Needed Rain Soaks Much Of Vermont, But Severe Storms, Too

Clouds billow over the Adirondacks Wednesday afternoon, dumping
torrential downpours in some towns across northeastern New York.

NOTE: I was using Microsoft Explorer, which sucks, to finish posting this on Thursday morning and even though it indicated this was post was complete. It publishes, then mysteriously reverted to draft form and was not publicly available.   Apologies. Here's an update, then what I actually wrote Thursday morning.

UPDATE: According to my rain gauge, my place in St. Albans, Vermont received 3.1 inches of rain in the 24 hours ending Thursday afternoon.

That's certainly not an official total, as of course the rain gauge is not NWS certified. I think it's location is good, but it probably isn't perfect.

The bottom line is most of northern Vermont got a soaking rain out of the storms Wednesday and Thursday morning, which was most welcome. Especially since not much rain is in the forecast for the next week.

It had been getting dry, and my gardens, at least, got a great soaking. It was a pleasure not to have to run around the property Thursday evening to water everything. And, bonus! Another thundershower came through a little before sunset, dropping a little more rain.

Stronger thunderstorms did go from western New York, through the Albany Capital District into western Massachusetts Thursday, causing yet another swath of wind and power line damage. This after all the damaging storms in the Northeast Wednesday. (see below.)

There will be scattered showers and storms around as a series of weak cold fronts and boundaries keep coming through. Today will also be noticeably cooler and less humid. Look for sun, some billowing clouds, some showers followed by sun. Nice potential rainbow weather.

Same is true for Saturday, and you will get your first real taste of autumn. It'll be breezy, with clouds spiked with breaks of sun with showers around.  It'll be breezy, and some of us won't even break 70 degrees Saturday afternoon.

Temperatures will stay near to a bit below normal through the middle of next week, which is a nice break from the heat and humidity we endured for weeks.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

As expected, Wednesday was an extremely busy severe weather day in the Northeast, with many, many reports of wind damage, and even more instances of urban flooding. That's especially true in cities like Baltimore, Hartfort, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island and around Boston.

Check out the scenes from Baltimore, Maryland, for instance, at the bottom of this post.

Here in Vermont we fared a little better as we threaded the needle between two bads on intense weather, but even in the Green Mountain State, there was some flooding, and some wind damage from severe storms.

The worst of the severe storms seemed to originate around Montpelier and the head up Route 2 into Plainfield, Marshfield and Cabot. Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts tweeted that two beloved old trees on his Cabot property, a large pine and a sugar maple, were toppled by the storm.

A flash flood warning was in effect for a time in far southeastern Vermont Wednesday afternoon, and video posted to social media showed traffic in downtown Brattleboro slogging through flooded streets.

Wednesday night's storms had a lot of lightning, at least high up in the clouds over St. Albans. This is what it looked like at dusk over my house:

Weather was especially rough around Baltimore, Maryland Wednesday. Have a look: