If you don't see the image for the video in this post, click on this link to view:

Heavy Rain Band Mostly Misses Vermont In This Goldilocks Summer

So far this summer, we've barely had to water the flowers
in St. Albans, Vermont. Relatively light but
consistent rains have been doing the work for us.

 As expected, a narrow north to south oriented , heavy rain band set up over northern New York and western  Quebec overnight, dumping one to locally as much as three inches of rain. 

One confirmed report was 1.77 inches of rain in Ile Perrot, Quebec, west of Montreal, bringing the month's total there to six inches. 

There might be some spot flooding here and there in the mountains of northern New York or southwestern Quebec,   but so far, we have no reports of anything wild.  I'm just impressed by how well this was forecast. 

 It was a tricky one, but the National Weather Service office in South Burlington and all the local meteorologists around here got this one right. Both in the location of the rain and how much fell. 

Further to the south and west in the humid air yesterday, severe thunderstorms struck from western New York southward into Virginia. Some of the storms in Virginia were especially fierce, causing damage to a number of homes and businesses and felling thousands of trees. 

Here in Vermont, we're continuing to experience a Goldilocks kind of summer, a couple of cold, windy days last weekend notwithstanding.  Most of the time over the past few weeks, we've seen no real temperature extremes and no real super wet or super dry spells.  Not too hot, not too cold, not too dry, not too wet. We haven't had much in the way of severe storms, either. 

That's a departure from most recent Junes, which featured torrid, record-breaking heat waves and drought. 

This Goldilocks trend looks like it will continue. That rain band in New York was slowly moving into Vermont early this morning.  It was raining at a good clip in St. Albans as of 7 a.m., but the sun was shining over eastern Vermont.

The rain band will slowly weaken as it grudgingly moves further into the Green Mountain State.     The northwestern corner of Vermont will see the most rain, perhaps up to a half inch. By the time what's left of this reaches central and eastern Vermont, it will only drop a tenth of an inch or so of rain. No biggie.

Today will be the sixth and last day in a row with cool temperatures in Vermont. The clouds today will hold temperatures down in the 60s to around 70.

Channeling our inner Annie, the sun will come out tomorrow, giving us a fine summer day with readings up near 80 degrees. It will actually turn kind of hot over the weekend with 80s on Saturday and some places nearing 90 degrees Sunday. 

Burlington has a shot at reaching 90 degrees Sunday for the first time this year. For comparison's sake, it had already been at least 90 degrees five times by this date last year and nine times in 2020. So yeah, we've caught a break so far this summer.

A cold front Sunday night will return us to cooler, comfortable weather early next week.  The front won't bring any excessive rains or severe thunderstorms. Instead we'll just get a quick drink of water for the gardens.

Extended forecasts continue with the Goldilocks theme. At this point, it looks like we'll continue to have near normal temperatures and rainfall through the first week of July.

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. 

Weird Weather Week Continue: Next Up: Narrow Bands Of Heavy Rain

Forecasts are consistently calling for a strange
north to south band of heavy rain somewhere near
Vermont this week. Most models, like the European
 depicted here, keep that heavy rain just to the 
west of Vermont. A tricky forecast that could
change, though. 

 A week or so of very strange June weather is continuing in and near Vermont this week with a very odd rain set up today and tomorrow. And possibly Thursday. 

It started Saturday with New England's June-uary, with snow and ice atop Mount Washington and frigid for June valley temperatures. Then came Sunday's sunny day wind storm, as we had a gloriously sunny day with winds strong enough to cause power failures. Next up: A strange, narrow, hard to predict band of torrential rains.  

This week might not be remembered for generations like big weather disasters. But for this weather geek, it's a bizarre stretch for sure. 

The set up is a north to south oriented stalling warm front in New York State.  Batches of rain are riding this front due south from Canada. Usually precipitation coming in from the north isn't very heavy, since the source region isn't exactly super tropical and wet. After all, why do you think the ginger ale brand is Canada Dry?

However, the air to the west of the warm front is part of that extremely hot, extremely humid air mass that has been torturing sections of the Midwest lately. The disturbance blasting southward along the front will be grabbing some of that wet, hot air and squeezing out lots of rain. 

The band of rain will be narrow. If there's any flood risk, it would be along a narrow 25 to at most 50 mile wide zone.  Best guess right now is the highest risk of heavy rain goes from the northern St. Lawrence Valley, down through parts of the Adirondacks, the Hudson Valley of New York and southwestern New England. 

That would leave Vermont mostly free of any potential flood threat.  Western Vermont will probably get some showers.    It's questionable whether eastern Vermont sees any rain at all from this. 

This is tricky, though, as it wouldn't take much to shift the rain band a little west, or a little to the east. 

A slight shift would radically change the forecast in any given spot.  As an illustration of how big the expected precipitation gradient will be here's this. The National Weather Service in South Burlington has St. Albans receiving just 0.08 inches of rain by Wednesday morning, while Plattsburgh, New York, just 20 miles away as the crow flies, gets nearly half an inch.  The central Adirondacks, just a short distance west of Plattsburgh, are in line for the potentially heaviest rain. 

I could clearly view this whole thing setting up from my perch in St. Albans early this morning.  The sun shone brightly from the east for a bit, but there were clouds directly overhead and I can see a good batch of rain falling to my west over the Adirondacks. 

Again note these forecasts are subject to change.

Things taper off for a time Wednesday. Then on Thursday, meteorologists think this stalled weather front in New York will interact with a storm off the New England coast to perhaps set up another very narrow band of heavy rain somewhere over eastern New York or perhaps western Vermont. Maybe. 

Weather forecasting is generally a little easier in the summer than in the winter. Not this week!