The Inevitable Slide Into Winter Continues

TONS of frost on my truck early this morning in St. Albans,
Vermont. I had the luxury of waiting for the sun to melt it
off later in the morning rather than having to scrape
all that ice away.

 I couldn't believe how thick the frost was on my truck, and basically everything else outdoors this morning in St. Albans, Vermont.

It was clear and calm overnight, and temperatures fell to their lowest levels yet this season. Most of us were around 20 degrees, with teens in the Northeast Kingdom. So, I'm sure you were spending a lot of time scraping the ice off your car this morning. 

All this is not unusual for this time of year. And t could be a lot worse. Two years ago on this date, we had record low temperatures in the single numbers, with a few places below zero. 

Still, the slide toward winter continues.  I see the first mentions of sleet and freezing rain in northern New England forecasts this morning. 

Before you panic, if there is any mixed precipitation in Vermont this evening, it will mostly a problem in the Northeast Kingdom. There is a winter weather advisory now up for Essex County in extreme northeast Vermont for the risk of a little sleet and freezing rain to ice up the roads.  

There are also winter weather advisories in northern New Hampshire and northwestern Maine for mixed precipitation tonight, so watch it if you're headed that way. 

For the time being, the weather pattern is very active, and as we head toward the end of Thanksgiving, winter weather hazards will be part of our lives off and on. That's our lot until at least March, of course.

The next storm in this active pattern is coming through tomorrow. That bit of rain this evening in the north is due to a warm front coming through. Temperatures will actually rise overnight for most of us.

That is actually another sign of winter. The sun is weak now, and in the winter, and weather systems are stronger. That means warm and cold fronts can overpower the influence of sunshine or night time darkness.  Warmer air flooding in will make it get toastier as the night goes on.

What comes up, must come down. It'll be a warm Thursday morning, and quite windy, with gusts to 40 mph in the Champlain Valley.  Rain will come in with a cold front in the afternoon, and temperatures will drop again starting in the mid to late afternoon.  

By then and on Friday, we're back to our usual November regime of cloudy skies, and snow showers, with accumulations pretty much limited to higher elevations.

Things are still looking pretty stormy early next week in this active pattern.  The forecast is still evolving so a lot of it is guess work at this point. 

The initial part of the storm should go by to our west Monday, keeping us warm enough for rain. But will a second storm form along the coast and give us accumulating snow Tuesday and Wednesday? It's possible, but we still have no idea.

In any event, there is some potential that the storm could be big enough to disrupt airline flights in the Midwest and East at the beginning of the week. Since that will be the big travel week of the season, with Thanksgiving at all, it could have a ripple effect across the nation with travel if worse comes to worse.

That's winter in Vermont. It will keep you guessing.