Climate change is accelerating by the decade in Vermont, and the state is not the climate refuge it has long been considered, University of Vermont researchers now say.
That’s one of the key findings from the third Vermont Climate Assessment, released Friday.
As a whole, Vermont is warming faster than the global average. Southeastern Vermont is seeing the most rapid change — that part of the state is on average almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 1900.
That translates to roughly 32 fewer inches of annual snowfall than in 1960.
The climate assessment pools weather and climate data from around the state to present a snapshot of change in Vermont. It relies on a mix of local and federal data, ranging from anecdotal ice out dates on local ponds to trends in how humid the air is. (It is getting more humid.)
Since the last assessment was released in 2021, Vermont has seen catastrophic flooding twice followed by the worst drought on record in 2025.
These compounding disasters — all of which scientists say were exacerbated by climate change — cost farmers roughly a third of their annual income, left more than 8,000 people living in homes with mold and water damage, and damaged some 1,000 local businesses.
Almost half of Vermonters rely on private wells for their drinking water, and in 2025 600 of those wells ran dry. The same year, half the farms in the state didn’t have enough feed for their animals. Dehydrated, hot cows produced less milk. Hydroelectric dams made less electricity, pushing the regional electric grid to rely more heavily on costly, climate-warming fossil fuels.
“Adding the last five years of data, the 2000-2024 data, really clearly illustrates those extreme weather events and what some people call climate whiplash — movement from almost year to year between way too much water and way too little,” said lead author and UVM climate scientist Gillian Galford.
Where the last assessment emphasized that Vermont’s climate is changing faster than expected and made stark predictions about the viability of skiing and farming and other industries based on global emissions scenarios, this report emphasizes that climate change is making life here far more chaotic and rendering a future that’s harder to predict.
For example, the growing season may be on average 24 days longer now than it was in 1900, but unpredictable frosts and early spring dry spells are making it harder for farmers to capitalize on the longer shoulder seasons.
Meanwhile, people and infrastructure, the researchers say, are simply unprepared for the changes they are encountering.
Burlington, the state’s most populous city, now sees triple the days above 90 degrees it did in 2020, and southern Vermont now sees about two weeks worth of these very hot, humid days a year. This trend is accelerating faster than predicted in the last climate assessment. But just a third of Vermont households have access to air conditioning.
In the past, Vermont’s abundant swimming holes and lakes offered people free refuge on the occasional very hot day.
Now, all that hot weather is making the water warmer — the surface of Lake Champlain is now on average 7 degrees warmer than it was in the 1960s, which fuels toxic cyanobacteria blooms that regularly close the only beaches Burlingtonians can walk to. In rural Vermont, extreme rain events blow out swimming holes and pump pollutants into rivers, making them dangerous.
“When it's that hot, it's really dangerous for our outdoor workers to do their jobs, for kids to have outdoor playtime,” said Jessica Balerna, another author. “Hot days correlate very strongly with emergency department visits in Vermont.”
Vermont is continuing to see more extreme rainfall. This trend is accelerating fastest in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, which was hit hard by flash flooding in 2024.
Just as public health officials in 2023 were telling flooded out Vermonters to open their windows and let their waterlogged homes air out to prevent mold, the state was inundated with wildfire smoke and extreme heat — prompting them to issue the opposite advice.
“Vermont is not a climate refuge as once believed,” Galford said. “Our aging infrastructure, aging population and rural mountainous geography make us more vulnerable to climate impacts.”
There were some bright spots. The prior assessment predicted skiing might not be viable by the end of the century absent dramatic action to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. But this new one suggests a future dominated by variability, of boom or bust cycles of drought and snow and rain. Vermont is seeing more winter rain, but the researchers expect ski areas to have the water they need for snowmaking.
