Some Record Highs, Some Cold, Some Rain, Some Wind, You Name It

Another example of how a warm week can change the look
of your surroundings. Part of my St. 
Albans, Vermont yard last Saturday.........

 I hope you enjoyed spring yesterday before the big cold front arrived on schedule. 

Plenty of record highs were set yesterday on both the West and East coasts in two zones of mild weather. Vermont even managed to get into the act. Montpelier tied its record high for the date at 50 degrees, and Springfield edged out a new record high at 49 degrees. 

Today, in a stripe from Virginia to southern New England where temperatures were in the upper 50s and low 60s yesterday, they're getting a few inches of snow. This snow will miss Vermont.

We're not expecting much in the way of snow here in Vermont. It's just cold.  Temperatures were a full 40 degrees colder this morning than they were yesterday at the same time.  And it will stay cold through Tuesday.

It's February, you have to expect that. 

We'll keep talking about a complicated storm that's due the second half of the week here in Vermont with a wide variety of weather.  We also don't know exactly what kind of weather just yet.

.....and the same exact view this morning. Saturday was
the fourth day in a row with temperatures in the 40s,
at least until a sharp cold front chilled us down
very quickly in the afternoon.

We do know it'll begin with a sharp warm up and a blast of strong south winds on Wednesday and Wednesday night. We'll need to keep an eye on those winds as they might actually be strong enough to be damaging in a few areas.

By Thursday. it looks like we could be warm enough to threaten record highs as the wind continues to roar.  

We'll probably lose most of the remaining snow cover in the valleys and there might be a few issues with ice moving in rivers, possibly causing a few jams.  We'll watch that, too.

The National Weather Service in Burlington is also noting that what happens Thursday night and early Friday is tricky. If the storm stays to our west, we stay warm and rainy.  If it goes right over northern or central Vermont, then low level cold air bleeds in, especially toward the Champlain Valley. 

If that happens, we're looking an another ugly batch of ice and schmutz in those areas. Luckily, the storm will zip right along, and we'll get into typical mid-February conditions by later Friday.