Vermont Autumn Heat Wave Really Off The Rails

Heat alerts in Vermont in late September?
Weather is really off the rails once again. 

Either the National Weather Service office in South Burlington is off the rails or the weather is.

I think it's the weather that's really off the rails, as the NWS is usually pretty sane.

Here's the deal: At this time of year, we're usually getting frost advisories from the National Weather Service.

Heat alerts are fairly rare any time of year, but this is ridiculous. Those meteorologists in South Burlington this morning put out an advisory warning Vermonters of high heat indexes with a few degrees of 90 today through Tuesday.

Never seen that in late September before.

As of 1 p.m. in Burlington, Vermont this Sunday afternoon it was already 85 degrees, with a heat index of 87.

This is turning out to be one of those really unprecedented warm spells that are really extreme. It might not seem like it. After all, it is only going to be in the upper 80s to near 90. We've had that before.

But never this time of year. And never for four days in a row, like what is expected to happen over the next few days.

We've had a whole series of these weird spells in recent months and years. You might remember the day in February when it got up to 72 degrees in Burlington, which was a full ten degrees warmer than it had ever been that time of year.

Or Christmas Eve, 2015, when it was 70 degrees in Vermont, when we're supposed to have those nice powdery white yuletides.

Not every odd spell of weather is global warming. Sometimes, things just get weird. But despite the climate denialists, despite the fact I can't prove this hot spell was influenced by climate change, the fingerprints of global warming all over this stretch of hot weather.