Chilly Weekends, Toasty Weeks And Rain Spigot To Shut Off Again

My husband last evening finally made me put away the snow shovel
 that has been standing guard by our front door since November.
Which is of course why the National Weather Service suddenly says
there's the possibility of a few snowflakes Saturday on the peaks
of the Adirondacks. I admit it won't snow at my house, though. 

It seems we have fallen into a rough pattern in which we have warm weeks and chilly weekends here in Vermont.

It's been going on since early May. Not every weekend gets the cold shot, but most of them have.

True to form, Saturday will be a very oddly cold day in Vermont in a month that has so far had pretty close to average temperatures so far.  It's just been a yo-yo, though.

High temperatures Saturday won't make it out of the 50s.  That's what weather is normally like in April. For June, it's 20 degrees colder than normal.

It'll be so cold that I wouldn't be surprised if a few snowflakes come down at the summits of the Adirondacks and northern Green Mountains.

Luckily, cloud cover will keep all of us, except maybe the highest mountain summits, above freezing Saturday and Sunday nights.  At this point the cold hollows look like they will escape frost. The rest of us certainly will stay above freezing. .

Sunday will be a little warmer, but still on the cool side for June.  Then, following the pattern we've had for awhile now, it will turn toasty and a little humid by mid to late week, with highs well into the 80s, as it looks now.

It's too soon to tell if next weekend will turn cool again.

LACKING RAINFALL

Most of Vermont, and most of  New England for that matter,
are now regarded as "abnormally dry" by the U.S.
Drought Monitor (yellow shading is the dry areas)/ 

This weather pattern has not bee generous with us at all in terms of rainfall.

A few of us lucked out yesterday.  The northern and southern ends of Vermont got generally a half inch of rain, locally more. The middle of Vermont, not so much.

For instance, my unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans collected 0.70 inches of rain, which was a decent enough soaking.  Burlington only managed 0.11 inches though, which is basically nothing.

A few spots might get a quickie downpour from scattered showers and thunderstorms this afternoon, but a lot of us will stay dry.  Those hit and miss showers are from the cold front which will give us the very chilly Saturday.

There might be a few  light showers Saturday and possibly Sunday, but they won't amount to anything.  Pretty much all of us can expect less than a tenth of an inch of rain for the next seven days.

That's bad, if you consider that the optimal, normal amount of summer rains in Vermont usually amount to about an inch per week.

The U.S. Drought Monitor now has all of Vermont except the Northeast Kingdom listed as "abnormally dry" which is one step below drought.  I still think at least a minor drought is developing  in Vermont.

Weather patterns will need to shift pretty dramatically to give us the kind of soakings we are accustomed to in the summer. We shall see how that turns out.