Could You Endure A Heat Index of 140? People In Persian Gulf Are Trying, But It's Dangerous

The heat index in the Persian Gulf region has been
pushing 150 degrees lately, which is of course
highly dangerous. They've always had extreme
heat there, but climate change is making
it even worse. 

 For those of you complaining about how oppressive the weather has been in Vermont until we got this little break, here's an "it could always be worse" story. 

We could always take a little excursion to the Persian Gulf. As the Washington Post reports:

"Some locations have seen the heat index, or how it feels when factoring in the humidity reach 140 top 150 degrees Fahrenheit (60 to 65 Celsius), fueled buy an intense heat dome, the warmest water temperatures in the world and the influence of human-caused climate change.

Temperatures at the Persian Gulf International Airport in Asaluyeh, Iran claimed to 108 on Wednesday and 106 on Thursday, with both days recording a peak heat index of 149. In Dubai, the temperature topped out at 113 on Tuesday and the heat index soared to 144."

Actual temperatures in the region were in the 105 to 115 degree range in recent days, which for the Persian Gulf is only a little hotter than normal. But the humidity has been off the charts, which explains the scary heat indexes. 

There have been record highs in the region earlier this month. A spot in the United Arab Emirates reached 123 degrees. Adrar, Algeria, reached 122 degrees. Cities in both Kuwait and Iraq got to a blistering 126 degrees.

All this has led to the Persian Gulf having the hottest surface waters in the world with a temperature of at least 95 degrees.

The hot water doesn't spread thunderstorms inland like the warm Gulf of Mexico often does in the United States. But it does pull in the extreme humidity. 

Of course, summers have always been dangerously hot around the Persian Gulf and many other places in the Mideast and Africa. But climate change is nudging the extreme heat to ever more dangerous levels. Another episode in the region last summer brought a heat index to 158 degrees. 

For comparison to all this, our current hot summer here in temperate Vermont have so far peaked at just above 100 degrees on the worst days. This is clearly dangerous for people over-exerting themselves or who have health issues and no access to air conditioning. But it obviously pales in comparison to the Persian Gulf. 

 

See The Cold Front Flush Out The Haze/Smoke Briefly In Vermont

Satellite view from this morning. Click on it to make
it bigger and easier to see. That band of clouds
across central Vermont, and northern New York 
and New Hampshire is a weakening cold
front that is flushing out the hazy air you
see in southern Vermont in favor of cooler,
drier, clearer air from Quebec.

 The visible satellite photo this Sunday morning tells you all you need to know about the kind of day we'll have today. Spoil: Nice.  

The photo,  (click on it to make it bigger and easier to see)   you see in this post pretty clearly shows the weak cold front as a band of clouds over central Vermont.  

The photo was taken around 8 a.m. today.  It's kind of a fascinating satellite pic from the perspective of a weather geek like me. 

That front had a bit more oomph to it when it crossed from Quebec into Vermont. A few places north of Route 2 had up to a quarter inch of rain. Not much, but more than many forecasts. Other places got just a few raindrops.

The cold front is weakening as it moves southward, and so the showers are breaking up fast, and it probably won't rain at all in central and southern Vermont. The clouds along it should break up, too. 

 Notice the milky quality to the air just south of the front. You might have also noticed is was slightly hazy Saturday afternoon. That was a bit of wildfire smoke in the atmosphere from blazes in the western United States and Canada.

The smoke is more concentrated just ahead of the front and the clouds. That's because the cold front it acting a bit like a snow plow, pushing the smoke out like that plow driver clearing the road in front of your house after a January six-incher. 

Another spoiler: Snow is not in the forecast, but you knew that. 

Also take a look at the air north of the front in the satellite photo, above Route 2 and up in Canada. That's much fresher, drier almost smoke-free air that we'll enjoy today.  Bright blue skies will spread quickly south across Vermont this morning and afternoon. 

We'll also probably have the "coldest" afternoon since July 1, with highs staying in the 70s, except low 80s in warmer valleys south. These temperatures of course, are only slightly below normal for the season. 

It makes for a total Chamber of Commerce kind of weather day in the Green Mountain State. This is the kind air that really makes the Green Mountains look, well, green. 

After an absolutely delightful sleeping night tonight, the humid, warm, wet air we've been dealing with all summer will start to flood back in. In the photo, you see the slightly hazy, humid air with clusters of showers and storms further down the East Coast. 

That's the air that's coming back this coming week, as our friendly weak Sunday cold front comes back north at us as a less friendly muggy warm front around Tuesday. 

We'll eke out a nice, dry, sunny, warm day Monday before the humidity and showers return for the rest of the week.

Enjoy it while you can.

Enjoy The Break In Vermont Humidity Siege: It Won't Last

Flowers in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens enjoying some
sunshine and somewhat cooler breezes than they've
had to endure most of this month. 

 I hope you're enjoying the break in the siege of humidity and heat Vermont has been under this summer as much as I have.   

You have something like three more days to embrace the dry weather before the humidity, showers, downpours and generally icky stickiness and stuffy nights come back. 

WARM STREAK RECORDS

The low temperature Thursday was 64 degrees in Burlington. Still on the warm side. But it ended a record breaking streak of 14 consecutive days with low temperatures above 64 degrees.  The old record was 13 back in 1988.

High humidity tends to keep nighttime temperatures up.  Unlike most summers, we had absolutely no breaks in the muggy weather for more than two weeks. Until Thursday. 

The lack of cool nights and wind really allowed Lake Champlain to heat up to near tropical levels. The water temperature has been as high as 80 degrees down to a depth of nine feet, which I've certainly never seen before.  

The warm Lake Champlain is actually bad news. Between the warmth of the water and the contaminants being swept into the lake by this month's flooding, that sets the stage for algae blooms. Cooler nights and breezes this weekend will help stir the water up a bit, so it is cooling down, at least temporarily. 

It got even cooler Friday morning, dipping to 59 in Burlington, the first time under 60 degrees since July 2.  

Flowers in my St. Albans, Vermont yard enjoy some
sunshine and dry air to keep the fungus at bay
for a change Friday evening. 

Today will mark Burlington's 19th consecutive day making it to at least 80 degrees. But we won't break the record for longest such streak.  That record is 25 days from July 22 through August 15, 1988.

After a warm but not humid sunny day today in the low to even mid-80s in spots today, a reinforcing shot of cool air is coming down from Quebec tonight. 

That means it's doubtful Burlington or practically anywhere else in Vermont will make it higher than the 70s Sunday afternoon.

Not that anybody's complaining.

Monday morning will be the coolest in this drier break, as most of us will be in the 50s, with 40s in the cooler hollows. Monday afternoon at this point is looking warm but dry - in the low 80s.  Then it's over, Again.

HUMIDITY SIEGE RETURNS 

The forces of summer evil - namely, the Bermuda High - are showing signs of another attack. That Bermuda High - the offshore heat pump responsible for summer hot spells, will be strengthening and moving westward over the next few days. 

The weak cold front that will come through early Sunday morning with just sprinkles of rain in a  few spots will stall to our south. Then that Bermuda High will push the front back north as a warm front Tuesday. 

The south flow will feed moisture into that front, so instead of sprinkles, it'll produce showers, some locally heavy as it comes back at us and stalls probably just to our north. 

Hydrangea flowers glow in evening light during a 
welcome dry spell Friday evening in St. Albans, Vermont. 

So it'll be back to the routine. Muggy nights, warm, sticky days, the ever-present risk of downpours, even a renewed (ugh!) chance of local flash flooding.  We'll have to deal with that again. 

As it looks now, Tuesday through Thursday and probably Friday gives us a daily chance of showers, storms and heavy downpours.  It definitely won't rain all the time. We'll have to look each morning during the week for updates on when/where it might rain the most.

We'll be back to each night staying in the muggy 60s. High temperatures in the upcoming week will be held down a little by clouds - highs should be in the sticky low 80s.

Toward next weekend, there are signs that we'll see less rain, but that would come in the form of another heat wave.  Things could change, but we could be looking at more 90 degree weather in about a week, with of course lots of humidity. 

I did say a few days ago that a northwest flow might keep hot temperatures mostly at bay for the rest of the month.  So much for that idea. That's a classic example of why one shouldn't rely on long range forecasts.

For what it's worth, some (but not all!) updated long range forecasts do continue to show the chance of some occasional cold fronts and bits of cooler, drier air coming in from the northwest into August

But there's also spells of warm or hot, humid weather thrown in between these cold fronts. The specifics and frequency of any cold fronts will undoubtably change as forecasts are updated. 

If you think Julys have been hot in recent years, you are correct.  This July is on pace to be one of the top five hottest in Burlington. If that happens, then each of the top five hottest Julys will have happened since 2018.

 

A Year After Cataclysmic Vermont Flood, We Get Another One As Climate Gangs Up On Us.

Now that the weather has finally settled down, I've had a chance to think about the two big July flood disasters Vermont experienced on the same date two years in a row.  

Somebody's little piece of Vermont heaven was trashed by
the raging Huntington River on July 11. Similar scenes -
many much worse than this, were once again
common across Vermont this month. 

 We spent the day this July 11 marking the first anniversary of one of the worst flood on record in Vermont by....... picking up the pieces after another deadly Vermont flood.  

It does seem like it's harder and harder to catch one's breath between new weather extremes.  Flooding after July 10, 2023 continued sporadically through the rest of that month and on into August. 

Last year's summer disaster was followed by more rough, scary, disheartening weather. We had another destructive flood in December, twin windstorms that spread further damage in January, and severe thunderstorms and flash flooding in central Vermont just on June 23 -less than month ago.

And never mind the other extremes that didn't cause so much harm but had us weirded out: The hottest October day on record, the warmest winter on record, and damaging wet snowstorms in December and April. It goes on and on.  

This year, the subsequent series of storms following July 10 haven't been as damaging as last year's.

So far, anyway. 

A RECKONING

A year after the July, 2023, and just before the torrents hit again earlier this month, Vermont looked largely tidied up. 

A snippet of a Carly Simon lyric pops into my head here, "Close the wound, hide the scar."  The line from the song is about emotionally wounded people putting on a brave face.  

Which is where I think Vermont was on July 9.  And maybe will be again this time next year.  

Behind closed doors, people were still  still living in homes whose insides are still had not been repaired.  Business owners and home owners teeter on the edge of financial ruin from the flood's cost.  Farmers, always on the edge and at the mercy of the weather more than pretty much all of us, wonder if they will make it.   

A sign outside a church in flood-ravaged Johnson,
Vermont in July, 2023

People like this are out of the headlines, except of course when we're marking the anniversary of the disaster. 

The Associated Press's profile of one woman's current life a year after the flood is pretty harrowing. I'm stressed out just reading it. 

"Lisa Edson Neveu and her two teenage sons still live in their flood-wracked home, despite unrepaired damage that festers like an open wound: Torn-out walls and floors, a missing ceiling in one room and a downstairs bathroom that is no more. The family's kitchen was destroyed, so they cook meals on an outdoor grill, an electric frying pan and an air fryer."

The immediate aftermath wasn't the real problem. Neighbors helped neighbors, the National Guard really stepped up to the plate. But then that was it. 

They were on their own to fight insurance companies, the adjusters, FEMA, state and local regulations, you name it.  A Vermont flood typically comes and goes in a day. The aftermath lasts forever. 

At least Neveu didn't have to start from square one with murky water in her house again. Montpelier avoided another calamity this time. 

 Not so in Barre. Or Waterbury. Or other towns victimized again the night of July 10-11.  I heard one clip on the radio of somebody in Barre saying they hadn't finished cleaning up the debris from the July 2023 flood when this one hit. 

The sudden transition from Vermonter living in a paradise to a climate victim has to be one of the most disorienting things out there. 

VTDigger told us about Sequin Skye, a hospice nurse who lives - or at least lived - in an apartment building on Great Brook in Plainfield. 

The flooding covered her floor in silt. She didn't know which belongings she'd be able to save. A porch she loved sitting out on was in ruins. It was a piece of paradise before Wednesday night.

"I swear to you, it was like a babbling brook. And I sat and drank coffee yesterday on my little porch, listening to the brook and being so happy."  Now, everything was covered with dirt and mud, and it now "looks like some kind of desert."

The joy Skye experienced before the flood is shared by most Vermonters. For me, there's nothing better than sitting in this deep tub we put out on our lower deck. I fill it with cool water. On muggy evenings, I just sit there, watching the flowers bloom, absorb the deep, deep green of a Vermont summer, and wonder what all the birds are gossiping about. 

It's a moment of calm and respite for my chaotic brain.  But now, other thoughts intrude on the peace.

 I wonder, when will the other shoe drop? When will climate change directly intrude into this placid life?  

Of course, it already has intruded. You can't escape thinking about the plight of your neighbors who have been hit hard, nor should you. Storm warnings seem to carry more weight now. Will the next storm be the literal homewrecker? It seems you never know nowadays. 

BARRE

Speaking of homewreckers, what about the fate of communities that have been hit hard over and over again. Places like Barre.

Can a town like that survive after two big flood disasters in a year?  Plus having endured flooding last December?  I'm also not sure everyone in Barre recovered from two big floods in 2011.

Visitors flock to the picture perfect Instagram ready villages in Vermont, but the Green Mountain State is also home to a lot of working class towns. Ones with even less money to throw around than the pretty but still cash-strapped tourist destination towns.  

Like Barre.

I can't be the only thinking along these lines. Heck, even the Washington Post quoted me when I wrote last week, "I honestly don't know how Barre will recover from two devastating floods in one  year."

The city is losing housing and population from the flooding, yet other people are trapped in flood-prone houses, because they are not eligible for buyouts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has a program that provided money to towns so they can buy up properties in flood prone areas. In many cases, those purchased homes are torn down and the area they once occupied becomes green space such as parks.   

Rain pours down in Montpelier, Vermont and flooding
shown just beginning on July 10, 2023. About 90
minutes after this photo was taken, virtually all
of downtown Montpelier was under water. With
all of our disasters in mind, we now get
nervous with every torrential downpour.

Barre received 62 applications for buyouts, but could only approve 20, because that's all the money that was available 

It almost seems as if Barre won't entire die from all these floods because some people have nowhere else to go. 

It's not as if Barre is full of millionaires.  VTDigger profiled one family whose Barre home was damaged three times by flooding in the past year. Each time, their basement filled up with water and pollutants. They applied for a buyout, but were denied. For now, anyway, Barre is only accepting buyouts for houses nearest the flood prone Stevens Brook. 

Everybody in Barre, whether they suffered flood damage or not, is in a bind because of these repeated climate related disasters.

Reports VTDigger: 

"Barre 'can't afford to buy houses for people not along the river,' according to (City Manager Nick Storellicastro, because property bought out with FEMA funds must become permanent green spaces. The city simply can't lose more housing space, according to Storellicastro, nor can the city's budget - already 'in dire straits' from last summer's flood - absorb any further loss of property tax revenue."

So where does that leave Kate O'Day, her husband Nick Roos and their baby daughter, the family profiled in VTDigger?

On top of not qualifying for a buyout, around last Christmas they also received notices from the city that they must elevate their house somehow, and also bring utilities up from the basement to meet fresh city codes. 

VTDigger again:

"And the couple wonders: Who's going to want to rent or buy a house in a floodway, with an unusable basement that you still pay taxes on, and all the utilities taking up square footage in the living area upstairs?"

Roos and O'Day said they would probably sell the house, accept their financial losses and start over somewhere else. 

For many others, though, there is no somewhere else. Either because people can't afford to move, or they have such deep ties to their town that they simply can't let go. 

Which now leaves our happy rural town life tinged with sadness and worry. There's an excellent YouTube flood fundraising video from Gold Shaw Farm in hard-hit Peacham where the narrator describes how the flood physically and emotionally affected the close-knit town. 

What made Peacham especially tragic is that the flood claimed the life of Peacham resident Dylan Kempton, 33, a married father of young children and a man that everybody in town knew and loved. 

All these climate change disasters in Vermont make me think of another song, "Our Town," by the wonderful Iris Dement. It's about a woman who lived her entire life in one small town, and now the town has died, and she has to move away. Somewhere.

The vast majority of us in Vermont are not at that point yet.  But it makes me wonder if we will see a few of our towns die away.  

It would be such a shame to lose places like Peacham, Plainfield, Barre.   People in those communities are banding together, and Vermonters are pretty awesome at finding creative solutions to some of our deepest problems. 

But some of us might well have to abandon our dreams of living out our days in our small towns, driven out by climate change. I guess Vermont is one microcosm of what's going on everywhere else in the world. 

Those lyrics from Dement's "Our Town" haunt me, given what we've been through with climate disasters in recent years:

"And you know the sun's settin' fast

And just like they say nothing good ever lasts.

Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,

 But hold on to your lover 

'Cause your heart's bound to die.

Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.

Can't you see the sun's settin' fast down on our town, on our town

Goodnight."

 

 

Toronto Slammed By Severe Flooding, 3rd Big One In 11 Years

The third huge flood in 11 years just hit Toronto
this week. 

 Severe storms seem to be hitting big cities these days. 

Power still isn't fully restored in steamy Houston yet after Hurricane Beryl roared through more than a week ago.  

Chicago is cleaning up from severe storms and tornadoes on two consecutive days Sunday and Monday. 

And now, Toronto, Canada went under water. 

Toronto on Tuesday had its fifth wettest day on record with 3.8 inches of rain, which is about what the city should see in the entire month of July, not just one day. 

Most of the Toronto rain hit Tuesday morning. The system that caused the flooding evolved into an intense line of thunderstorms that produced tornadoes in New York State, including a particularly devastating one in Rome, New York. 

In Toronto, cars along the normally busy Don Valley Parkway were covered just about to their roofs in floodwaters. The Toronto Fire Department rescued 12 people from the cars on that highway, the CBC reported. 

City officials received at least 700 calls regarding flooded basements. More than 165,000 people lost electricity. 

Several inches of water covered the floor in much of Union Station, Toronto's largest transit hub. Water also cascaded down stairways there. Trains were canceled for hours. 

The rapper Drake's Toronto mansion was among the hundreds or even thousands of flood-damaged properties. He posted a video on Instagram showing ankle deep water gushing into his home as we waded through it. "This better be Espresso Martini," he joked in the caption. 

The Toronto flood was a classic case of "training" that dangerous flash flood phenomenon I often talk about. It's those thunderstorms that line up like boxcars on railroad tracks. Repeated storms goes over the same spot. A typical thunderstorm might last 20 minutes and dump a half inch of rain. 

You get 10 of those storms right after one another and pretty soon you have five inches of rain and flooding.  The terrible flooding in Vermont last week was caused mostly by "training" thunderstorms. 

Toronto City Manager Paul Johnson said this was the city's third so-called 100 year flood in eleven years. A 100-year flood is defined as one that has a one in 100 chance of happening in a given year. 

"I don't even know why we talk about 100-year storms anymore because that definition seems to have flown right out the window," Johnson said. "The challenge is much of the city is not designed to handle this amount of water coming down."

Climate change has made torrential storms like the one that hit Toronto more likely.  The challenge Toronto's city manager cites is shared by many if not most places, including Vermont. 

Floods like the ones in Toronto and Vermont this month used to be rare, but they have become all too common. This will force some kind of reckoning as to what can be built or rebuilt where in countless communities in the world.

 

Vermont Surrounded By, But So Far Untouched By Tornadoes This Year (But We've Had Spinny Things)

It's been a busy year for tornadoes in the Northeast so far, but Vermont has been spared any of them. 

Strong winds and torrential rain from a thunderstorm
in Hinesburg, Vermont on June 23 that carried a tornado
warning. No known twisters touched down that day. 

We've had some close misses, but no twisters have been confirmed in the Green Mountain State this year. 

The latest close misses came on Tuesday. 

TUESDAY TWISTERS

The National Weather Service office in Gray, Maine confirmed that a tornado touched down in Lyme, New Hampshire Tuesday. Lyme is just across the Connecticut River from Thetford, Vermont. 

The NWS office will release more details on that tornado later today, but did say it was a high end EF-1 with top winds of 110 mph with a path length of 1.8 miles long. 

Video from WPTZ showed the tornado's rapidly rotating wall cloud engulfing a mountain in Lyme. 

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service office in Albany, New York, has so far confirmed three tornadoes Tuesday in New York, not that far from the Vermont border.

A brief EF-1 touched down in Oxbow Lake, New York, with winds of 100 mph. Another, even more brief EF-0 tornado with winds of 85 mph touched the ground a little northwest of Warrensburg, New York.

A slightly larger EF-1 tornado with top winds of 100 mph and a path length of about a mile hit Wells, New  York. 

These tornadoes hit a little to the west of Lake George. The same parent thunderstorm that spawned these three twisters also launched another much larger tornado further to the west onto Rome, New York.

The Rome tornado was an EF-2 with winds of 135 mph and a 5.25 mile long path, says the National Weather Service office in Binghamton, New York.  That office will investigated two additional areas of severe storm damage in the region. At least one of those storms, this one in Canastota, New York, killed one person, and the damage is consisted with what you'd expect in a tornado.

We expect confirmation one way or another later today. 

That tornadic storm in New York eventually ended up in southwestern Vermont.  The NWS office in Albany investigated a concentrated areas of snapped off and uprooted trees along Route 30 in Rupert, Vermont. That damage was caused by a microburst carrying 95 mph winds, and not a tornado, meteorologists concluded. 

OTHER VERMONT SPINNY THINGS

Vermont has had other close calls with tornadoes this year.

Last week, at the start of our severe flash flooding on July 10, thunderstorms with tornado warnings blossomed in New York, west of Addison County, Vermont.

Those storms entered Addison County, carrying severe thunderstorm but not tornado warnings. A funnel cloud was spotted in Bridport, and damage was reported in the town. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington investigated.

The funnel must not have touched down, as no damage was found where it was located. The tree damage near Pratt's Store in Bridport was three or four miles from the funnel position, so it had to be straight line winds that caused the problem. 

I was downstream from that storm in New Haven, Vermont, and I spotted some suspicious, apparently rotating clouds, but those clouds clearly showed no signs of touching down as a tornado. The same storm moved on to neighboring Monkton, where videographers spotted a wall cloud, which is often a precursor to a tornado. But again, nothing touched down. 

Monkton seems to be Vermont's version of tornado alley this year, though no actual tornadoes touched down there. However, on June 23, two separate storms, each rotating and having tornado warnings associated with them, passed near Monkton.  A funnel cloud was photographed near Monkton, but nothing touched down. 

A tornado did touch down in Dublin, New Hampshire, a little east of Keene that day. 

Finally, on June 9, I spotted a cold air funnel over St. Albans, Vermont. This type of funnel is really not tornadic, and almost never touch down. They are a function of garden variety storms interacting with cold air aloft.   They are almost always no biggies, but fun to watch.

It is of course, possible a tornado or even a couple might have hit somewhere in Vermont this summer. Tornadoes in this neck of the woods are often incredibly brief and cause little damage. Perhaps there was one in the deep woods somewhere far from anybody's house, so it went unnoticed. 

 Or maybe somebody did notice some fallen trees, but thought it was caused by a typical summer windstorm. The National Weather Service doesn't do random investigations looking for damage. If storm damage is reported to them, they'll often investigate to determine whether it was a microburst, straight line winds or a tornado. They'll also assess how strong the winds were and how big an areas those winds covered.

Those investigations both satisfy our curiosity and help meteorologists make better forecasts in the future. They can observe the conditions that led to the damage, and that can help improve forecasts going forward. 

No severe weather, or any kind of majorly inclement weather is in the forecast through at least Monday, so we're good to go with no spinny thing threats for the foreseeable future. 

Vermont 1 p.m Wednesday Update: Severe Storm Watch Likely Southern Vermont, Storms Developing

Skies over St. Albans darkening as of 12:45 p.m today
as thunderstorms approach. A few more places in
Vermont today will lose some trees, branches and
power lines, and there might be isolated instances'
of flash flooding. Today is the last day of 
potentially damaging storms for awhile. 

 As expected thunderstorms were rapidly developing in eastern New York State as of 12:30 today, and some of those will carry the risk of damaging wind gusts in southern and possibly eastern Vermont this afternoon.  

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center says they'll likely issue a severe thunderstorm watch for much of western New England and eastern New York, and that would probably include southern Vermont. 

A batch of non-severe but growing storms was entering the northwest corner of Vermont as of 12:30 p.m. It was starting to thunder in St. Albans, Vermont at 12:45 p.m. 

Some of those might intensify into stronger cells in the next few hours. But damage from these, if it occurs, will probably be fairly isolated.

Those northern storms will be carrying torrential downpours, and could set off isolated spots of flash flooding, given how wet the soil is. 

The storms developing in the Albany, New York Capitol District area look meaner than the ones further north. Those should enter Bennington and Rutland counties within the next couple hours and continue across southern Vermont into New Hampshire.

A severe thunderstorm warning was already in effect for far western Bennington County as of 1 p.m. 

Those will ones to definitely look out for.  Some of them almost certainly will contain strong gusty winds and torrential downpours. Not all towns in southern Vermont will have severe storms, but a few places might lose some trees or power lines. 

Pay attention to the weather and possible warnings all afternoon. I'd abandon plans for boating on Lake Champlain for the day.  

This won't be a super widespread event, but we will have spots of trouble in Vermont this afternoon and early evening. 

The great news is we expect no more storminess or dangerous weather after today at least through Monday and quite possibly beyond that.