Worthless Snow Flurries/Brief Seasonable Cold In A Vermont Snow Drought

The sun sets amid snow flurries and seasonably cold
temperatures in St. Albans, Vermont on Tuesday. Yesterday
and last night were a brief return to more traditional winter
weather before milder air floods back in again. 

 St. Albans, Vermont was one of the snowiest places in Vermont on Tuesday.

That, however, is saying practically nothing. 

Most of Vermont enjoyed partly to mostly sunny skies on Tuesday. However, parts of northern Vermont, including much of the upper Champlain Valley, spent the day stuck under clouds and snow showers. 

Which was sort of nice, I guess, for people who are antsy about the snow drought afflicting Vermont in this warm winter. 

The snow showers in St. Albans accumulated to almost an inch of fluff, which by this morning has surely compacted to less than half an inch. This leaves us with about an inch of snow on the ground.

That's paltry to say the least, but more than a lot of places across the Green Mountain State.

Other than mountain peaks, the most snow on the round I saw in National Weather reports Tuesday was five inches in a high spot in Greensboro. Almost everybody else only had nothing to three inches, if they were lucky. 

This morning turned out to be seasonably cold, too.  It got down to at least 9 below in Island Pond, minus 1 in Morrisville, 8 below in Saranac Lake, New York. In Banana Belt Burlington, it got down to 11 above.

In other words, just a routine January morning in the North Country. 

However, after the extreme warmth that lasted since after Christmas, it felt downright frigid this morning. 

The warm weather will surge back in, though, giving us another snow to rain scenario Thursday afternoon and night, with some ice mixed in east of the Green Mountains.  After a seasonable weekend, it looks warm next week, too. 

I do see some uncertain signs that we might actually finally enter real winter at the end of this month. The jet stream over the Pacific Ocean which has been driving storm after storm into California looks like it wants to weaken. 

If that happens, the storminess in California would diminish, as would the flood of warm Pacific air from coast to coast in the U.S. This, in turn would allow cold Canadian air to push south into our neck of the woods. 

There's no guarantees on this, of course, but for people who enjoy winter, it's a glimmer of good news. For those of us who aren't as enthusiastic about winter, we got quite a break, so don't complain. 

Here's a video of the weak attempts of a winter comeback in St. Albans on Tuesday. As you can see, there were pretty fluffy snowflakes, but it wasn't exactly a blizzard. The video shows those thin winter clouds  couldn't exactly unleash a snowstorm. It was a pretty lame attempt at winter. 

Click on this link to view the video if you can't see the image below. Otherwise, click on this image to view the beauty of a lame winter. Slo-mo snowflake clips included: