Gordon Update, And More Vermont Heat And....Autumn??

Tropical Storm Gordon in the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday.

Tropical Storm Gordon continues to spin in the Gulf of Mexico today, still on a potentially destructive course that will take it ashore on the central Gulf Coast of the United States late tonight or very early Wednesday.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that fears Gordon would become much stronger than forecast are fading.

There are some upper level winds that are making conditions not perfect for the storm to grow exponentially before landfall.

The bad news that atmospheric conditions, and the warm water Tropical Storm Gordon is passing over still makes it likely the storm will be at or near hurricane strength at landfall. You really can't win with these things.

Top sustained winds with Gordon this morning were at 65 mph, so you can see it's not that far from hurricane strength, which is 75 mph.

Storm surges of up to three to five feet are still forecast. While the storm's high winds won't cause complete destruction, gusts over 75 mph can still do some real structural damage. The highest risk from Gordon continues to be serious inland flooding due to torrential rains.

Although Gordon will rapidly fall apart once it reaches land, the risk of flooding will continue all week. The remnants of former hurricanes and tropical storms can cause flooding days or even more than a week after they lose their tropical characteristics.

In this case, the remnants of Gordon seem like they will be somewhere over or near Missouri by around Sunday.

This is bad, because as I've mentioned, it's been raining hard in parts of the Midwest for days. Flooding is becoming widespread. Torrential rain is falling in this area again today due to a weather system unrelated to Gordon.

Gordon seems like it wants to spread another surge of heavy rain onto soggy places like Iowa, Missouri and eastern Nebraska. Ugh.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Florence in the central Atlantic Ocean has been upgraded to a hurricane, at least for now. It will probably temporarily weaken, then strengthen again. It's too soon to say whether it will affect the United States East Coast.

MORE VERMONT WEIRDNESS

A perfect anvil cloud from a strong to severe thunderstorm, looking
south from the Burlington area on Lake Champlain. The storm was
probably near Middlebury at the time. 

On Monday, Burlington, Vermont reached a record high of 93 degrees, beating the previous record of 92 degrees set in 2010. Once again, we have an over-performing hot spell. (Forecast highs Monday  were "only" in the upper 80s.)

Plattsburgh, New York made it to a record 94 degrees, besting the previous record of 90 degrees in 1953.

It's a little cooler in Vermont and the rest of the North Country today, but it's still quite summer-like. Highs today will be around 80 degrees, which is still warmer than normal, but not totally weird.

A weak cold front is responsible for today's so-called cool down. The front was able to set off some thunderstorms and some of them were pretty rambunctious. Most people that got the storms - mostly in northern and central Vermont - appreciated them because we need the rain.

I'm in Yankton, South Dakota for the week but I was anxiously watching radar hoping some storms would bulleye my St. Albans house. It looks like a couple brief downpours passed over my property, so that's a plus.

Some storms were damaging. Possibly the worst went through the Coventry area in the Northeast Kingdom, where numerous trees fell down on Interstate 89 and Route 5. In Irasburg, numerous trees toppled and a baseball field dugout was lifted off its foundation and folded in half.

Since all the trees seemed to fall in the same direction, it sounds like a microburst and not a tornado to me.

Shelf cloud near Lyndonville, Vermont Monday. Via Twitter from
@vanessa_wxgirl

There were isolated spots of very heavy rain. Gilman reported 2.35 inches of rain and Lyndonville had 1.67 inches from a dramatic storm filmed by meteorology students on the Northern Vermont University campus.

Another blast of heat is coming back at Vermont tomorrow, and more record highs are very likely. Temperatures could get into the mid-90s in the Champlain Valley. Heat advisories will probably be issued.

But that's it for awhile.

A strong cold front is still destined to come through Thursday. There won't be any severe storms with it, except maybe in southern sections. But it will totally feel like autumn over the weekend.

High temperatures over the weekend in most of the northern half of Vermont and the rest of the North Country won't get out of the 60s, and overnight lows will be in the 40s. A few colder mountain hollows could get into the 30s.

In Burlington, the last time the high temperature failed to reach 70 degrees was on June 24.

It even feels possible we'll have a rainfall next Monday that will seem more fall-like than something we see in the summer. During summer, rain usually falls in the form of hit and miss showers and thunderstorms.

During the fall, winter and early spring, precipitation is usually steadier and more widespread. A storm system, consisting partly of what will be the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon, could spread a shield of light to moderate rain.

All this doesn't mean warm weather is over. There are signs it could turn pretty warm and summer- like later next week. I doubt that will involve 90-degree heat waves, but I wouldn't drag out the ski parkas and snow boots just yet.