Lousy Stuck Weather Pattern To Unstick, Then A Much Better Stuck Weather Pattern To Hit

A burst of sunlight lights up a landscape of dark clouds
early this morning in St. Albans, Vermont. Our stuck, wet
weather pattern is scheduled to be replaced by 
another stuck, but better weather pattern. 

 Springtime for some reason is peak season for stuck weather patterns. 

The flow in the atmosphere often gets tangled up, and you end up with basically the same weather for days. 

What you end up with is usually luck of the draw. Sometimes, you get stuck in a wet, dreary pattern, other times you're "stuck" with brilliant blue skies in warm temperatures, like we had in mid-April. 

Last week, we were stuck under a showery regime, as low pressure to our northwest kept us unsettled. But at least we had long breaks of partly sunny skies in which we could get things done outside. That pattern untangled last Friday, only to get us stuck in a new spell of wet weather. 

This week's long spell of wet weather has been worse than last week, I suppose. The showers have been more frequent. The sun has been more scant. But we can look on the bright side. The core of the coldest air with this stuck pattern has been off to our south and west, in the Great Lakes and central Appalachians 

Some of those areas got quite a bit of late season snow out of this. In Vermont, we avoided frozen precipitation. Unless you include snow on the mountain peaks and pea sized hail accompanying heavier lower elevation showers. 

Now some good news: Over the next couple of days, this current regime will become unstuck and move on.  Quick on its heels will be another stalled weather pattern that will be.........not bad!

Big high pressure will settle in near Hudson Bay, Canada starting this weekend and continuing through most of next week. Low pressure will stall far off in northeastern Canada.

This will set up a pretty persistent northwest flow of air over us. 

On paper, this looks a bit ominous, but in reality, it won't be hard to take at all. 

In the winter, with this kind of pattern, it can stay pretty cold, with subzero temperatures.  You'd think with this set-up, we'd get some late season freezes and basically an end to spring, with frost-ruined gardens and such. 

NOT  this time, though.  Most of the snow has melted in central Canada and the high pressure isn't from the Arctic. It's pretty mild under that system. 

So, air temperatures through our next stuck weather regime will be pretty close to normal.  That means highs most days will make it into  the 60s, with possibly a 70 degree day or two thrown in for good measure. Lows are forecast to be in the mid 30s to mid 40s. Sure, there might be a touch of frost some nights in the coldest hollows, but that's perfectly normal and fine for this time of year. 

One bonus is there will be a fair amount of sun this weekend and next week. We won't always have crystal clear skies, but we'll definitely see enough sun to keep you - and the garden flowers and the pollinators happy.  

 Little, moisture-starved disturbances and weak cold fronts will keep coming down on us from Quebec during this upcoming regime. That might touch off a few periods of clouds and some widely scattered light showers. But the vast majority of the time will be dry, so you can get out in your yard and enjoy.

It's actually good that we've gotten all this rain and it's so soggy out there. That moisture will help us get through at least a week of mostly dry weather. 

The one negative in all this is the black flies. They are AWFUL this year!!!!!  I'm hoping the northwest breezes that will accompany the weather this weekend and next week will be strong enough to help keep those dreadful little buggers at bay.