 |
| Sun sets at the end of a torrid Vermont day yesterday. The large, hazy cloud to the left and above the sun is the remnant of a thunderstorm that suddenly developed over the Adirondacks yesterday evening and then just as quickly dissipated. |
So far, record high of 97 degrees today in Burlington, Vermont, exceeding the old record of 96.
As hot and awful as it will remain the rest of the day, attention is turning to thunderstorms.
A weak trough or disturbance is heading our way, and forecasters now think thunderstorms between now and midnight will be a little more widespread than first thought.
Unlike on Saturday, when storms were very reluctant to develop, some good ones have gotten going in western New York and Ontario.
I think some of these will hold together and reach eastern New York and Vermont. Also unlike Saturday, all of the region is at risk for storms.
This will definitely be hit and miss. Many areas will get no storms, or just hear thunder in the distance. Perhaps as many as 50 percent of us will get an actual storm. A very few locations will get strong gusty winds and torrential rains this evening. Keep an eye on the sky and try to stay cool.
Thunderstorms end by midnight or shortly after tonight. Hot again Tuesday and Wednesday, but a bit less humid, so that will be nice.
PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:
Today, as advertised will bring us the peak of the big heat wave that will go on through Thursday. If you don't have air conditioning, bet you didn't sleep well last night in parts of the Champlain Valley.
It is quite a morning around Burlington, Vermont. As of dawn, the lowest overnight temperature had reached 83 degrees. The heat index was 88 degrees at 5 a.m., having slipped below 90 degrees just two hours earlier.
The people at National Weather Service in South Burlington are certainly impressed by these stats. While Senior Forecaster Peter Banacos wrote the discussion in the pre-dawn hours, the temperature was still 85 degrees. He wrote:
"The south wind around 10 mph feels like a misplace trade wind from the tropics, a surreal Vermont weather experience."
I'll say.
If there are no thunderstorms to bring rain-cooled air to the National Weather Service office before midnight tonight (an iffy proposition) Burlington will set the all time record for hottest minimum temperature for any date since they started keeping track of this stuff in the 1880s.
Because we're starting out so warm, we'll have no trouble getting into the mid and upper 90s today. It could still possibly reach 100 degrees.
Burlington on Sunday managed to tie the record high for the date of 96 degrees. I guess that's a mini-bonus, given the predicted high was 97 or 98 degrees. Montpelier on Sunday set a record high for the date at 92 degrees. The summit of Mount Mansfield got to 83, just shy of its all time record high of 84 degrees.
OPPRESSIVE AND AWFUL DETAILS
Today - another bonus! The humidity will decline by a pretty much non-perceptable level. That "decline" in humidity is just background noise for us humans. It's still awfully muggy out there.
However, that the humidity will be that tiny bit lower could help the atmosphere get hotter than yesterday, since "drier" air can help temperatures rise more under sunshine. Also, overall temperatures a few thousand feet overhead might be a couple degrees warmer than Sunday could also encourage temperatures in the Champlain Valley to approach 100 degrees.
Needless to say, the National Weather Service's first-ever Excessive Heat Warning remains in effect for the valleys of Vermont today. Elsehere in the state, a heat advisory still goes on.
Speaking of humidity, dew points in some spots across the North Country were higher than I can ever remember. The dew point is the temperature at which we'd have to go down to in order to create dew or fog.
If the dew point is over 70 degrees, most of us will feel ridiculously uncomfortable. High dew points make hot weather feel even worse. For instance, at 2 p.m. Sunday, the temperature at the National Weather Service office in South Burlington, Vermont was 95 degrees, with a dewpoint of 73. That translated to a heat index - what the air felt like to us humans - of 105 degrees.
By the way, Burlington spent nine hours in a row with a heat index of over 100 degrees. I hope you're not wondering why the National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning.
In the St. Lawrence Valley of northwest New York, the dewpoint was even more ridiculous. At Massena, New York, the dewpoint at one point Sunday was 81 degrees. That's unusually high for places like the ultra-sultry Gulf Coast, never mind Arctic northern New York. I don't think I've ever seen dewpoints that high that far north.
To make matters all the more worse, an Air Quality Alert is in effect for Vermont today. Pollution from the big cities along the East Coast is streaming north toward us. When it's this hot, the sunshine interacts with pollution to create high ozone levels, which can be dangerous, especially for people with pre-existing health conditions. It's all made even more risky because those people with the health problems are also under stress from the heat.
THUNDERSTORM CHANCES
As I've mentioned before, it's hard to get thunderstorms going in this type of heat wave, despite the energy all this hot air and humidity add to the atmosphere.
Think of it as being in a pot with its lid on it, heating up on the stove. Gawd knows it feels like that out there, so let's run with this analogy.
The boiling liquid in the water and air inside the lidded pot can't escape. The air outside the pot is of course much cooler than the air inside it. Thunderstorms bubble up when they can access cooler air aloft. But the thick layer of very warm air over us acts as a lid that keeps those thunderstorm clouds from towering up into the atmosphere.
But what if there was a hole in the lid of our boiling pot of soup on the stove? Then steam would rise pretty high above the pot in the kitchen. That would be akin to an updraft finding some cool air aloft and forming a thunderstorm.
During heat waves like this, an updraft caused by say, a mountain, finds a "hole" in the lid of warm air. Then a thunderstorm develops instantaneously and becomes strong fast. That's why isolated thunderstorms develop. They last only as long as the updraft can find the cooler air above, which is not very long in these situations. The updraft moves a few miles down the road, and the thunderstorm quickly collapses into nothing.
We did see exactly that scenario happen near Lyon Mountain, west of Plattsburgh, New York last evening. There could be a isolated thunderstorm or two this afternoon in the mountains today, but the chances are low. Just don't be surprised if you do see an intense but very brief boomer somewhere out there today.
This evening and tonight, there's a somewhat better chance of thunderstorms. The remnants of a weak, now pretty much dead cold front will approach. This disturbance might help take the "lid" off our boiling pot of soup, our heat wave.
This will lead to scattered storms overnight, kind of like what happened Saturday night. Not everybody will see a storm after 6 p.m. today, but a few of us who do could face some pretty strong, gusty winds and torrential downpours.
The "cold front" such as it is, will have moved through by tomorrow morning. The temperature will probably "only" hit the low to mid 90s on Tuesday, and the humidity will drop a unnoticeable smidge again.
It won't be until Friday, when a cold front that really means business will end this long, strange Vermont heat wave.
LIKE A WINTER STORM
To me, a heat wave like this is kind of like a winter storm without the icy roads. The advice we get is the same as during a bad snowstorm: Don't overexert yourself outdoors, check on the elderly, stay inside if you can.
Driving to work yesterday, the streets, parks and sidewalks did not look like a normal summer Sunday in Vermont. Usually there's lots of people out walking, jogging, running around the park. Yesterday, nobody was out, it seemed. It was eerily quiet. People were hunkered down, waiting out the heat, just as they do as they wait out the storm in the winter.
HEAT EVOKES MEMORIES
Funny how these rare strong summer heat waves, the kind we get in Vermont only once every few years, evokes strong memories. I guess that happens because anything that's unusual plays with your brain.
Back in the 1970s, there were a few summers in Vermont that featured some big time hot spells, much like the one we're currently experiencing.
This heat wave takes me back to my youth in West Rutland, Vermont. My dad, Red, owned a tavern, called Marble Valley Restaurant, but everybody called it Red's Place. It was the local hangout, where quarry workers, truck drivers, and the barely employed in this decidedly not picture-postcard working class town would go after their shifts ended. They'd all console themselves, or recharge with a few cheap drafts of Schlitz or Shaefer or Utica Club.
Last night, the muggy night air took me back to Red's Place to an evening that was eerily similar. Those summers, I'd go down there to the bar at 10 or 11 on those nights, walking the 15 minutes or so from our house to the bar, working up a sweat in the stuffy air.
The front door of the bar was wide open, in a vain attempt to catch any breeze that would somehow drift down Marble Street and into the bar. Inside, it was even hotter than outside. Overhead, a fan slowly, listlessly spun, having no effect on the heat but slightly stirring the dense clouds of cigarette smoke hanging in the bar like an acrid fog.
Middle aged men, half drunk, very tired, sat hunched over the bar. I wasn't sure if they were weighed down by the heat or life. It was probably both.
I'd stand by the door of Red's Place, trying to catch a breath of fresh air that wasn't to be. Off in the distance, faint flashes of heat lightning played above the mountains. The distant flashes seemed so half-hearted I'd swear they were being worn down by the dense humidity. Beyond Marble Street was the big West Rutland marsh, where frogs croaked their weary disapproval of the heat.
On the jukebox, Patsy Cline sang "She's Got You." The song's melody seemed to somehow transmit that we'd been transported to a lazy, hot Georgia night.
This description sounds negative, but it's a cherished memory, and I thank the current heat wave for bringing it back to me. See? There's a positive side to everything. To give you a taste of this, listen to Patsy Cline sing "She's Got You."
No comments:
Post a Comment