Hit And Miss Showers Missing Some Parts Of Vermont Too Often

Parts of my gardens in St. Albans, Vermont.  The flowers are blooming
only because I've had to water frequently. And, unlike last year, I've
gotten lucky: A couple rounds of hit and mostly miss showers
and storms hit me in the past week or so. 

As darkness fell last evening around my place in St. Albans, Vermont, I was still out there tending my gardens, when...splish, splash. It suddenly began to rain. At a fairly good clip.

What a pleasant surprise! I knew there was a chance of a few scattered showers, but I figured there would be more misses than hits. It turns out there were more misses than hits, but I got lucky.

 It was only about a quarter inch of rain, but I'll take it. Most places in Vermont got nothing, or next to nothing.  

We've had a lot of warmer than normal weather since late June at least, and that tends to make things dry out faster. In the summer, there's rarely a nice general soaking rain. It's always a bunch of showers and thunderstorms, with winners getting a nice soaking and the losers, well, losing out.

The rain has been generally more scattered and sporadic this summer than usual. Between the heat and the lack of storms, it's getting dry. Not nearly as bad as last year, when much of Vermont was in a drought, but still dry.

I have a feeling that the next U.S. Drought Monitor, which comes out weekly on Thursdays, might start popping up an "abnormally dry" status in parts of Vermont, which is their lowest status in a five-tier ranking of how dry it is. Currently the U.S. Drought Monitor doesn't have any part of the Green Mountain State listed as dry.

Since July 14, Burlington, Vermont has only had 0.8 inches of rain. The rough rule of thumb is you should get about an inch of rain per week to keep things nice and wet and lush in the summer. Certain areas of the Burlington area have gotten less than that. I was working in a client's garden on the Burlington/South Burlington border yesterday and it was basically a dust bowl.

I had trouble with another South Burlington client in June, as parts of their property were a swamp and inaccessible from all the rain. Now their lawn is brown and dry.

Here in St. Albans, I'll be back to watering my gardens as soon as tonight, even with last night's rain. A torrential downpour this past Wednesday dried up quickly, and my garden plots were dusty by Friday afternoon.

We're not expecting much in way of rain anytime soon. Although there are daily chances of showers and thunderstorms Tuesday through at least Friday as a series of seasonably weak weather systems pass through.

It'll be hit or miss with these, too.  Once we get toward into the autumn, storm systems will generally transition into ones that bring more widespread, steady rains, so we have that to look forward to. Or, the remains of some tropical systems can start giving us better rains in the late summer or autumn, but that's very iffy.

The sunny weather of late has certainly been fantastic to enjoy the outdoors, so we have that to be thankful for.  I might be complaining about a relative lack of rain, but it has been a gorgeous, if at times toasty summer so far.