Roller Coaster May Was Near "Average" But Not Really

A St. Albans, Vermont daffodil shivers in the snow on May 9. By
the end of the month  the same gardens were wilting in record heat

If you like changeable weather, May was surely your month here in Vermont.

The weather gave us a little bit of everything: Snow, record heat, subfreezing cold and severe weather.  No locusts that I'm are of, though.

This was the only May on record in Burlington with both measurable snow and 90 degree heat. As reported last week, that 95 degree reading on the 27th was the hottest temperature on record for the month of May, besting the old record by two degrees.

If you take all the extremes we had this month, you end up with a May with near normal temperatures.  Never mind that there were few actual days that were near normal.  Combine near record cold with record heat and you get something lukewarm, I guess.

In Burlington, the mean temperature for May, 2020 was 57.9 degrees, or 1.6 degrees above normal. Most other weather stations in northern Vermont, including Montpelier, St Johnsbury and Morrisville,  had a month that averaged out a little on the cool side.

If you ignore the Mother's Day weekend snows, the record heat near the end of the month and two severe weather outbreaks - which is a lot to ignore - the month overall was quite pleasant, with plenty of sunny days.

It was a dry May in Vermont, meaning garden irrigation got off
to an early start 

The inevitable result of all those sunny days, of course, is a dearth of precipitation. All of Vermont was solidly on the dry side in May.

That ranged from just a bit below normal in St. Johnsbury to more than a half inch below normal in precipitation elsewhere.

Both Burlington and Montpelier were on the dry side by nearly an inch, and Springfield's May precipitation was nearly an inch and a half below normal.

When it did rain in May, it was sometimes accompanied by dangerous weather. One round of severe weather prompted a tornado warning in southwestern Vermont on May 15. Though no tornadoes touched down in Vermont, there were aeveral reports of wind damage in the southern half of the state.

Another round of severe weather caused scattered damage throughout Vermont, but especially in the southwestern part of the state again.  I also saw some minor erosion damage around from torrential downpours. You can get that during dry months, even.

True to form, May closed with another wild shift in the weather with another cold shot. Snow was reported yesterday atop Mount Mansfield. Especially during light rain showers, mid-afternoon temperatures dipped into the 40s across northern Vermont at a time of day and year when it should have been around 70 degrees.

As June opened this morning, scattered frost iced up a few parts of Vermont and surrounding areas. It was 27 degrees in Saranac Lake, New York this morning and 32 degrees in Bennington. It was 39 degrees in Burlington, making it I believe the first time in several years that Burlington got under 40 degrees in June.