Meteorological Winter Going Out With A Bang, Including Here In Vermont, With Mon Evening Frzg Rain/Flood Update

A rather colorful National Weather Service home page
this morning means active weather and a lot of alerts
and warnings for wide areas of the nation. 

UPDATE 5 p.m. MONDAY

As expected a few minor updates to the forecast in Vermont tomorrow and tomorrow night. 

The good news is the threat of freezing drizzle in the northern Champlain Valley tonight has diminished so the winter weather advisory is suspended there.

The bad news is a winter weather advisory for freezing rain has been issued for tomorrow afternoon and night for Vermont east of the Green Mountains. 

Low level cold air will be coming in out of the northeast even as warm air flood in aloft.

This sets the stage for freezing rain tomorrow afternoon and night, especially in protected valleys.

West of the Green Mountains, that warm air coming in aloft should be able to partly mix to the surface so it will be too warm for freezing rain. The drawback to that in the Champlain Valley is this mixing sets the stage for possibly another quite windy night. 

Later Tuesday night, temperatures will abruptly warm well into the 40s to low 50s everywhere in Vermont as a warm front makes it through. The combination of moderate rain and melting snow, plus existing ice jams has prompted the National Weather Service to extend flood watches to all of Vermont, not just southern and central sections.

Wednesday will start off quite warm, but temperatures will fall all day back toward winter levels. 

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Meteorological winter, which is what climatologists regard as winter for their record keeping, runs from December 1 through February 28.  

Which means we're coming up on the end of meteorological winter, and it's going out with a bang. Storms are hitting most of the nation this week with a variety of hazardous weather. Nasty shots of cold air will hit most of the places hit by these storms. 

Some record low temperatures are anticipated this week in parts of the northern Plains, Rockies and California.

Here in Vermont, we'll share in the storminess, but the really cold air is postponed until about a week from now. More on all that after the overview, as usual. 

The National  Weather Service home page map is very colorful this morning, which is a bad sign. Lots of colors means lots of warnings and alerts for lousy weather. 

Central California's color is light blue, to warn of the freezes coming this week. This cold snap could cost a lot of money in the agricultural Central Valley.  Unseasonably warm weather earlier this month coaxed a lot of plants and crops to start growing and blooming too early. Now, a freeze is likely for three nights this week. 

What California really needs is some good soaking storms, but that's still  not in the cards. At least they'll get a little snow and rain over the next couple of days, which I suppose is better than nothing. 

Meanwhile, a long stripe of winter storm warnings extends from western Montana to western Wisconsin.  Up to 18 inches of new snow is expected in central Minnesota amid cold temperatures.

Lovely Fargo, North Dakota expects several inches of snow over the next day or two while temperatures remain continuously below zero and gusty winds add a nasty wind chill and blow the snow around into a ground blizzard. 

Further south in (temporarily) warmer air, flooding is once again about to erupt in and around Kentucky. That state has had the roughest winter imaginable. It started with the record intense outbreak of tornadoes back on December 10, and since then, they've had a series of winter storms and floods. The flood event in Kentucky this week looks fairly serious. 

To add insult to injury severe thunderstorms and possibly a couple tornadoes are in the cards for much of the South today and tomorrow, including in Kentucky. 

VERMONT'S ACTIVE WEATHER

We won't be immune from a variety of interesting weather here in Vermont this week, with a wide variety of conditions planned.  It won't be record breaking, but conditions will keep us on our toes.

The busy week began yesterday afternoon and evening, with another round of strong winds, especially in the Champlain Valley and higher elevations. Some places gusted past 50 mph.

The National Weather Service office in South Burlington reached 48 mph Sunday.  Yesterday was the fifth day in a row there with gusts to at least 39 mph, so yes, it really has been quite windy lately. 

The winds have diminished somewhat, in time for new weather issues.

A winter weather advisory is up for areas north of Route 2 mostly for later today and tonight. A weak cold front is sagging south through Vermont, and that will touch off patchy freezing drizzle in that neck of the woods. 

There won't be much ice, but once again it can make the roads tricky, as has so often been the cas this schmutzy winter.

Next up, another windy, rainy period tomorrow and tomorrow night as the next storm rips on by just to our northwest.   There won't be as much rain as last time, maybe a half inch or a little more in many places as opposed to more than an inch last Thursday night. 

But, rivers are still elevated from that storm, ice jams and still in place and there's more snow to melt amid the warm temperatures. So flood watches are up with this one for southern and central Vermont. 

Temperatures will crash during the day Wednesday, setting us up for a cold Thursday and a likely snowstorm Friday. 

The snowstorm on Friday doesn't look huge.  It's a little early to guess at accumulations, but since it will be a quick mover, I'm supposing it'll be in the four to six inch range for many of us. That initial stab at a prognostication will see adjustments as we get closer to the event.

The air immediately behind that storm will only be a little below normal, but there are signs of an Arctic blast starting next Monday that could send Vermont temperatures below zero for the first time since early in the month.   

Video:

More gusty winds in St. Albans, Vermont last evening as a very windy month continues. Click on this hyperlink to view of you don't see the video image below on your device. If you do see it, click on the red arrow, then the YouTube video