Early Start To North Country Severe Weather Season

A line of strong showers and storms that prompted severe thunderstorm
warnings in New York and western Vermont Friday were nothing
like this biggie near Sheldon in May, 2018. Instead, Friday's weather
consisted of a quick moving line of mostly light showers that
brought strong, potentially damaging wind gusts. 

Some severe thunderstorm warnings went up Friday afternoon in northern New York and western Vermont, giving us an early start to the spring and summer severe weather season.

There were several reports to the National Weather Service of tree damage mostly across northern New York.  There was also a report of several small trees down around Swanton, Vermont.

This was pretty early to be getting this type of weather in the North Country. The first severe thunderstorms of the season usually don't crop up until around May.

These weren't classic late spring or summer thunderstorms, of course. Some things about the strong storms were similar to what you'd get, say, in June, but most aspects of them were not.

Very often, strong thunderstorms around here develop along or near something known as a pre-frontal trough.  A pre-frontal trough is a skinny area of lower air pressure that marks a wind shift.  This feature usually comes through, from west to east a few hours ahead of a cold front that will also come in from west to east.

In the summer, the air of ahead of this trough is often quite humid and unstable. The trough adds lift to the atmosphere, allowing towering thunderstorm clouds to grow. These summer thunderstorms will usually produce torrential downpours, frequent lightning, strong, damaging winds and hail.

Friday's storms weren't quite like that. There wasn't much lightning involved and rainfall was modest, with most places getting less than a tenth of an inch of rain. This line of storms also zipped through much more quickly than storms do in the summer.

Strong winds were blowing several thousand feet overhead Friday, and the thunderstorm clouds did reach high enough to grab some of that wind, bringing it down to the surface in damaging gusts.

The air was more stable over and east of the Green Mountains, so the storms weakened a lot by the time they got there.  That explains the lack of damage reports east of the northern Champlain Valley.

The early taste of severe weather in Vermont and New York is most definitely over.  It's back to wintry stuff for a little while.

As previously advertised, this weekend will be mostly sunny during the day, clear at night and cold throughout.  A number of places in the north and mountains won't even  make it above freezing today and tomorrow. Lows tonight will be in the single numbers and low teens, with some late season subzero readings likely in the Adirondacks and Northeast Kingdomf of Vermont.

There's lots of questions about a potential quick-hitting storm Monday afternoon and night. There's the potential for several inches of snow with this, especially in the mountains.  However, the computer models were still arguing over this as of Saturday morning.

Some of those models said all of Vermont would get at least some snow.  Others said northern areas might miss out.  Still other forecasts say it will be a bit too warm for snow in the valleys.

As usual, stay tuned.