Yes, It's Been A Hot Summer In Vermont, Rest Of New England

Another nice summer day in what has been a warm, sunny
summer in Vermont. This photo was in Charlotte yesterday.
 

It's getting into the middle of August, and the weather is still quite warm here in Vermont.

And it's going to stay that way for awhile, too.

Checking out what's happened in the weather since summer started I can tell you what I'm sure you suspected: It definitely has been a hot summer.

Not the hottest ever, mind you, but still up there.

Actually, if it stays as warm as I think it might for the rest of August, we might end up in the Top 10 hottest list of summers, if you use the stats from the National Weather Service office in South Burlington, Vermont.

The hottest summer on record, which for climatological purposes runs from June 1 through August 31, was 1949, with a mean temperature of 72.2

June and July this year in Burlington were each about two degrees warmer than normal, give or take a few tenths of a degree. That's not record territory, but it's up there.  We'd need an incredible, record hot August to exceed the 1949 mark for hottest summer.

It looks like August could continue to remain warm, though.  If it does, then the consistency of the heat could give us a summer that, though not the hottest on record, it will be up there.

The temperature in Burlington this summer has so far reached 90 degrees eleven times. The normal for an entire summer is five or six such days.

It's possible we'll get a couple more 90s in this month, too. We'll see.

It's been consistently hot elsewhere, too. Washington DC had a record long streak of consecutive days that stayed at 70 degrees or warmer.

Southern New England had a stretch of a week or more in late July in which every day got to 90 degrees.

Back here in Vermont, as I'm also sure you're aware of, it has also been quite dry. We've been teetering on the edge of drought in northern Vermont all summer, and parts of central and southern New England have plunged right into drought.

We could use the rain.

These dry conditions were made worse by the fact that although it's been hot, we haven't had long stretches of very humid weather. Oh sure, a few days have been muggy, but it hasn't been ridiculous.

That lack of humidity has made the summer heat more tolerable than you would have expected.

However, things are going to change later this week. We're going to get the first multi-day spell of very, very humid weather starting midweek and probably going through the weekend.

That means oppressive nights and days that will feel awful, even as temperatures hold in the not-bad low to mid 80s.

The good thing about the upcoming spell of  awfully humid weather is it increases the chances of showers and thunderstorms. We need the rain.

While these storms will no doubt be beneficial, it won't be exactly what we need. It would be better if we get slow, steady rains, not sharp, relatively brief downpours that seem to be in the cards for later in the week and the weekend.

In fact, there's a chance the storms could be too much of a good thing. It will be so humid that storms can tap into that water and dump an enormous amount of rain in a short period of time in a few areas.

That could lead to local flash flood this weekend, which would be kind of ironic, given how dry it has been.