Vermont Rain: Feast Or Famine; Flood Or Drought

Central and southern Vermont are included in the slight risk zone
for flash flooding tomorrow. (Yellow shaded area of map.)

Depending upon which part of our fair state of Vermont you're living in, you're either living it up in renewed wetness after lots of rain in the past 10 days or so, or you're still mired in drought-like conditions.

It gets worse: The parts of the state that have had a lot of rain recently are going to get a lot more in the next day or two. So much more that flash flooding is a real risk.

The parts of the state that haven't gotten much rain lately won't get much more in the near future.

Southern and central Vermont have gotten those welcome rains. In the last nine days of July, Montpelier picked up 2.59 inches of rain. Springfield received 3.14 inches and Rutland got clobbered by just a hair under four inches of rain during that period.

Up here in the northwestern part of the state, not so good. Burlington only had about 1.6 inches of rain during that period.

Compared to last week, the U.S. Drought Monitor has conditions improving over southern and central Vermont. Those areas were either in moderate drought or abnormally dry. Those areas have eased, with the two southernmost counties of the state now off the abnormally dry list.

Northwestern Vermont went downhill from abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions.

Now, we're in that familiar weather pattern we've been in lately. It's incredibly humid out there, but in some areas, the humidity is not translating into rain.

Plus, the weather in parts of Vermont is likely to get interesting later Friday, through Friday night into Saturday.

There's a conveyer belt of tropical moisture riding up the East Coast from the tropical Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Flash flood watches and scattered flash flood warnings are up today for a broad area stretching pretty much along the entire Appalachian Mountain chain from Georgia to southwestern New York.

A little tropical disturbance not far from Bermuda seems like it's going to get caught up in the air flow between the Bermuda High to our east and a dip in the jet stream to our west. This isn't a tropical storm or a tropical depression or anything like that.

But with the super wet air in place, this little tropical thing - whatever it is - will be enough to create a swath of very heavy rain moving up the East Coast.

Here's the part where Vermont gets screwed. As it stands now, it appears the heaviest rain from this thing will go through central and southern Vermont, where soil moisture is now fairly high. A few inches of rain could come down with this system, and the National Weather Service in South Burlington is mulling over whether to issue a flash flood watch for this area.

They're waiting for more forecast guidance before deciding whether to pull the trigger on that.

Meanwhile, there will probably be a sharp cutoff of precipitation on the northwest flank of this wet system that will move through. There's still a relatively decent chance of some beneficial rains in northwestern Vermont, but the prospects are kind of iffy. The further northwest you go, the less rain you'll get.

For instance, at this point, National Weather Service data predicts maybe 0.19 inches of rain for Swanton through 1 p.m. Saturday. That increases to roughly 0.40 inches around Burlington, and approximately 1.5 inches around Rutland.

These are only estimates, so the rainfall totals could be higher or lower, depending upon where the heaviest downpours go.

Out in northern New York state, they'll be lucky to get a tenth of an inch of rain out of this.

Meanwhile the humidity will drag on into early next week, with only hit or miss showers and storms through next Tuesday, if that.

Feast or famine for sure.