Long Spell Of Subfreezing Weather Coming To Vermont, But It Won't Break Records. It's Just Winter

We've got a pretty long stretch of continuous subfreezing 
temperatures and several below zero mornings coming
up in Vermont. This phenomenon is called "winter." 

You might have missed it, but it got a little above freezing in the Champlain Valley for a while on Wednesday.  

That's probably the last you'll see of any kind of quote, unquote thaw for awhile.

Though long range forecasts get more and more unreliable as time goes on, it's possible it won't get above freezing again through the end of the month, or possibly beyond.

Technically, the stretch of consecutive subfreezing days won't start until tomorrow, since it was still above freezing just after midnight this morning.  

(As an aside, Burlington could oddly have two days in a row with highs above freezing and lows below zero. It was 6 below early yesterday morning before the mini-thaw in the afternoon and evening, and temperatures will likely get below zero before midnight tonight).

Such an extended spell of subfreezing weather like the one that's coming up seems like a long time to have no thawing weather, but it really isn't.  Though such long stretches of chilly winter weather have become a little more rare with climate change, they still happen quite a bit. 

Plus, if we're going to have a long stretch of chilly weather, this is the time of year to expect it. Right about now is on average the coldest part of winter. True, the sun sets a little more than a half hour later than it did at the winter solstice back in December. However, the adage is true: As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens. 

There's a month-long lag between the shortest days of the year and the coldest days of the year.  Yes, some  years feature the strongest cold waves of the year as early as mid-December and as late as mid-March, but the depth of winter cold is likeliest now. 

If being in the depths of winter depresses you, think of it this way: It's all uphill from here.  

There's no chance we'll even come close to breaking the record for the longest stretch of consecutive days of subfreezing weather here in Vermont. At Burlington, the longest such stretch was 51 days, from December 22, 1976 through February 10, 1977.

We've had plenty of other subfreezing stretches that were longer than this one probably will be.  Even in "warmer" recent years with climate change taking hold. In 2018, we went 27 days in a row without ever getting above freezing. In 2004, the streak lasted 29 days. 

We're just no longer used to these long subfreezing streaks. Since 2016, the longest below freezing period lasted 16 days. Two winters ago, the longest stretch of below 32 temperatures lasted just five days.  The year before that, the longest below 32 degree period just lasted six days. 

One aspect of our current winter that will have a colder statistic than our  recent winters is the number of days that get below zero.

Back in the 1960s, people in Burlington would on average suffer through 27 subzero days per winter.  Now that the climate is warmer, that annual number of subzero days has declined to eight. 

This winter, then, will be above the "new" average in terms of subzero readings.  We've already had six subzero days this winter and at least three or four more are in the forecast.  At least we probably won't reach the 1960s average, so there's that. 

Some signs are beginning to surface in a few long range forecasts that suggest the very cold weather pattern we're stuck in now might start to evolve into a somewhat milder one once we get into February.  If that happens, we'll have a stretch of continuous subfreezing weather that only lasts a couple of weeks.

If that happens, we'll have a phenomenon in Vermont known simply as "winter."