Long Cold Spell Settles Into Vermont After Our Icy Storm

In this map, the dotted red lines over Greenland
and northern Canada represent comparatively 
warm air squashing colder air southward
into souther Canada and the northern United
States. The solid lines show the general 
air flow that is roughly northwest to
southeast towards us. This map is a prediction
for early January. Click on the map to 
make it bigger and easier to see.

 We're done with our ice storm here in Vermont. we're back to our regularly scheduled cold winter weather. 

The gusty overnight winds materialized, which caused new spikes in power outages overnight, but as of this morning, things are back under control. A little over 100 homes and businesses were still without power in eastern Vermont as of 8:30 a.m.

Now, it's going to just stay cold and rather dry for a long time. The cause of this upcoming frigid, bland weather pattern takes us to Greenland. And northern Canada. 

Yes, Greenland again. Or at least the air flow over the top of this huge, frigid pile of ice in the Arctic.  

It's called the Greenland block or negative Arctic oscillation. Basically. a huge, balmy northward bulge in the jet stream, or high pressure oozes over Greenland, and often continues into northern Canada. That's what's happening now. 

The high pressure up in the Arctic means they'll have oddly warm weather. At least toasty by their winter standards. The bitter cold of the Arctic under a negative Arctic oscillation gets squashed southward into southern Canada and the northern United States. 

Sometimes. this negative Arctic oscillation is accompanied by a separate northward bulge in the jet stream over Alaska. This creates a jet stream that originates in Siberia, then races southward through central Canada into the United States. That would delivery horribly unwanted packages of extreme, perhaps record cold to our neck of the woods.   

The incredible, record cold in Vermont we saw in January, 1970 and December, 1989 was brought to us by this nasty, Siberian pattern. 

However, we're in luck this time. Instead of the northern bulge in the jet stream over Alaska, there's a bit of a southward dip up there. We'll still be cold, because, remember, the cold Canadian air that usually hangs out in the high Arctic has been squashed southward to where we live. But the developing weather pattern won't give us access to that awful, gelid air from Siberia.

The end result will be a steady diet of colder than normal weather for us in Vermont. It means we'll frequently have days with highs in the teens to low 20s. Overnights on some nights will be near zero. But at least we should at least mostly avoid those old fashioned, terrible nights when we suffer in temperatures down in the 20s and 30s below. 

Thank gawd for small wins. 

There might be some brief squirts of slightly milder air ahead of some of the relentless parade of cold fronts. But those mild moments only mean seasonably chilly air. The bottom line is we should prepare ourselves for a nippy era of boring weather for the opening days of the New Year. 

These negative Arctic oscillation episodes tend to get "stuck," meaning that they don't go away easily. So we could be trapped in this cold weather for perhaps two weeks. Maybe more. Sometimes these patterns can last a month or more. 

Sometimes, this weather pattern can also mean a lot of snow for us. But that usually happens when there's a northward bulge in the jet stream in Alaska. The jet stream plunges south toward the Gulf of Mexico, picks up moisture, then goes up the East Coast as nor'easters. 

But we don't have that northward bulge in the jet stream in Alaska. So, we'll have a roughly northwest to southeast weather pattern. A  series of weak weather systems that would come through every couple of days, throwing bursts of light snow and flurries at us. 

Usually, this setup does give the mountains unspectacular but decent snowfalls to the ski areas so that's a good thing. There's always a chance one of these disturbances could do something weird and give us a nice big dump of snow. But for now, I don't see it.  

This winter has so far been more rough than we've gotten used to in this age of climate change. That trend will probably continue into January.