"Pulse" Storms Make For Gorgeous Summer Skies

A small, isolated storm formed over the Adirondacks around
sunset last evening, as seen looking toward the southwest
from St. Albans, Vermont. 

One of the many things I like about summer is the sky is far more interesting and beautiful than in the winter.

Summer is the time of year when scattered showers and thunderstorms are more likely, without those dreary, boring overcast skies that come in the colder seasons.

Such was the case last evening when isolated thunderstorms erupted over mountainous terrain of northern Vermont and the Adirondacks of New York.

These dramatic looking, but usually harmless and brief thunderstorms often form during these hot, humid days.

There's really no weather systems to create updrafts that would form organized lines of clusters of long lasting storms.    But the atmosphere in these conditions is primed for storms, if only there were a trigger.

That trigger is the mountains. The strong June sun helps creates updrafts that also help cause light local breezes.  If things line up just right, one of these breezes hits a mountain slope and is forced to rise.

That breeze going up the side of a mountain can be just enough to trigger a storm.  That upslope breeze becomes a rapidly rising column of air, which forms almost immediately into a towering thunderstorm, the kind we saw here and there last evening. They go from nothing to immense, often in just minutes

Since these clouds are so tall, they can be seen from very far away. People in the Burlington area saw a gorgeous white tower erupt to the northeast early Friday evening. That storm was near Greensboro, almost 50 miles away as the crow flies.

Beautiful isolated storm last evening in
northern Vermont. Photo via Twitter
by Charlie of Mystery Springs
@SlowWaterMvmnt

Unlike in some hot spells, when haze obscures the best views, the skies Friday were more clear, making the beautiful storms more striking.  They were isolated, so looking east, the low angle sun turned the clouds brilliant white, surrounded by a deep blue background.

Some lucky bastard up near Greensboro was probably treated to a brief downpour for their garden, and maybe a lightning strike or two.

These so-called "pulse" storms die pretty much as fast as they form.  Remember, there's no real weather system, or cold front, or boundary to continue the updraft.

Once they move beyond that mountain that caused the initial updraft in the first place, the storm collapses. The process from initiation to dissipation can take less than an hour.

I did say these pulse storms are usually harmless. But there is one moment - when they're dying - when they can become momentarily dangerous.  The storm collapses, often in a very localized gush of wind and heavy rain.

This collapse could become a very local microburst, in which wind is strong enough to cause damage in a very small area.  One end of a street might have fallen trees from this type, while a mile away, there was just a gentle breeze.

Timing out these collapses is hard, and since they're so local and quick, they're often over and done with by the time the National Weather Service can issue a storm warning.

On some occasions, a pulse storm can keep forming in the same location all afternoon and evening, and just not move. In those cases, you can get a small area of dangerous flash flooding while immediate surrounding areas remain dry.

These two hazards only sometimes happen. More often than not, a pulse storm will quickly collapse and die with no danger involved. That's why they're called pulse storms. They quickly form, then quickly fade. It was just a quick pulse.

After we lost the Greensboro storm last evening, a couple others formed in the Adirondacks, contributing to a gorgeous sunset as the orange light lit up the towering clouds to our west and south.

If you missed these beautiful storms last night, not to worry. The weather pattern is kind of stuck in this hot, humid, still and featureless set up.  This will favor more scattered, slow moving and brief "pulse" storms today, Sunday and Monday.

They tend to start forming in the early to mid afternoon on these hot days, and fade with the setting sun.  The storms tend to avoid large valleys, so we in the dusty Champlain Valley will just be bystanders, begging in vain for just a little rain from these brief showers.

A weak cold front will approach us during the upcoming mid to late week.  That will provide enough forcing for more sustained, and somewhat more widespread showers and storms starting perhaps on Tuesday and continuing into Wednesday.

Classic Summer Weather And Classic Summer Storms, Finally

Dark and beautifully patterned clouds Wednesday in a
thunderstorm that was approaching South Burlington, Vermont.

The last few days have finally brought us classic Vermont summer weather: To my mind, it's perfect.

This weather features quite a bit of sun, with puffy clouds thrown in. Temperatures are now often reaching the 80s, with some noticeable but not extreme humidity.

And there's finally summer storms thrown into the mix. Towering cumulus and thunderstorms are easily my favorite type of cloud.

The form an endless array of distinct shapes. They're often dramatic. You need your camera with you at all times in a Vermont summer, in case the sky gives you a treat.

One bonus is that although Vermont can does get severe and damaging thunderstorms every summer, we're not as prone to super scary storms as the Midwest and South. Often, we get the beauty and the drama without the destruction.

Plus, the tallest thunderstorm towers can often be seen when they're as many as 100 miles away, if there's no mountains to block your view. Which I think is pretty cool.

Early this Thursday afternoon, for instance, I could see the tops of some distant thunderstorms from my perch in St. Albans. The storms were well into Quebec. How far up north? Radar showed they were about 60 miles north of Montreal when I spotted them. Montreal is 65 miles north of me. So these storms, barely visible through the slightest haze, were roaring 125 miles away from me.

More on those storms in a minute.

Yesterday brought the first significant, dramatic thunderstorms of the season to my neck of the woods in northwestern Vermont, and I couldn't have been more pleased.

Gorgeous but threatening skies as a thunderstorm approached
South Burlington Wednesday. 

The storms prompted severe thunderstorm warnings in a wide area along the shores of the northern half of Lake Champlain of New York, most of the Champlain Valley of Vermont and on into central Vermont.

Actual reports of severe weather were scant, which is great. Despite the excitement of having a severe thunderstorm warning, that turned out exactly as meteorologists predicted.

Ingredients were there for isolated, but not widespread severe weather. It was a little warmer than forecast yesterday. Burlington reached 86 degrees Wednesday. That was the hottest temperature so far this year, though it was nothing unusual for late June.

Humidity was moderate. The sun, the heat and the modest humidity helped destabilize the atmosphere, allowing for thunderstorms. A weak boundary approached from the St. Lawrence Valley of New York.

It doesn't take much to form thunderstorms this time of year, and there you go. On the other hand, Wednesday's air wasn't super unstable and there were dry layers up there, so that prevented a lot of severe weather.

Storm clouds over South Burlington Wednesday look like a painting.
Like all photos in this post, I did no editing or augmentation.

However, there was a long north to south band of thunderstorms with this. Most cells in this band were below severe levels, but a few spots in this band looked like they had the potential to reach severe limits.

You couldn't tell which isolated spot in the path of this band would get a brief period of severe weather, so the National Weather Service had to issue a blanket severe thunderstorm warning for most people in the path of the storms.

All this is to remind you that every time you get a severe thunderstorm warning this summer, take it seriously and get inside. You never know where under that warning the winds and/or hail will get particularly dangerous

In the end, there were reports of some damage in Essex, New York. A tree toppled in downtown Burlington. I saw very minor flash flooding and a few twigs down in Charlotte, Shelburne and South Burlington, so nothing major there.

The clouds with this band of storms though! They made me very happy. Especially since there wasn't a lot of damage to report.

MORE STORMS AND SUMMER

This afternoon is once again very warm and vaguely humid. That would maybe mean the chance of additional photogenic storms, but you need a trigger, like that weak boundary yesterday.

Updrafts near the mountains could trigger a few isolated showers and storms in the Green Mountains and Adirondacks late this afternoon, but no biggie.

There is a weak weather front in Quebec which is triggering those thunderstorms up there that I mentioned. As of this writing, at 2 p.m. Thursday, there's even a severe thunderstorm warning in northwestern Maine, due to the same weather front. That boundary might come close enough to the Vermont and New York border to set up the chance of isolated storms this evening.

But the sun will be going down by the time that boundary tries to cross the International Border, so potential energy for storms will also be going away. People way up north in Vermont might hear a rumble of thunder and see pretty clouds again this evening, so that's good.

Friday it's more of the same. Just a chance of late day storms.

This post is getting a little long, so I'll postpone a discussion about Saturday and Sunday until tomorrow morning. Let's just say there's a chance both weekend days could grant us some photogenic skies again, if things work out right. It will be unsettled, and possibly stormy so we'll see!

"Superbloom" Dazzling California And Arizona; Stupid People Threaten To Ruin It

A view of this year's Super Bloom in California

A spectacular "super bloom" is engulfing desert areas of California and Arizona after a very wet winter re-energized plants in arid parts of the southwest.

Hillsides there are dazzling with acres and acres and acres of red poppies, along with lupine, phacelia, popcorn flower, lily, snapdragon and varieties of sunflower.

The result are hillsides so colorful that they - I hate to say it - are at least as stunningly gorgeous if not more so than the fall foliage that brings millions of tourists here to Vermont.   Even photos from space are capturing the gorgeous colors of this super bloom

Newsweek calls this "perfect storm" conditions for a super bloom, but of course storm is not what comes to mind when you see photos and videos of these flowers. But storms are why they are there.

In some spots, wildfire heat and smoke can prime the pump to germinate seeds. If it rains a lot in the months following these fires, ideal conditions develop for super blooms.

Which is happening this year.

Of course, everybody wants to see this super bloom, and that brings out the idiots.

The ecosystem in these super bloom sites is fragile, and visitors really must stay on marked trails or else they'll damage the plants and soil, forever wrecking future super blooms. But of course some people don't, because their own Instagram shots are far more important that the blooms, and the future enjoyment of other visitors.

Apparently, getting "likes" on Instagram is much more important than preserving parks for future super blooms.

So they lay down in the flowers for the glamour shot. And doing so means flowers won't grow back in that spot for ages. Thanks a lot, scummy "fashion models!"

In Lake Elsinore, California, officials had to close down access to Walker Canyon becaue the roads, including Interstate 15, got so clogged with visitors. Area officials started a shuttle service, costing $10 per person, to bring things down to a dull roar.

This recent satellite photo clearly shows the bright colors of
this year's super bloom in southern California.

Many of the visitors were also not prepared. These are hiking trails. Outdoors. In nature. And weather.

So people got stuck or mildly injured because they didn't bring decent hiking shoes, proper clothing and water. Plus, some were not in good enough physical shape to hike.

One particularly entitled pair decided to set a helicopter down this past Tuesday in the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, says the Los Angeles Times.

Obviously, there is no airport or landing pad in the reserve. As the Los Angeles Times reports:

"'We never thought it would be explicitly necessary to state that it is illegal to land a helicopter in the middle of the fields and begin hiking off trail in the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve,' officials said in a Facebook post along with the hashtag #Don'tDoomTheBloom.

'We were wrong.'"

The pair fled in the helicopter when rangers began approaching to find out what the hell these two were thinking. Officials said they are still trying to identify the helicopter and its occupants.

I certainly can't blame people for wanting to see this spectacular show from nature. We all love to see things like this. Most people are pretty responsible about it, too. I just hope as soon as somebody sees some moron doing something damaging, they get called out.

A little bit of public shaming wouldn't hurt, either.

Here's a nice video tour around Lake Elsinore, California recently:



Once this video gets going after the preliminaries, the views are spectacular:

Another Storm Video You Should Watch

Last month, I gave a totally rave review to a storm chasing video by Pecos Hank.

In that post, I mentioned in passing my other favorite storm chaser, Mike Olbinski.

Olbinski usually focuses on Arizona. Every year, in the mid to late summer moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean finds its way into the Desert Southwest, creating a "rainy season" of sorts. It's called the seasonal monsoon.

This rainy season in Arizona and surrounding areas  consists of thunderstorms that develop over the region. Unlike the humid East, where haze often obscures the delicate yet powerful structures of thunderstorms, the visibility in the deserts remains great.

Most of what happens with the best of these thunderstorms are microbursts and haboobs, which are thunderstorm-generated dust storms.

Olbinski's beautiful time lapse videos usually focus on these microbursts and dust storms. When you speed up the footage of these phenomeneno, like Olbinski does, you really see the power of these storms.

As in the Pecos Hank video,  I'm not going to provide you with the link, so you can click on it and give Olbinski more hits. At least I think that's how it works.

Just click on this sentence to view the video, called Monsoon V.

A Very Picturesque Mountain Celebrates Easter With A Bonnet

A beautiful "Easter Bonnet" lenticular cloud over Mount
Taranaki in New Zealand. 

There's a very picturesque mountain in New Zealand called Mount Taranaki.

A photographer named Martin Quicke recently snapped a photo of the mountain with a beautiful lenticular cloud resting on the summit. Looks like the mountain was wearing an Easter bonnet.

Fun fact: Mount Taranaki has the same legal rights as a person in New Zealand. It's a sacred mountain for the Maori tribe, and it's a popular tourist destination.

The only thing to spoil this is that the photo was taken several days before Easter. Still, what an awesome photo!

Lenticular clouds are formed when winds rise up and over a mountain or other obstacle. The rising air condenses, so you see a cloud. These clouds tend to stay in one place and winds blowing through and around them give them a smooth, curved shape. They're beautiful clouds.

People sometimes mistake them for UFOs because of their shape.

Lenticular clouds usually form above or just downwind of mountains. In this case, the cloud settled right on top of Mount Taranaki. It was just another example of Mother Nature showing off.

Bright Sun And Storms: Skies Perfect For A Weather Geek

A photo I took last summer in Fairfield,
on a day with beautiful atmospheric
conditions similar to Sunday's
in Vermont.

Sunday featured what I consider perfect weather here in Vermont, though I know most people would disagree with me.

Oh sure, people must have thought it was nice enough, at times. There were bouts of briliant blue skies and bright sunshine. But those were frequently interrupted by billowing clouds, lightning, and quick downpours accompanied by chilly wind gusts.

But those skies! Big cloud towers lit up white by the sun against a deep blue sky backdrop, free of haze. Closer to the storms, evening sun cut underneath roiling storm clouds, giving the atmosphere an  otherworldly feel.

This kind of thing happens at least once a year, sometimes several times of year, especially in June and the first half of July.

These beautiful sunny and stormy days are created when a pocket of cold air sits high overhead. The sun is as strong as it gets this time of year and quickly heats the ground. Warm air starts to rise, and rises especially quickly when it's cold up above.

These rising air pockets condense into billowy clouds, and eventually, the types of showers and thunderstorms we saw on Sunday. This is especially true when a weak weather front, again like we had Sunday, adds more lift to the air.

You might think this is odd, but the weather conditions remind me of my favorite play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." by Edward Albee.

In that play, protagonists George and Martha are in constant conflict, but seem to have an emotional need to constantly engage in that conflict.

Sunday's weather was a classic conflict between warmth and cold, and the two temperature extremes needed each other to create the beautiful turmoil overhead.

The kind of storms we had Sunday come on days when the air isn't particularly humid. Which means there's no haze obscuring the beautiful cloud structures the way it usually does when we have thunderstorms. After all, we associate thunderstorms with hot, humid weather and not  during refreshingly cool days. But of course it does happen.  

Dramatic skies over St. Albans, Vermont Sunday evening
as the setting sun lit up the base of a thunderstorm
passing by just to my north. 

Sometimes, these cooler weather storms can get strong or even severe. Since there's plenty of cold air aloft, it's easier to get hail out of the type of storm we got Sunday, so that's one drawback. We love the sky we had yesterday, until the hail shreds the hostas.

Also, these storms are relatively brief, and will collapse suddenly, bringing a gush of potentially strong to damaging winds to a few local areas.

This all happened up toward St. Johnsbury, where one storm Sunday produced golf ball sized hail and knocked down some trees and power lines.

Today, there will be some cool weather showers and isolated thunderstorms around, but the dynamics of the atmosphere don't lend themselves to the skies we had Sunday.

However, tomorrow, Tuesday, we have another weather disturbance and a new pocket of cold air aloft  coming in, so there's the potential for things to look as beautiful as they did Sunday.

So make sure you look up and enjoy the spectacle of an active Vermont summer skh. Let's just keep the hail out of the gardens, OK?

Weekend Vermont Wintry Storm A Whopper, With More On The Way

From @ABC7NY on Twitter, fall foliage and snow Sunday
near Killington, Vermont.   

That turned out to be a pretty impressive early season rain and snow storm in Vermont over the weekend, with surprising amounts of snow in some spots.

Reports came in of 9 inches of new snow at relatively high elevations in Bolton, Vermont.

Other Vermont towns hitting the snow jackpot include 8 inches in Holland, 7.5 inches in South Starksboro, and 7 inches in Averill, Hyde Park and East Enosburg.

The sun burst through the clouds in all but the Northeast Kingdom in the afternoon, affording us wonderful views of lingering fall foliage with snow on the mid and high elevations.

The storm put a nice dent in the drought, too, though the dryness hasn't been totally erased. Still, most places in Vermont and surrounding states got 1 to 3 inches of rain, with locally more.

As noted previously, the rain came down to hard at once in parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Pennsylvania. Some towns in each of those states had 5 inches of rain in just a few hours over the weekend.

Here in Vermont, nobody got enough rain to trigger flooding, but I notice stream flows in rivers look healthier.

Places that got snow had it fall on unfrozen ground, so that is gradually melting into the soil, too. That will continue to ease the drought slightly.

Satellite imagery at midday Sunday
shows snow in the mountains,  and evidence of
fall foliage. Most of northern Vermont away
from Lake Champlain was still in the clouds
when this shot was taken. 

This week, and into next weekend, there are frequently chances of more rain and snow.

It's an interesting weather pattern coming up, with a series of storms moving through with air temperatures marginal for rain or snow. This is more typical of late November than late October.

A weather disturbance Tuesday will deposit relatively light rain and snow on Vermont. Probably a quarter inch of rain or less in the valleys, and maybe 1 to 4 inches of new snow in the mountains.

The National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont is watching the interaction with Tuesdays cold weather system and the still rather warm Lake Champlain waters. That could enhance rainfall a bit in parts of the Champlain Valley.  

The instabililty in the air could also trigger briefly heavy bursts of snow in the high elevations.

The next storm comes along Thursday and Thursday night.  Again, temperatures will be marginal, especially over the Green Mountains and eastward. Some places might get several inches of wet snow before a changeover to rain.

Even warmer places like the Champlain Valley might get a little snow out of this before a fairly quick changeover to rain. Stay tuned, because forecasts could change.

Looks like there could be another rain/snow event over the weekend.

Overall, there's a chance we could get another inch of rain and/or melted snow over the next week, which would put a further dent in the drought. Good news.

Something Called Kelvin-Helmholtz Is A Thing Of Beauty

Beautiful Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds over
Breckenridge, Colorado last week. 

A Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud hit the ski resort of Breckenridge, Colorado last week.

Don't worry, everything's fine. The name sounds like maybe a toxic gas enveloped the region, but nope! Kelvin-Helmholtz is a thing of beauty.

The clouds resemble breaking waves in a sea. They sometimes form when air at higher levels of the atmosphere is moving much faster than the layer below it.

The high speed air up top will sometimes grap the top layer of lower lying clouds and form them into wave-like structures.

As you can see in the time lapse of the Breckenridge clouds, below, they're quite beautiful. Especially when you see them at sunset, like what happened in the video.

For those of us on the ground Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds are absolutely nothing to worry about. They are a sign of instability and rough air up above, so airliners and pilots tend to watch out for these.

Here's the video:

El Nino Makes Barren Chilean Desert Bloom Gorgeously

The Atacama Desert in Chili is normally one of the most desolate places on Earth.

It's on the east side of the Andes mountains, and is pretty much blocked from any moisture that wants to sneak in from the Pacific Ocean.

Moisture from places like the Amazon, and the Atlantic Ocean way, way, way off to the east are also blocke by moisture.

So the Atacama desert is barren. It's one of the driest places on Earth. In many places in this desert, you can go years without measureable rain. There are actually little sections of this desert where it hasn't rained in 400 years! 

However, during a very strong El Nino, the kind we are having now, the ocean on the Chilean coastt warms, which encourages particularly strong storms to form near that Chilean coast.

The strong storms then allow some moisture to force its way over the mountains into the Atacama desert, and it will rain a little in parts of what looks like a wasteland.

Then a miracle happens. According to the Bored Panda web site this is what happens in those rare occasions when it rains:

"The flowers 'hibernating' beneath its surface suddenly bloom with an explosion of color, eager to take advantage of the rain.'

The Atacama desert then turns into a flowery psychelic paradise, as the photos in this post from Bored Panda indicate. (Click on the pics to make them bigger and easier to enjoy.)

Daniel Diaz, the National Tourism Service director in Atacama said in 2015, this bloom has happened twice in the same year, whih has never been seen in recorded history.

I'll just enjoy the photos of the flowers, and for once in my life, I'll wish I was in the Atacama desert.

Mike Olbinski Strikes Again With Awesome Storm Time Lapse Compilation

Mike Olbinski strikes again with his new monsoon
storm time lapse compilation. Just awesome.  

I've become a big fan of photographer and storm chaser Mike Olbinski.

Some of his work has already been featured in this here weather blog thingy.

However,  you can never get too much of Mike Olbinski.

He says he logged 48 days and 17,000 miles, mostly in Arizona during the summer monsoon storm season capturing these storms.

He's collected images of the storms into an artistic time lapse compilation that is just mesmerizing to watch over and over again.

This is true whether or not you're a weather geek.

I love how in many of the segments, you can see the thunderstorm microbursts heavily crashing to the ground. I'm sure whoever or whatever was under those microbursts had quite a jolt of wind and rain, to say the least!

He captures the bubbling up of towering thunderheads, strobe light lightning at night that makes you almost feel like you're in a bad 1980s nightclub, and dust storms blasting across the desert landscape.

Here's the video:

Yet Another Gorgeous Time Lapse Of Severe Storms

I found yet another time lapse compilation of severe storms and this one is absolutely gorgeous.

Image from "A Storm of Color", a time lapse compilation
by Pecos Hank.  

It's by Pecos Hank, a full time storm chaser with a great YouTube channel.

In this video, I'm not super crazy about the narration, but the videography is exquisite.

I especially like how Pecos Hank often frames the scene with a human scale landscape or surroundings.

This is just brilliant and beautiful. Watch:

"Perfect" Hurricane Pops Up On Beautiful Satellite Photo

Hurricanes Jiminez, to the right, and Ignacio, to the left
closer to Hawaii.  n

This week, an unprecedented three major hurricanes co-existed with each other in the central and eastern Pacific.

In this post, click on the satellite photo to make it bigger and easier to see. The hurricane to the right is Jimena It has to be the most perfectly formed hurricane I've ever seen in a satellite photo.

Too bad hurricanes can be so deadly. Otherwise, at least from space they are among the most beautiful weather phenomenon you will ever see.

The other hurricane in the photo, northeast of Hawaii, is Ignacio, which gave rough weather to the easternmost islands in the Hawaii chain yesterday.

Hurricane Jimina is expected to turn north and weaken over the next few days. It will miss Hawaii.

Love This Colorado Supercell Time-lapse

Watch this mesmerizing time lapse video of a supercell thunderstorm spinning like a top in Colorado on Friday.

I'm not aware of it causing much in the way of damage, but way cool:

Texas Supercell Was A Gorgeous Beauty

A different view of the Texas supercell than the one
in the video below. This photo is from a passing airliner.
 

Supercell thunderstorms erupted east of Lubbock, Texas on Saturday.

Supercells are pretty much always bad, unleasing large hail, damaging winds, torrential rains and sometimes tornadoes.  

This one was no different, containing all of the above, although the tornado appears to have been really just a funnel cloud that never quite touched down.

Luckily, this storm moved over sparsely populated terrain, so there weren't a whole lot of buildings for the supercell to wreck or people to hurt.

The storm was beautiful, as these often deadly storms are.

The National Weather Service in Lubbock captured a time lapse of the storm from their offices.

It looks like two storms formed, merged, and then blossomed over the Texas prairie. It really looks like some massive series of explosions.

You can see in the video, below, the fast erupting clouds, the anvil top of the storm spreading out, and if you look carefully, the whole storm rotating, which is one of the main reasons the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning on the storm.

Watch the vid:

Though Deadly, Severe Thunderstorms Are Amazingly BeautifulBeautiful Storm...

Severe thunderstorms are forecast today and tomorrow from the Midwest to the East Coast.

Gorgeous storm photography by Nicolaus Wegner.
Time to buy up some of us work, everyone!  

These won't be those classic isolated, but huge supercell thunderstorms you get on the Great Plains in the spring or summer, but instead they will be along a gusty squall line.

Damaging wind gusts are the main threat from this outbreak, but there might be a couple of tornadoes.

This week's storms won't be beautiful, per se, but some severe thunderstorms are, especially when viewed on a wide open prarie.

Watch this video by Nicolaus Wegner as gorgeous proof.

Beauty In Unexpected Downpours

The scattered showers that affected northern Vermont Friday evening were expected, but I'm a little surprised by the intensity of them.

A dark shower cloud approaches St. Albans, Vermont
Friday evening as the setting sun pokes some light
beneath small but intense storm.  

Up here in St. Albans in really poured hard just before sunset. Many other areas north of Route 2 in Vermont saw some brief, heavy showers, too.

A disturbance that made the air a little unstable helped set off the showers. The instability was expected, as were a few scattered showers Friday afternoon and evening.

But a line of showers and storms in southern Quebec late Friday sent a gust of air southward into the instability over Vermont.

The gust from Quebec moved air a bit like you see snow move as a snowplow pushes it. Some of the air kind of went upward as it was pushed into northern Vermont by the Quebec storms.

That line of moving air, and the instability both combined to cause air to rise more energetically than some forecasters (like me!) thought. So the showers were more energetic than they otherwise might have been.

Light from the setting sun undercuts
dark storm clouds in St. Albans, Vermont Friday evening
adding a glow to the falling shafts of rain beneath the clouds.  

Still, they were pretty, as the light from the setting sun shown through the clouds and the narrow bands of downpours, as you can see from the photos I took in this post. They were taken from St. Albans Hill.