Welcome To Our Brief Autumn Preview

This might not be what you want to
see right now, but today will feel
like fall, although much more
dreary than in this photo. 

Normally, in late July, high temperatures get to the low 80s.

It'll be as much as 20 degrees cooler than that. Today will be our reminder that, though there's plenty of summer left, it won't last forever.

Often in mid-winter, we get a January thaw, which gives us a break from the snow and cold. It's a real climatological thing: There does tend to be a slight warmup, on average, in the third week of January. Then we get back to mid winter conditions until a real uptick in temperatures starts in mid to late February.

The July fall preview is not a climatological thing. I so far haven't found concrete evidence that temperatures tend to slump a bit in late July before recovering.

However, I have noticed, anecdotally, that we often do get a cool spell sometime between mid-July and early August that gives a case of mid-summer chills.

This year's is more obvious than many others. It started in Maine yesterday. While temperatures here in Vermont weren't that far off from normal on Sunday, a remote corner of far northern Maine actually got below freezing Sumday morning.

Today, a huge slug of rain is moving across New York and New England. The warm, muggy air has been suppressed south. With no sun and plenty of precipitation, temperatures this afternoon will be more typical of mid to late September than July.

The high temperature for today in Burlington already happened early this morning at 69 degrees. We'll stay in the low 60s all day today. On Tuesday, most places will top out between 60 and 70 degrees.

There's going go be an awful lot of rain today and tonight, too, though flooding won't be widespread.

However, there is already a flash flood warning in a corner of northwestern New York and there may be a few other local trouble spots today, especially in New York where the rain is expected to be heaviest.

On the bright side for us, at least, the really heavy rain is hitting much further south. For instance, there was a lot of flash flooding problems in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey yesterday, including in the Philadelphia area.

Plus, it'll be back to summer soon. I still don't see any signs of a big heat wave coming in. Still,  temperatures will pop back up to near normal Wednesday, and stay that way at least into next weekened.