Climate Prediction Center Predicts Above Average Start to Summer

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Created on Wednesday, 11 May 2022 19:30

Written by Robert Koenig

VERMONT - The Climate Prediction Center recently released its 3-month outlooks on temperature and precipitation across the United States. This outlook paints an idea as to which areas have the best chance of being above average and below average for that time period. 

This is a commonly misread map because of this, as most people don't pay attention to that detail. In keeping that in mind, we can look at the temperature outlook for the Northeast and it clearly shows a 40% chance of being above average for most of the state of Vermont during this time. This means that overall we're trending towards a slightly warmer than average beginning to summer heading into this year. 

A national look at the temperature outlook shows a high probability of above-average temperatures as you head out west through parts of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. This big area of probability once again doesn't mean that we'll see temperatures well above average, it instead means that we'll have a good chance of seeing temperatures above average. The other thing to note is that nowhere in the lower 48 do we have any spots that have chances of being below average. This further enforces the warming pattern that we've been seeing not only in the state of Vermont but Across the entire country.

Before getting to the precipitation outlook, I wanted to first talk about the drought monitor for the region. If you remember back to this time last year, most of the state was actually under a moderate drought. Compare that to this year, and we've managed to stay out of a drought for most of the state for the past few weeks. There is part of the Northeast Kingdom that is considered abnormally dry, but this will be something to continue to monitor heading throughout the summer months.

The precipitation outlook for the region doesn't really bring good or bad news. At this point, it looks like the next couple of months look to remain close to average in terms of precipitation for our region. Further south through parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio have a better chance of seeing some above-average precipitation amounts, which is good for parts of the Virginias as they're also seeing parts that are abnormally dry. While it's not great that we don't have an increased chance of additional precipitation over the region during this time, it's good that our chances of precipitation aren't lower than average.

At the national level, the drought situation continues to get worse in parts of the western United States. There are wide areas across the county that are seeing extreme if not exceptional drought conditions. Most of these places that are in the higher-level droughts have also been dealing with a drought for a while now, in some spots well over a year. This part of the county desperately needs the rain, especially with the wildfires that keep sparking and burning in these areas.

I wish the outlook was better, but it appears that things are only going to stay on the dry side for the western half of the United States, with much of the area under an increased probability of seeing below-average precipitation for the first few summer months. This outlook only continues to exacerbate the situation in that part of the country and will be something to watch during the summer as it could lead to an increase in wildfires and an increase in smoke in the atmosphere. Overall the trend of the summer for the United States appears to be a warm and dry one, with less of a risk of being dry for Vermont more specifically.