Late Week Storm System Not Weird, But We're No Longer Used To That Sort Of Thing

For the first time in ages, weather forecasts are calling
for a fairly substantial storm in the Northeast, which
would bring badly needed precipitation. This
map is one interpretation of how the storm 
might look like on the weather charts Friday morning. 

 In a normal Vermont November, we gradually slide into winter, with each storm featuring a little more snow and schmutz than the time before. 

This transition also usually features a lot of iffy forecasts that could go one way or another, snow, or rain, or ice, depending on locations just miles apart.

We've had such a dry, storm-free autumn that we never got a chance to get into practice for this sort of thing. 

Which means we now face an actual storm later this week that could bring an actual mix of fairly substantial precipitation. 

I'm not complaining. We sure need the moisture, and we'll take it however we can get it. 

There's questions as to what form the precipitation will take. After all, it's the end of November, so anything can happen. Early bets are mostly rain in the valleys and a tossup in the mountains on this one. Forecasts on the storm will certainly change and shift one way or another by the time it hits beginning Thursday.  

And this isn't even going to be a blockbuster storm by any means. Just a typical thing you'd expect around now. Still, we're in for what might be a fair amount of rain. And some snow. Whatever falls from the sky, it will be the most precipitation we've seen in at least five weeks. It might even be the most we've seen since late September. 

Bring it on.  

THE SETUP 

What will become ingredients for the storm was causing an outbreak of tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and flash flooding in parts of Oklahoma and northern Texas this morning. The parent storm causing that will head northward and eventually fade.

But the energy isn't going away. At first, it will look like that original storm's cold front will weaken and fall apart as it approaches the east, like so many such fronts have done this autumn. 

Remember that energy, though. The storm will stall in the upper atmosphere above the Great Lakes and spawn a new storm somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic States. That would move north into New England Thursday.

That will cause a decent slug of what I think will be mostly rain throughout the region. Finally! Something to squelch the wildfire risk. This won't be enough to put a huge dent in the drought, but at least we get something. 

The storm will get drawn into that slow moving upper level storm. That whole thing will slowly shift eastward from the Great Lakes into New England, continuing the unsettled weather through next weekend. 

This system won't have huge amounts of cold air to work with. But it is the end of November, so it's not hard to get snow, at least in the mountains. 

At times, the snow could venture into the valleys. 

We don't know the extent of any snow just yet, but the ski areas look like they're in for several inches next weekend. 

The early guess on this suggests Vermont could see a good inch of rain and/or melted snow out of this storm. So not bad, really. This storm should affect the entire Northeast, so the super dry zones in southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic States should be dancing with joy in the cold rain by the end of the week. 

I do see hints that even after this storm departs, we might see a more active weather pattern. That would at least give us a shot at a few more bouts of rain or snow to close out the month and head into December. 

We could sure use it, so bring it on.