In 2023, Vermont made headlines for having the warmest year on record, mirroring a worldwide trend full of extreme weather and hotter temperatures.
The state has just blown past that record.
The average annual temperature in Burlington in 2024 was 50.9 degrees — a full degree warmer than the year before, according to National Weather Service data.
Last year’s data is part of a long-term trend of rising temperatures since the weather service began tracking the measure in the 1890s. Vermont was about 8 degrees warmer in 2024 than it was in 1924, the data shows. For context, that’s about the difference between Burlington and Philadelphia’s average temperatures this year.
“Looking at our top 10 warmest years on record,” all of them have come “from 1998 onward,” said Matthew Clay, a meteorologist for the weather service.
The warming trend in Vermont is consistent with international climate scientists’ predictions of human-caused global warming within this century.
Several other weather service monitoring stations in Vermont with more than 20 years of reporting either hit a record in 2024 or had higher-than-normal temperatures compared with previous years. St. Johnsbury had its warmest year since 1895. Montpelier tied for its second-warmest year since reporting began in 1949.
2024 was once again marked by extreme weather events, particularly the statewide flooding in mid-July and Northeast Kingdom flooding in late July. St. Johnsbury hit a record high in precipitation in 2024, in part, because of that late July event.
“They ended up getting that 8 inches of rain overnight,” Clay said of the Caledonia County town. “That definitely drove their higher rainfall total. That was pretty crazy. It just sat over them all night.”
It’s too early to say whether this season’s snowfall total will be lower or higher than average, but Clay said that Vermont has received more snowfall overall as the state warms up — though the data for snowfall is more variable by year.
That could be the result of a lower number of extreme cold days. Clay said Burlington recently broke its record for the longest period of time between below-zero temperature maximums — almost two years. 2024 also had the second-lowest number of days where the minimum temperature dropped below 0.
Those colder days don’t typically produce much heavy snowfall, so fewer extremely cold days could translate to more snow, Clay said.
“When you’re 10 degrees below outside, if you’re getting any kind of snow, it’s the diamond dust — just like, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, little flakes,” he said. “It’s never going to accumulate to anything.”
Of course, snow falling doesn’t always translate to snow on the ground. Burlington received 16.5 inches of snow in December 2024, an inch above the 30-year average. But the city only had 5 inches of snow depth throughout the month, 3 inches below average, thanks to thawing-and-freezing cycles.
That thawing and freezing pattern has led to extreme weather concerns as well. The state had a major flood event in December 2023 and minor flooding in December 2024 thanks to rain and snowmelt. Just a week ago, Montpelier was forced to use wastewater to prevent an ice jam that was caused in part by thawed ice.
Clay said the lack of extreme cold could also mean more cloudy days. “We have a saying here in the office, ‘when it’s clear in the winter, it’s cold.’”
Data from over the past 25 years appears to show that the number of overcast hours per year in Burlington has risen. But changes to the way cloud cover has been tracked make it harder to establish a long-term trend.
Read the story on VTDigger here: 2024 was Vermont’s warmest year on record — again.