Rinse And Repeat: Your Weekly Round Of U.S. Severe Weather, High Winds, Wildfires And Rains

A little dusting of snow around my garden shed early this 
morning. That will melt in a flash. Unlike much of the 
nation, Vermont will have another fairly benign
weather week. 

 It seems like a weekly ritual lately. We get to Monday and the nation is gearing up for a big storm. 

Each time, the storm triggers dangerous wildfires in the Plains, severe weather and tornadoes in the South, gusty rains in the East and winter weather around the Great Lakes. 

Buckle up, folks as we're going to do the same exact thing this week. The timing of each event is about the same as past weeks too.

We start the first half of the week with the fires, then the severe weather mid to late week, and we close out the week with rainy weather here in Vermont.

As always, there are subtle differences between the storms. Let's go through them:

WILDFIRES

The wildfire risk out in the central U.S. looks like it might be more widespread and long lasting than a lot of the recent events.

You can see signs of that today, given the huge area under high wind warnings and wind advisories across the northern half of the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest today and tomorrow. 

Those strong winds will be edging out into the Plains starting today and ramping up tomorrow, and dry winds are expected all week. Eastern Wyoming is under the gun for fires today.

From there, it looks like most of the Plains states are under fire risk daily through Saturday, though conditions might be briefly better on Friday.  This has been a remarkably active winter and spring for fires on the Plains

SEVERE WEATHER

Today marks the start of a four-day period of severe weather and tornadoes in the South once again. Although this will likely be no mega-outbreak, but the persistence of it over several days will rack up the damage once again in the South.

These will be the same places hit by the last three weekly storm outbreaks. We'll start with today with severe weather in a band from northern Texas through Louisiana into Mississippi. Today's threat will be mostly high winds, but there could be a few tornadoes embedded in this mix.

Tomorrow's fun will go from southern Louisiana and Mississippi through Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. There's a somewhat better chance of tornadoes there than in the severe zone today.

Wednesday, a large area of the Southeast is a risk for damaging winds and tornadoes, and that risk moves to the immediate East Coast Thursday.

On top of all this, there should be scattered areas of flooding with particularly heavy thunderstorms in the South, and some snow in the northern Plains and northern Minnesota.

VERMONT IMPACTS

As has been the case with these weekly storms, the impacts on Vermont won't exactly be scary. Let's break it down: 

Many of us woke up to a dusting of snow on the ground today, left behind from a weak disturbance that wandered through overnight. Be on the lookout during this morning's commute for patchy freezing fog which could abruptly cut visibility and create a few icy patches.

The snow will melt in a flash today with partly sunny skies and temperatures well up into the 40s. 

Tuesday is pick of the week, with partly sunny skies and temperatures up into the lower 50s.  More clouds will arrive by Wednesday, with maybe a little rain south due to a small storm scooting by to our south ahead of the main action. 

At this point, it looks like Thursday and Thursday night could bring us a decent slug of rain, which we could actually use, despite the mud underfoot. Early projects call for a half inch to an inch of rain. 

But there's lots of moving parts to this system, so the forecast will need refining.

Then it's relatively cool and somewhat showery weather for us Friday and Saturday. At this point, it looks like this storm will produce almost exclusively rain for us, except up in the mountains toward the tail end of the storm.