Winds To 50 MPH Will End Foliage Season In Some Sections Of Vermont

The woods around my house in St. Albans, Vermont look a lot different, a lot thinner than they did yesterday morning.

Fall foliage in my St. Albans, Vermont yard on
Saturday. These colorful branches are
now largely bare after wind and rain last night. Such
weather will continue today.  

We've had some good rains and some gusty winds late yesterday and overnight, and a lot of leaves blew off the trees.

It's still quite colorful with autumn foliage, but it is going fast in this wind.

I'm afraid peak foliage season is pretty much over in higher elevations and parts of northern Vermont as of today.

The state is under a wind advisory, with gusts to 50 mph likely during the day. We'll also get showers and thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, and some of those will have some pretty heavy rain.

All this is the perfect recipe to strip foliage from the trees.

That's OK. We had a long spell of calm weather, and that meant the foliage was spectacular. We had our chance to enjoy it. I hope you did.

Plus, in the Champlain and lower Connecticut River valleys and in low elevations in southern Vermont, spectacular foliage will continue despite today's storminess. There is still some green foliage there, and that will turn color over the next week or so.

The wind will not only strip leaves from the trees today, it might also be strong enough to knock a few whole branches from the trees, and take down some power lines. So watch out for that.

This is particularly true since the National Severe Storms Center says some of the thunderstorms in Vermont could become severe, with winds pushing 60 mph. Maybe.

Also, the fallen leaves will clog storm drains. The rain this afternoon and/or evening looks like it might come in one heavy burst, with up to an inch of rain in just a couple hours in some areas. That clogged drains and heavy rain could combine to produce some street flooding here and there.

The stormiest weather in Vermont will come this afternoon, when the winds will be strongest and the showers and thunderstorms will arrive.

We have gotten used to calm, sunny weather and we've had so much of it lately. The good news is we're only getting one stormy day. The rest of the week looks like we'll have a return to sunshine. Tuesday will be sort of on the cool side, but it will warm up well into the 60s later in the week.

So the nice fall weather isn't finished yet.