Beauty In Unexpected Downpours

The scattered showers that affected northern Vermont Friday evening were expected, but I'm a little surprised by the intensity of them.

A dark shower cloud approaches St. Albans, Vermont
Friday evening as the setting sun pokes some light
beneath small but intense storm.  

Up here in St. Albans in really poured hard just before sunset. Many other areas north of Route 2 in Vermont saw some brief, heavy showers, too.

A disturbance that made the air a little unstable helped set off the showers. The instability was expected, as were a few scattered showers Friday afternoon and evening.

But a line of showers and storms in southern Quebec late Friday sent a gust of air southward into the instability over Vermont.

The gust from Quebec moved air a bit like you see snow move as a snowplow pushes it. Some of the air kind of went upward as it was pushed into northern Vermont by the Quebec storms.

That line of moving air, and the instability both combined to cause air to rise more energetically than some forecasters (like me!) thought. So the showers were more energetic than they otherwise might have been.

Light from the setting sun undercuts
dark storm clouds in St. Albans, Vermont Friday evening
adding a glow to the falling shafts of rain beneath the clouds.  

Still, they were pretty, as the light from the setting sun shown through the clouds and the narrow bands of downpours, as you can see from the photos I took in this post. They were taken from St. Albans Hill.