Big Storm Update: Not So Fast With The Winter Plunge

Still looking at a big storm early in the week over
the Northeast. This map is a forecast for Tuesday morning.
Notice the storm is 

A couple days ago, I mentioned a large storm was coming for early in the week.  That's still happening,.

However, the plunge into winter I advertised for just after the storm isn't happening after all. At least not as quickly as I originally billed it. 

The overall set up is pretty much the same as it's been with this thing.  Pieces of energy from the south and north will merge into a strong storm that will move north from the Southeast into the Great Lakes. 

That will produce a bunch of snow in some parts of the upper Midwest, and a lot of wind and rain for the East, including here in Vermont. 

We've been stuck under clouds and damp air for a few days now, and that state of affairs continues today.  At least it's a little warmer than average for this time of year. We might break out into some peeks of sun Sunday, hut that won't last long with that storm I mentioned that's on the way.

We'll get a decent slug of rain Monday.  The orientation of the storm will probably bring some strong downslope winds to the western slopes of the Green Mountains.  Late fall and early winter seem to be the peak time for these sometimes destructive wind storms along the west slopes of the Greens, so I'm not surprised. 

In this case, not everything is coming together to produce a super wild wind storm.  So there might be a period of strong wind gusts in some areas, it won't be as bad as some of the more epic storms, and probably won't last as long as some we've had in the past. 

Since, we'll be on the warm east side of the storm, we're in for a quick squirt of very mild air for this time of year. Temperatures could actually rise toward 50 degrees overnight Monday, and maybe reach 60 degrees Tuesday before the storms cold front sweeps through in the afternoon. 

The record high temperature for the date Tuesday in Burlington is 64 degrees, so chances are we won't be far off from that mark. 

There will still be showers around Tuesday, especially as that cold front comes through. Total rainfall from the storm looks decent but not excessive. Maybe a half inch to an inch. 

There's actually still some drought conditions in most of the eastern two thirds of Vermont, believe it or not, so this rainfall will offer some needed additional help. 

Here's the big change in the forecast from a few days ago: .This big storm doesn't look like it will be able to "grab" as much cold air from Canada as originally though. 

So, late in the week, the weather will be close to average for this time of year (highs in the 30s to near 40, lows in the 20s to near 30).  There might be some snow and rain showers around starting Tuesday night and lasting the rest of the week, but this won't be a huge deal. 

There are some signs another large storm would affect the Northeast in about 8 days or so.  It's way to soon to know how this storm will develop, and whether we get rain or snow or something else out of it. 

And of course, there's always the chance that storm might not develop as robustly as some of the computer models are suggesting. However, at this point, this second storm might do a better job of grabbing and locking in the colder winter air here in the Northeast, which would give us a somewhat postponed plunge into winter. 

We shall see!