A Bit of Needed Rain In New England, With More To Come: Storm Photos, Too

I snapped this photo of an approaching thunderstorm
over a farm in Georgia, Vermont Thursday afternoon. n

As expected, scattered thunderstorms broke out in the humid air over northern New England Thursday.

Also as expected, a few of them became severe, with scattered reports of damage in northern Vermont, mostly trees down on roads, snapped power lines, that sort of thing.

As usual, I was out snapping photos of the clouds asssociated with the Vermont storms. There's a couple in this post. Click on them to make them bigger and easier to read.

It was part of a trend this week that I brought up yesterday of lots of severe weather ongoing in the nation this week.

The toll continued across the nation, with 12 reports of tornadoes, mostly in North Dakota and Kansas and a concentration of wind damage in Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas.

Storm clouds over Georgia,
Vermont Thursday. 

Up here in Vermont, the storms generally did more good than harm, as most places across the northern  half of the state got some rain out of this.

We needed the rain. Where the storms hit hardest, the rain was torrential, given the humid air over the region.

Stil, a couple storms got too rambunctious.

One storm I was in was strong enough to drop a tree across a highway in Georgia, Vermont. Another storm, probably the strongest of the bunch, knocked over a bunch of trees in and near Underhill, Vermont.

The dryness in New England has been getting worse, at least until yesterday in some areas, or until this weekend in others (more on that in a moment).

The U.S. Drought Monitor updated this week shows continued abnormally dry conditions over most of New England, except northern Maine. (Plus northern Maine received, after the latest drought report came out, a lot more rain on Thursday.)

There are pockets of drought in southern New England, with an area of severe drought in central and northeastern Massachusetts and southeastern New Hampshire.

I encountered this fallen tree blocking one lane of Route
7 in Georgia, Vermont as the storm in the above
photos began to depart.  

The good news is the region will get a good shot of rain this weekend.

Unfortunately, the area that will probably receive the lightest rain in New England is the area under severe drought. Still, they'll get some rain, which is good.

New England will get a brief break from the recent heat, too. Burlington, Vermont hit 90 again Thursday before the storms hit, making it seven days with 90 degrees or above so far this summer.

Normal for an entire summer is six such days.

It'll get cool during and just after the rain Saturday and Sunday, but it looks hot again by the middle of next week.