We Vermonters Have A Good Shot At Thunderstorms This Sunday Afternoon

An isolated thunderstorm where New York, Vermont and Quebec meet
casts a shadow over the northern Champlain Valley Saturday evening
Coverage of storms will be greater this afternoon.

As of a little before 1 p.m. this humid Sunday afternoon, showers and thunderstorms were rapidly firing in much of Vermont and northern New York.

I hate to ruin your Sunday afternoon, but I really hope we do get some decent rains out of these. We need it.

The trouble is, as is almost always the case with thunderstorms, it will be hit or miss. It's just that today, more ingredients have come together for storms than on many humid days this month, so the coverage will be greater.  

At this point, it looks something like 70 percent of us will get at least a little rain before sunset today.

On days like yesterday, updrafts near mountains and isolated lake breezes were the only things available to trigger some widely scattered thunderstorms.  Today, a weak disturbance from Quebec has been added to the mix, allowing for more storms.

A small minority of the storms could cause a bit of damage. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has us in a marginal risk zone for severe weather. That means a very few isolated places around here could see some damaging wind gusts.

Since the humidity is fairly high, several thunderstorms will have heavy rain. They're moving right along, so it won't rain super hard in any one place for that long, so don't worry about epic flash floods.

But you might get ponding of water on roads and small creek and stream flooding, gully washers, damaged steep driveways, that sort of thing.

Also, there might be quite a bit of cloud to ground lightning with some of the storms today.

All this means this afternoon is probably not the day to go out on the lake, or take a long hike. You'll want to find a spot where you can quickly take shelter in a sturdy building while storms pass.

It'll be a very changeable rest of the afternoon. Here's one example: A shower abruptly formed directly over my St. Albans house at around 1:50 p.m.  The large rain drops were as warm as bath water. Then, by 1:55 p.m., the sun was back out. We didn't get nearly enough rain for my parched gardens to get a drink. I hope I get a much bigger downpour later today!

The storms will quickly weaken and fall apart near and after sunset this evening.

On Monday, it will be back to just isolated storms in the mountains. Warmer valleys like Burlington could easily make it to 90 degrees, just like on Saturday.

Showers and storms become more likely Tuesday and Wednesday as a very slow moving cold front approaches and limps through. If Tuesday's clouds and rain hold off until later in the day, it could hit 90 again.  Humidity will stay high on Wednesday before waning Thursday.