Rainy, Foggy Christmas Week Unwelcome In Vermont During Oddly Warm December

We've had a lot of rainy days and nights in Vermont this
month, like this scene in downtown St. Albans, Vermont
on December 10. Another unwelcome rainy spell is hitting
tonight through Thursday. 

 Early this morning, fog blanketed much of the Northeast, including Vermont. In some places, it was freezing fog so there might be a slick patch or two on the roads until  mid-morning.

 At least you might have caught a glimpse of some very pretty frost on the trees left behind by the sub-freezing mist.

At least before all that melted.  

It was a warm and rather dark Christmas Day in the weather department, and that trend is going to continue most of the week.

 I almost wrote "moist of the week" which is actually a pretty accurate description, too. Which is unfortunate for vacationers wanting  ski week in Vermont.

The ski areas are all of course open, and they made snow when they could. But it's not like there's deep powder anywhere. 

I suppose the best day you'll have for winter recreation is today.  After the fog lifts this morning, it'll be cloudy, but rain-free. Temperatures will be very warm again for the season, reaching the 40s. Even at most of the ski ares. 

Next up is a long lasting, complicated period of wet, inclement weather for us. It'll be rain, even up on the mountain summits,  until possibly toward the end of the week when a little snow might mix in. We shall see.

The root of all the wet warmth in Vermont this week is a large, swirling upper level low in the middle of the nation. It's the one that is causing a blizzard and ice storm in the central and northern Plains. 

Rain should spread into Vermont this evening, continue overnight at least off and on through Wednesday and probably Wednesday night. At first it'll be spottier the further north and east you go, but by Wednesday afternoon, everyone should be into a soaking rain again.

But not that soaking. Unlike the last storm, which causes serious flooding across Vermont and the rest of northern New England, this one won't be nearly enough to cause any serious worries. Rivers will probably go up a bit, but not hit flood stage.

Even if this storm ends up surprising us with more rain than forecast - like the last one did - we still don't really have much to worry about with flooding. We won't have nearly the amount of rain we did a little over a week ago. 

The exception to the no flood forecast might be Lake Champlain. The rain and runoff could push it toward or even minor flood stage of 99.5 feet by later in the week.  Above 99 feet, the lake can cause problems with waves, erosion splash-overs, especially on windy days. As we well know, it's often windy this time of year.  

When it gets below freezing the waves and splash over can ice over nearby roads, which is what happened last week. 

But that's a problem for a few days down the road.

As the large whirl in the atmosphere keeps slowly drifting toward the south and east toward the southeastern U.S. coast, it's kind of hard to tell how it will interact with other weather disturbance passing by to the north of it. 

In general, it will start to turn cooler, but not abruptly cold Thursday into Friday.  Some lingering rain and/or snow is a good bet on those days, but at least as far as I can tell, it's pretty hard to tell at this point how much. 

But at least the mountains have a shot at regaining a little of the snow lost last week and during the war, rainy spell we're getting into now.

STRANGE WARMTH

For now, the main oddity of this whole storm system is how warm it is. Daytime highs won't get anywhere close to recor highs. But following a trend we've seen all this year, really, nights have been and will be strangely warm this week - well above freezing. New records for highest minimum temperatures will probably be set. 

The temperature at Burlington rose above freezing at 10 a.m. Saturday and will stay above 32 degrees until later Thursday night at the earlier.  Nearly six continuous days above freezing in the depths of winter! 

For comparison, record lows in Burlington this time of year are in the 20s below zero. 

 At a time of year when subzero temperatures are routine, the coldest it's gotten so far in Burlington is a comparatively balmy 14 degrees. It looks like that will be the chilliest temperature this entire month. It's a very rare December that fails to get into the single digits above or below zero at least a couple times.  

The only December that compares to this was the bonkers warm month of December, 2015, which is by far the warmest on record. 

It looks like this December will end up being Burlington's second warmest and second wettest on record, but I'll have the final say on this when complete stats for the month are available on New Years Day. 

 Temperatures will be closer to normal  heading into the New Year and during the first week in January, but not downright cold. I'm sure we'll have a spell of frigid, subzero cold eventually, but so far, it's not in the cards for awhile, anyway.