Avalanches And A Back-Door Warm Front? Quiet Vermont Weather, With Embedded Weirdness

Things are frosted over from yesterday's snow this
Sunday morning in St. Albans, Vermont.

 Now that the latest storm has ended in Vermont, this will be a "flurried to death" week, in which pesky light snow will continue to bless or harass us, depending on your perspective. 

The vast majority of the snow showers all week will be up in the mountains. 

AVALANCHES?

This morning, outdoor enthusiasts are no doubt stampeding toward Vermont ski areas, back country areas, ice cliffs, cross country trails, snowshoe paths, snowmobile trails - you name it. Since it hasn't been a great winter for such activity, who can blame all these people?

However, the National Weather Service Office in South Burlington just had to be a bit of a Debbie Downer regarding this. They're warning of back country avalanche dangers in parts of the Green Mountains and Adirondacks. 

By the way, I'm not complaining about this avalanche alert. The NWS office is wise to give us that heads up. 

The type of snow we had yesterday, on top of pre-existing snow cover in the mountains, has left steep slopes pretty unstable. 

Hikers, snowshoe enthusiasts and ice climbers should probably stick to marked trails and avoid those steep slopes and areas just below them where snow can rush down. 

Avalanches in Vermont are by no means as extreme as they are out West, but they do occur and do injure people and endanger lives. For instance, six Vermont Army National Guard members were injured in a 2018 avalanche near Smugglers Notch. 

By the way, if you are planning some safe snow fun in Vermont, you won't be limited to today. 

THE WEEK AND (SORT OF) BACK DOOR WARM FRONT?

The weather pattern for us this week will  be dominated by what's going on up in Canada. Huge high pressure will be sprawled over the middle of the giant nation to the north. Big storms will spin somewhat aimlessly off both coasts of Canada.  

The National Weather Service caution to outdoor 
enthusiasts in the Green Mountains to watch out
for avalanches sounds like the work of 
Debbie Downer, but they do have a great point. 

This arrangement will ensure that storms coming across the United States from west to east get shoved southward, so they'll miss us here in Vermont.  We'll get some sunshine out of this on Monday, which will probably be the only bright day of the week. 

It will be a cloudy week here in Vermont because the storm off the east coast of Canada will send little bits and pieces of energy southward into northern New England. The strongest one will probably come through Tuesday,

That'll be the coldest day of the week. It probably won't even make it to the freezing point in the afternoon. Frequent snow showers give the mountains a good shot at a few inches of snow, and the valleys could see an inch or two. 

That disturbance on Tuesday is being driven by warm air wrapping around the big storm off of Nova Scotia, then heading southwestward toward Quebec and northern Maine.

So yes, that's sort of a wrong way warm front.  Almost all warm fronts move from southwest or southern to northeast or north.  This one is heading toward the south and west. It might not technically be a true warm front, but it is a definite weirdness to keep us weather geeks engaged. 

Vaguely warmer air will have arrived by Wednesday. The second half of the week will feature continue cloudy skies, occasional snow showers, possibly mixed with raindrops in the valleys.

The mountains will be flurried to death, as I mentioned. They won't see much new snow on any give day. But one to three inches daily for four or five days does kind of add up. Valleys won't see much at all.

Dustings at night will melt during the afternoons. (except on Tuesday!) We'll see a situation in which valleys actually lose a small portion of their snow cover while the mountains make gains. 

The next chance of any more substantial storm would be next Sunday. But at this point, nobody has any idea what kind of storm it would be, if it even hits at all.