Perfect day to be inside baking something, in my opinion... maybe not exactly what you had in mind. But for me, this was one of those sit inside with your flashlights at the ready, and a batch of cookies in the oven (hoping the power doesn't go out) kind of night.
Rain and wind were the 2 weather headlines for our Tuesday. Our Sky Tracker forecasts called for 1-2" of rainfall region wide and wind gusts for most residential zones to near 40 mph, with the mountaintops seeing winds over 60 mph. Let's see how we did... it's verification time!
Winds:
Well, it depended a lot on where you were. I have to admit, I didn't see a leaf move all morning, until I came to work which is higher in elevation from where I live. Steve Glazier alluded to a tricky wind forecast in his blog from Monday morning. There was a very strong core of winds over 50 knots down to about 2000' elevation. The question was, would this mix down to the valleys? By mix down, I mean that literally. The air needs to mix around so the surface air mixes with that higher wind speed air in the higher elevations. We managed to do that in many spots. Maximum wind gusts region wide were mostly on the order of 20-35 mph, with more localized gusts 35-50 mph. (see images on the left, click to enlarge). The highest wind speeds recorded on Tuesday were indeed at the mountaintops...Mt Mansfield, Vt registered a 77mph gusts and Mt Washington, NH clocked a 72 mph gust.
As for rain, we overshot by about a half in inch as a whole. Most rainfall totals ranged from .50"-1.50", with locally up to about 2" in some parts of southern VT. With that, there is not much concern for flooding at this time. The smaller creeks and streams will get noisy tonight as the levels come up some, but nearly all should stay within their banks.
