Vermont Weather Week Ahead: Back To The Longest "November" Ever: Warm-ish And Gloomy

Still cold this morning in St. Albans, Vermont, but at
least there's some blue sky.  Sunshine has been an
extremely rare commodity this winter. 

 We've got a day or two of actual winter weather left in Vermont until we return to our ridiculously long stretch of November-like weather. 

You know, the warm-ish, gloomy stuff that set in around the end of October and has never really left except for just a handful of brief exceptions.

It took a massive outbreak of Arctic air to flood the nation to make us seasonable cold here in Vermont.  In the grand scheme of things, it hasn't really been that cold. Many of us are not even seeing any subzero chill around here.

That massive Arctic outbreak is now decaying and getting ready to leave the United States. There's still trouble with a brewing ice storm in Arkansas.  Freeze warnings and wind chill advisories were still up in northern and central Florida this morning. 

Warmer Pacific air is now starting to make its way across the Lower 48. We'll feel that here in Vermont as the week goes on.

TODAY AND MONDAY

We're still on the cold side of that decaying Arctic high pressure, so most of us will stay in the teens, to possibly near 20 today. That's still a little chiller than average but by no means ridiculous for January.  It's also turning nice and bright out there, too. For a change. Despite today's nippiness, the sun will make it seem a little happier. 

Enjoy the sun today, and perhaps part of tomorrow, because it's back to the persistent clouds, gloom and mild temperatures we've had for almost all of this winter after that point. 

Tonight should get into the single numbers again, with a few spots below zero east of the Green Mountains. West of those mountains, temperatures should start to climb late tonight, and it'll be 32 by afternoon.

MONDAY NIGHT/TUESDAY

Temperatures will stay mild Monday night, and peak again Tuesday morning. The warming trend looks like it will get briefly cut off at the pass Tuesday morning by a bit of a cold front from Quebec. Temperatures should fall back through the 20s for most of us.

BEYOND TUESDAY

Starting Tuesday we'll be stuck in a warm, moist southwest airflow that guarantees warmth, at least for this time of year, lots of clouds, and some mostly light precipitation. It'll start as light snow, turning to a wet snow, and finally an unpleasant rain for most of us.

It'll be occasional, light stuff Wednesday through Friday, with big gaps with no precipitation at all. Daytime highs Wednesday through at least Friday will be in the upper 30s to a few low 40s.  It'll be a little cooler than that in the mountains, though, so perhaps most of the precipitation will come down as snow up there. 

The real story will be the nighttime lows during this spell. It seems that -  especially for the last year or more - toasty nights have been the most pronounced part of most of the warm spells we've gotten.

That'll be the case here. In the warmer valleys, especially the Champlain Valley, it could stay continuously above freezing from Wednesday morning through most of Saturday. That means three nights in a row have a shot of seeing record warm minimums for the date.  Record high minimum temperatures in Burlington currently for Thursday and Friday are 37 degrees, and 36 degrees for Saturday.

It'll eventually turn colder, of course, at some point. We're still in January here. Long range forecasts hint at some pushes of Arctic air moving southeastward from central Canada into Quebec.  Though long range forecasts are big time subject to change, so far, those cold blasts will only give us in Vermont glancing blows, with central and northern Quebec taking the brunt of the subzero, frigid Arctic air.

January is pretty much guaranteed to be yet another warmer than normal month in Vermont.