A Few Warmish, Rainy Vermont Days To Interrupt Vermont Winter, But Will It Last

The freezing fog seen in the background of this photo
taken Friday frosted these trees near Fairfield, Vermont.
The temperature inversion that created the fog is 
breaking up, allowing for a few days of thawing
around Vermont before colder air returns for the New Year.

 As expected, there've been a few little sprinkles of freezing rain here and there in Vermont early this morning, so there might be slick spot here and there on the roads until temperatures rise above freezing most places this afternoon.  

The temperature inversion that has caused freezing fog, cold valleys and warm mountain summits much of this week is finally breaking down. The inversion's last gasps are helping create freezing sprinkles. 

This afternoon's thawing temperatures mark the start of an interruption in our relatively cold winter so far, at least compared to recent ones. 

Expect a few days of thawing before winter roars back in the New Year. 

The main event come Sunday afternoon into Monday as a warm storm blows in from the south.  This storm looks destined to cause what might end up being a nasty tornado outbreak in the South today. (I'll have a separate post on that issue later this morning). 

Up here in New England, we won't have anything nearly as dramatic as tornadoes, but if you have a thin snow cover, you're about to lose it temporarily. And if the snow is kinda of deep where you are, it won't be all that thick by the time the New Year starts. 

Once it gets above freezing this afternoon, it'll stay there in many parts of Vermont until sometime on New Year's Day or night. (A few place, especially in eastern Vermont, might dip briefly below freezing at night between now and then).

That storm should send a wave of rain through Vermont and surrounding areas Sunday afternoon and night, with more to come for at least part of Monday. Despite the rain and the melting snow, it doesn't look like flooding will be a real threat with this. 

Monday will probably be the warmest day we've had in awhile, and the warmest day we'll have for some time to come.   Many of us should make it to 50 degrees that day. 

However forces are gathering, weather pattern changes are coming that could make January colder than we've gotten used to in recent years.  I'm not talking coldest ever by a long shot. It probably won't even be as cold as January, 2022, which was a chilly exception to our recent run of warm winter months. 

The upcoming pattern looks like it might stay persistently chilly well into January, perhaps all the way through the month, if the iffy NOAA three to four week outlook comes true. 

This doesn't look like it will be another mild winter, given how this December wasn't particularly mild and January's long range forecasts don't exactly look tropical. Unless February gets ridiculously warm.

In the shorter term, another fairly modest storm scheduled for New Years Day will mark the transition back to winter cold.  That storm will probably start as rain and end as snow.  Even valleys could get a bit of replacement snow from that one after the thaw we're about to see. 

Whether our colder pattern in January leads to a lot or a little more snow during the month is a coin toss, frankly. It depends on the paths of the various storms that typically buzz around in the winter.  They have to be just right to give us deep snows. 

 At least we know there will be some snow around in January, even if we lose what we have in the next could of days