Snow Cover, Terrain Cheated Champlain Valley Out of A Gorgeous Spring Day Today

Bare ground around Bennington, Vermont helped 
temperatures warm up to 61 degrees there Wednesday afternoon.

 You start to get these days in March. Where it really warms up and you think spring is on the way. 

It was 61 degrees in Bennington. Rutland was 55 degrees. Even in northern Vermont, Montpelier managed to reach 50 degrees. All these readings were warmer than forecast. 

The Champlain Valley, though, was stuck in the low 40s all day. Though that's not terrible, the Champlain Valley is usually a banana belt region of the state, Is usually not the ice box of Vermont. What happened?

It was mostly a mix of snow cover and terrain.

The snow is pretty much gone in Bennington. Around the valley floor in Rutland, the snow cover is  patchy at best. In the Champlain Valley, there's certainly bare patches. But there's still quite a bit of snow on the ground, and parts of Lake Champlain are frozen. 

The Montpelier area still has quite a bit of snow on the ground. But the chillier air hugging the ground in the Champlain Valley couldn't quite make it over the mountains to Montpelier, so even they were relatively warm. 

Several thousand feet above us, winds were from the south today.  That warmed the atmosphere, making it possible for low elevations in much of Vermont to warm up. Especially where snow cover is lacking. 

Bare patches are forming, but snow cover in the northern
Champlain Valley was one ingredient that helped
that part of the state stay chiller than the 
rest of Vermont. 

Meanwhile, dense cold air hugging the ground in Quebec was able to easily flow southward into the Champlain Valley. 

It was partly the weight of this dense air that prompted north winds that pulled the chillier air into the space between the Adironadacks and Green Mountains in northern Vermont, 

Strong March sun would have heated bare ground, helping to beat back the cold air from Quebec. 

But the snow and patches of lake ice reflected the sun's heat to some extent, so the northern Champlain Valley could only reach the low 40s. 

It was still nice, but it was not the gorgeous snow melter that at least I hoped for. 

The snow cover outside my St. Albans, Vermont home is interfering with outdoor work I want to get going on. Today's insistence on relatively chillier air is, in my worst moments, has me thinking the snow cover here in permanent. (Not really) Especially since we have a chance of more snow this weekend. 

This cold dense air might have some implications late tonight as the next storm moves in. As I noted this morning, the precipitation should be exclusively rain. But lingering cold, dense air could open the door for a bit of freezing rain in the pre-dawn hours Thursday. 

This won't amount to much, and stiff south breezes should scour out the cold-ish air out of the Champlain Valley by daybreak.