Strange Spring Day Unfolding In Vermont Today

Nasty Sunday morning in Vermont with gusty chilly
winds, cold rain and melting snow. Forecasts indicate
it will turn springlike, almost gorgeous this afternoon,
we'll see. Also a slight chance of an isolated, strong
thunderstorm late in the afternoon too! 

 The weather gods are throwing just about everything at us today, and you'll see the character of today's weather changing frequently, almost hour to hour.  

The common denominators by the time it all ends this evening is warmth, wind and just a slight chance of an isolated severe thunderstorm. I'd add there's a fairly high bust potential with the storm forecast.

We also have changes in the forecast for Monday, too, so let's get into it. 

The day started off raw, cloudy and gusty, typical gloomy March. A slug of rain was coming into Vermont from New York as of 8:30 a.m. It's warm enough so that none of this will freeze, which is nice. But it will be kind of a stormy morning with that rain around.

The Champlain Valley might be "shadowed" from the rain by the Adirondack Mountains, so some places there might not get much.  We'll see how that plays out. 

Unlike the impression I left yesterday, it looks like this batch of rain will move out pretty quickly and some sun will burst out at times this afternoon.  It will actually be spring like later today, believe it or not. 

Trends have gone a bit higher for temperatures with those partly sunny skies this afternoon.  Montpelier is now likely to break its record high of 55 degrees. Burlington's record high for today's date, 61 degrees, was set way, way back in 1894 and is easily among the oldest daily record highs on the books. That record could be challenged today 

But wait, there's more! 

I told you last night there was a low, but not zero chance of some unseasonable severe thunderstorms today.  That's still in play as NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has us in a marginal risk zone for severe weather today. 

A cold front is coming in from the west. The scattered sunshine might help form some showers and thunderstorms along the front, which would move into Vermont late this afternoon.

Some of these storms could grab some high speed air from aloft and bring it down to the surface.  That would create isolated reports of wind damage.

The storms will be hit and miss and not everybody will see any showers this afternoon.  It'll be a broken line of showers and storms, so one town would get a brief one, while the next town over gets absolutely nothing at all.

It won't be like those snow squalls last Sunday, which were a solid line of storms that swept across the state. 

The National Weather Service in South Burlington suggests that ice covered Lake Champlain might help stabilize the air, which would in turn suck some of the life out of the storms as they leave New York State

I'll also note there is a bust potential in this storm forecast.  It's possible the atmosphere won't get its act together at all, and perhaps no showers or storms will form, or very isolated, brief ones.  l . It's an iffy forecast, so we'll see.

This same storm caused a surprisingly nasty tornado outbreak in Iowa on Saturday.  I'll have more on that in a separate post later this morning. 

Once that front passes by late this afternoon and evening, we'll see some gusty west winds for a time, especially in New York State.  It might be a bit gusty in parts of the Champlain Valley and a few places on the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains as well.

MONDAY'S STORM 

That cold front coming through today is still expected to stall a little to our south, with a new storm riding northeastward along it. 

Forecasts for this not-so-strong storm have trended a little northward, so it looks like most of us will less snow and mostly a cold rain with it. It'll still end with a little snow Monday evening, but that won't amount to much.  Rainfall with this thing will be somewhere near or a little less than half an inch, but locally more than that in higher elevations. Nothing extreme. 

Between the very warm temperatures today which will cause fast thawing of the snow, the showers today and the rain with Monday's system, rivers will rise. Forecasters still don't expect much in the way of flooding, as there just won't be enough rain to make things overflow.

But there's still some ice and ice jams out there, so there's still a risk of some local problems with that between now and Monday night.