Flood Update And Those Weird Temperatures In Vermont On Saturday

Water from Lake Champlain began to creep over this walkway
at Perkins Pier in Burlington, Vermont Saturday as the
lake approached its 100-foot flood stage.

Water is receding this Sunday morning in most of Vermont, with the notable exception of Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River as the weather has taken a dramatic turn for the better, especially in northwestern parts of the state.

As expected, most of the flooding was minor, except in parts of the Northeast Kingdom where the heavy rains Friday and Saturday fell on melting snow.

High water around St. Johnsbury and Lyndonville rivaled the damaging floods of April, 2014, May, 2011 and July, 1973.  Homes and businesses in some parts of Lyndonville and St. Johnsbury likely suffered flood damage.

USGA data indicated Lake Champlain reached its 100 flood stage at around mid-morning today. and it will continue rising for at least a day or two as the rest of the runoff from that weekend rain and snowmelt makes its way to the lake.

The risk of damage from the lake flooding will come if we get any high winds over the next couple of weeks that could cause battering waves and erosion. Spring can be a windy time of year, so that's something to be watched.

It could get a breezy on Wednesday, but there are no big wind storms in the forecast for at least the next week. So that's good.

The other flood problem is along the Connecticut River from about Fairlee north.  Waterways were particularly high in northeastern Vermont and northern New Hampshire because there was more snow to melt there than elsewhere. That and the rain sent a LOT of water headed toward the Connecticut River.

At Wells River, Vermont, the Connecticut River could be close to two feet above flood stage, with possible further rises after that.  Low water crossings will be underwater for days, as will many hundreds of acres of farmland.

As the crest goes downstream, people should monitor the Connecticut River from along the central Vermont/New Hampshire border to Long Island Sound in Connecticut. Flooding is a possibility all the way down to the mouth of the river.

Other than the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain, I don't see much in the way of new flooding threats for the rest of the week at least. We'll certainly get our share of off and on April showers during the week and into next weekend, but there are no drenching storms in the forecast

ODD TEMPERATURES

A temperature inversion kept Burlington, Vermont chilly and
foggy last evening, while elsewhere in Vermont, it
was a very mild evening with temperatures in the 60s.

Can we talk about how weird the weather was on Saturday? Yes, it was a typically rainy April day, but those temperatures were all over the place.

One of the reasons why there was so much flooding is in many cases, the mountains were warmer than valleys, at least the valleys in western Vermont.

An inversion kept a layer of warm air overhead, with chily air in the deeper valleys of northwestern Vermont.

The top of Mount Mansfield had temperatures in the 50s all day Saturday, with rapid snowmelt contributing to the flooding. The snow depth there went from 107 to 90 inches in two days.

Meanwhile, in Burlington, temperatures were in the low 40s all day, as low level cold air drained down the valley from the north.

To the east, on the other side of a stalled cold front, in places like St. Johnsbury and White River Junction, temperatures Saturday were well up into the 60s.

South winds were blowing just one to two thousand feet overhead, so it was warmer up above. The cold waters of Lake Champlain also helped to form a lid of cold air over the Champlain Valley, which did not allow those warm winds above us to mix down to the surface. Thick fog formed beneath this lid keeping the warm air above out.

This lid began to break up overnight, leading to strange temperature changes. Rutland was just north of the stalled front during the day Saturday. Temperatures in Rutland abruptly went from the 60s to the 40s just before midnight Friday as the cold front came through. The front stalled a few miles south of Rutland, keeping readings there in the 40s most of the day.

That front jogged north and the inversion broke in Rutland a little before 6 p.m., and the temperature immediately rocketed upward into the upper 60s. Very strange.

In Burlington, the temperarture abruptly rose about nine degrees just before midnight as the south wind finally broke through, and that 54 degrees at midnight was the high temperature for the day.

Things are taking a much more normal arc today. Lows in the 50s this morning will rise to the 60s or maybe around 70 this afternoon. Readings will slowly fall this evening, which is the way things are supposed to work.