Winter And Spring To Battle It Out The Next Few Days

Looking wintry still with a relatively thin layer of snow
in my yard and around my shed in St. Albans, Vermont.
Thawing tomorrow will get rid of a lot of that snow,
but will more come back early next week?

 The well-advertised roller coaster weather pattern is about to arrive in Vermont, which means we'll have a little bit of everything.  

We're pretty much through the unseasonable cold that we had yesterday morning. 

A couple more subzero readings popped up this morning in the normal frigid spots, places like Island Pond for instance. But most of us managed to stay in the upper single number to low teens for this morning's lows.

It'll get into the low 30s this afternoon. That's still a bit chilly for early March, but not too bad.

Next up, we're in for a minor shot of winter ice tonight, then a warm surge, March winds, maybe even a springlike rumble of thunder, followed up by an indecisive storm, torn between two seasons.

We're still expecting a little ice overnight tonight, but it won't be especially widespread or nasty.  That warm front is still coming, but most of the precipitation will stay north into Quebec.

Northern Vermont is  mostly the target for a light mix overnight, especially east of the Green Mountains, so there will be slick spots on the roads. You know the drill.

Tomorrow, we get another quick taste of spring. We'll be solidly in the warm air ahead of that storm going through the Great Lakes. Many cities along the East Coast will probably have some record highs tomorrow, but I'm dubious about Vermont's chances of setting any new records. 

In Burlington, for instance, the record high Sunday is 61.  It'll get into the 50s, but clouds, rain showers and an approaching cold front will probably keep it from getting too warm. Montpelier has a shot at a record high since their mark tomorrow is 55 degrees. 

It'll also be another windy day as gusts reach 40 mph or even a little more in a few locations. At least it will be too warm for blowing snow, right?

The cold front itself could be a bit interesting. The parent storm is pretty dynamic, which is why severe storms and possible tornadoes are in the forecast for Iowa today. 

This cold front could give us another hint of spring in the form of  low chance of thunder with the cold front. 

In fact NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has an early season marginal risk for severe storms in northern New York tomorrow between lakes Ontario and Champlain. Marginal risk means there's a risk of an isolated, brief severe wind gust with the thunderstorms. Still, it's awfully early to be talking about that kind of weather in the North Country. 

The air will be more stable tomorrow in Vermont. The cold front will probably produce some gusty showers, but nothing severe. 

The rapid snow melt and relatively light rain could cause a few new problems with ice jams on rivers tomorrow, but nothing widespread seems to be in the cards.

NEXT STORMS

Forecasters still expect a couple more storms to ride northeastward along that cold front that will come through Sunday. The cold front will run out of gas temporarily a little to our south. 

That means we'll be to the north of those waves of moisture, the colder side. In the winter, that almost always means snow. But we're into March now.  Sometimes, by this time of year, the cold air is lacking.

So it looks like we're in for a rain/snow mixture, with mostly rain in southern Vermont valleys. It will end as snow Monday night for all of us as slightly colder air bleeds in, but accumulations won't be spectacular. Current guesses are in the one to three inch range.

Average early March weather is expected for the rest of the week, until some sort of storm comes at us next Friday. It's too early to say what kind of storm it would be if it even affects us at all.

March weather patterns tend to be active, though, so you can expect almost anything this time of year.