Major Temperature Contrasts Spell Stormy U.S. Trouble For Upcoming Week (Vermont, Too!)

5:30 PM SUNDAY UPDATE

Sheets of ice from Friday's freezing rain, sleet and hail
slowly melt and slide off my roof in St. Albans,
Vermont on Saturday. Mild weather should 
continue for a few days, with a potential big
storm by around Thursday.

Little change in the forecast since this morning, but it looks like winter will make an appearance later this week and possibly last awhile.

All indications are we should see a good thump of snow on Thursday. There's still the possibility of mixed precipitation of course.

Somebody will probably get a very nasty, damaging ice storm out of this. But, fingers crossed, at this point the worst ice

looks like it might be very roughly along a Buffalo, New York to southwestern New England line, 

Obviously, that forecast could change pretty dramatically. Stay tuned.

Of course, I don't want anybody to have a damaging ice storm, but, selfishly, I'd rather it not be in Vermont. 

After the storm departs around Friday, it's looking like we'll have the coldest weather since the brief Arctic outbreak on February 3-4.  This one won't be as bad as that, but some of us could easily go below zero at the end of the week or the beginning of the weekend. 

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Hang on to your hats. Another round of weird weather extremes is about to hit the U.S. This includes widespread record warmth, severe weather, tornadoes, widespread snow and freezing rain, and strong winds.   

We here in Vermont will be included in some of this fun. More on that further below. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's get started. 

RECENT RECORDS 

Before I get into the upcoming weird week, I have to touch on the weirdness of this past week. 

As I said in previous posts, we had our share of record highs last week in Vermont. At Burlington we managed to get to 33 degrees just before midnight Saturday. That brings us to 14 consecutive days that got above freezing, quite an incredible streak for a Vermont February.  

Tuesday or more likely Wednesday will be the first subfreezing day since February 4.   

Elsewhere, several cities hit all time record highs for the entire month of February. They included 70 at Kingston, Rhode Island and New Bedford, Mass; 71 in Islip, New York and Groton, Connecticut.  New York City had its warmest February overnight low on Thursday, only dipping to 58 degrees. 

By the way, after record warmth in Vermont Wednesday and Thursday, Springfield, Vermont managed to eek out a record high of 49 degrees Friday before the icy cold front reached them. 

All this has led to a premature spring in the East, which will probably end in a destructive freeze sometime in March. Daffodil shoots continue to grow at my house in St. Albans, Vermont, barely a 20 minute drive from the Canadian border. Magnolias are blooming in Washington DC. Honeysuckle and lilac leaves are beginning to sprout as far north as New York City. 

Such extreme early signs of spring does make one worry a bit more about climate change. 

EASTERN SPRING GETS WEIRDER

This dangerously early spring will continue. Record warmth is likely in much of the eastern U.S. outside of New England later this week, which will just be sort of warm-ish for the season.   

The whole weather pattern is setting up to feature big temperature contrasts, which are a recipe for storms. Some of which could possibly be dangerous. 

The warmth coming up in the Southeast looks like it will be just wild. Temperatures are forecast to reach 90 to 95 this week in much of Florida, which could break all time records for the month of February. Normal highs in central Florida this time of year are in the mid-70s.

Temperatures later this week could get to 80 as far north as Virginia. 

One forecast map out of many for Thursday. The 
idea shows a wide ranging, coast to coast storm'
to cause a variety of nasty to dangerous 
weather, including here in Vermont. 

There's been a ridge of warm high pressure over the Southeast pretty much all winter. This brought a mostly springlike winter for most places east of the Mississippi River. That "heat ridge" will intensify further this week. 

Of course, it is winter, so it's cold north and west of the the Southeast heat ridge. 

That has led to a parade of storms that have unleashed repeated severe weather and tornado outbreaks near the Gulf Coast, repeated winter storms in the central and northern Plains, and our own weird misery of rain, mixed precipitation and warmth here in Vermont. 

While the Southeast bakes, record lows should hit parts of the West Coast this week. This big, big contrast means storms. 

We are looking at a big storm to form in the middle of the week. Big at least in the size of the area it will cover. Snow will fall mid to late week from Washington State across the northern tier of states all the way to Maine. 

Somewhere just south of that, it looks like a broad stripe of freezing rain and sleet will extend from the Plains to New York, Pennsylvania and New England. Or at least near those places, give or take. 

The storm will generate yet another round of severe storms and tornadoes in the Deep South Wednesday and possibly Thursday. Strong winds will blow in large parts of the Midwest, Plains and Rocky Mountains. 

The weather is really going to be in the national news later this week. 

VERMONT EFFECTS 

It looks like the Green Mountain State will escape any major weather until about Thursday. At that point, things look like they'll get interesting to say the least.

Before we get there,  we've got a couple little storm systems to deal with. Neither will mess up your life too much. 

The first and weakest of the storms comes through tomorrow. It will just spit out some valley rain showers and maybe some snowflakes in the mountains. Look for less than an inch of snow up high, and enough rain to barely wet the ground in the lowlands.

Another, slightly strong storm is scheduled to zip through west to east Tuesday and Tuesday night. Again it'll be warm, so we'll see some rain and snow showers.  The storm's cold front Tuesday night might produce brief, somewhat heavier snow showers. But this won't be a tremendous storm, either.

Then the potential biggie.

Remember that large zone of record heat building in the Southeast?  The incoming storm will cause a big rush of that super heated air to start flowing northward. Meanwhile, dense, cold air will build up in Quebec. 

We won't feel that record hot air. Instead, it will be forced to glide up and over that dense cold air. Rising air means precipitation. Since the air is so warm and coming in such a rush, and that cold air will create such lift, we have some potential to see some heavy precipitation of some sort. 

Problem is, we're not sure yet exactly what will fall out of the sky.  

The early thinking is it'll start as a thump of pretty heavy snow, followed by a surge of sleet and possibly freezing rain. Then it would flip back to snow at the end late Thursday or Thursday night. 

That's just an early guess, though, and this storm could still turn out much differently than that.

We don't know how far north in Vermont the mixed precipitation will reach, though it seems most likely in southern parts of the state. There's a decent chance of at least some of us seeing a good six inches of snow or more. Maybe even much more. But we don't know the ins and outs of that, either. 

We also don't know if the weather in Vermont will get as weird as it did Friday, with those sharp temperature contrasts, thunderstorms, hail, ice and whatnot. 

As we get closer to the event, meteorologists will surely, gradually iron out the details. At this point, if you have travel plans, I can tell already that Thursday will not be your day.