Every Kind Of Weather Possible Hit On Wednesday. Here's Why

After a sunny start, cold storm clouds loomed over Lake
Champlain in Alburgh on Wednesday. 

The old saying "If you don't like the weather in Vermont, just wait a minute and it will change," was probably never more true than in was Wednesday.

Especially in northern Vermont. One minute it was sunny and mild, the next featured black clouds looming, as if there was a summer thunderstorm approaching.

Then a tremendous gust of wind, then some rain, maybe some sleet, then a burst of snow, then back to sunny and nice, then rinse and repeat.

You always want to dress for the weather, but on Wednesday, you would have needed to take your entire wardrobe closet with  you to pull that off.

What the hell happened?

A chaotic sky over St. Albans, Vermont Wednesday produced a day
with almost every kind of weather imaginable. 

It turns out early April is the perfect time of year to get weather that will mess with your head, like it did yesterday.

The sun angle is about as high as it is around Labor Day. That's why the day started off so pleasantly. The sun was able to warm the atmosphere, and temperatures really sprung upward during the morning.

Meanwhile, a few thousand feet overhead, the atmosphere still thinks it's winter.  It was cold up there yesterday, especially with a cold front passing through and a chunk of chilly air from Canada coming in at us.

When there is a big contrast between the warm surface and cold air thousands of feet above us, towering clouds can form. These develop into showers and thunderstorms, which happened yesterday. (There wasn't much in the way of lightning strikes yesterday, just a few, but you get what I mean.)

On top of all that, winds aloft tend to be much stronger in the winter than in the summer. Remember, it's still pretty much winter way overhead, so it was a screaming gale up there.

One of those storm clouds yesterday set off this springtime snow
squall in St. Albans, Vermont late Wednesday afternoon.

The showers that formed, and the downdrafts created by the those showers, were able to grab some of that high level wind and bring it to the surface. That's why it would get so windy in those passing showers.

The air was relatively dry, and much of the precipitation evaporated on its way down. That evaporation also helped bring wind to the surface.

Some of those gusts yesterday were impressive. I was at an exposed location on the shore of Lake Champlain in Alburgh Wednesday when one of those storms came through.

Winds gusted to an estimated 55 to 60 mph, downing some tree limbs and taking a few shingles off a couple houses. Winds gusted to 52 mph in Burlington. Many places in Vermont had gusts in the 45 to 55 mph range.

The cold air brought to the surface during these showers was enough so that the entire column of air was chilly enough so that snow aloft stayed snow all the way to the ground. We had a couple brief gusty snow squalls here in Franklin County, Vermont yesterday.

A confused weather day created dark clouds, blue sky, light and
shadows Wednesday evening in St. Albans, Vermont

Between the showers of rain and snow, the warm April sun would come back out, raising temperatures again, only to see them crash when the next windy storm came through. I swear we packed 12 months of weather into one afternoon.

Today won't be so changeable. High pressure has moved in. The air is very dry throughout the entire height of the atmosphere, so there won't be any towering clouds to promote more showers of either rain or snow.

However, the air remains chilly, especially aloft. The April sun will roil the atmosphere, creating updrafts.

What goes up must come down, so these updrafts will grab more of that strong wind from up above and bring it to the surface. It's so dry there won't be much in the way of clouds, but there will be some pretty strong wind gusts today, probably as high as 40 mph in spots. Not as bad as Wednesday, but still.

In the Champlain Valley and in the lower Connecticut River valley, almost all the snow is gone.  Last year's vegetation is brown and bone dry.  Humidities will be quite low today amid those gusty winds. That means there's a risk that any brush fires could get out of control pretty quickly.

If you were planning on setting your brush pile alight or doing any outdoor burning today, think again. Find another day to do it. One that's wetter and calmer.

This is also true across all of southern New England.

Precipitation will move in Friday afternoon to wet things down somewhat. At least this next little weather disturbance, with its cold rain and mountain wet snow, won't be as dynamic as Wednesday's conditions were. It won't be a Heinz 57 weather kind of day.

Some video of one of the storms rolling through Alburgh Wednesday.   Click the big screen icon on the lower left of each one to see a wider version of these. F