Nasty Storm Due In Vermont/Northeast Thursday Night And Friday

The snow is too deep for little Henry the Weather Dog
to explore the backyard, so I dug a series of paths
through the snow so he can at least sniff around in
some places. A late week storm looks like it
will melt most of this snow, so Henry might
once again get an opportunity to go anywhere
he wants in the yard. 

The upcoming break from the relentless chill we've endured this month is not going to be a nice one. 

It's going to get stormy. 

It's a little soon to give you exactly what will happen Thursday night and Friday, and exactly when they will happen. Whatever we get, you're definitely going to notice it.

But it looks like we have a lot of rain, wind and then a sudden freeze and a little snow to deal with in that episode. 

Before we get there, we will manage a quiet weather interlude with a warming trend. 

Low temperatures this  morning were chilly, but much warmer than forecasts from a few days ago anticipated.  Instead of subzero weather, we had lows in the upper single number and low teens east, and low 20s in the Champlain Valley. 

It won't warm up all that much today, but readings in the upper 20s to near 30 aren't terrible, at least. Still a tad colder than average, but manageable. 

South winds ahead of small storm passing far to our north should bring in clouds and maybe few light snow showers north. In the Champlain Valley, those might even mix with sprinkles as warmer air comes in By warmer, I mean high in the 30s to near 40 in the warmest valleys. 

STORM BUILDS

Then we get into Thursday. South winds will increase, especially in the Champlain Valley as we begin to feel the effects of a strong storm approaching us from the west. 

This thing will have a nice feed of warm. wet air ahead of it, which will eventually engulf us late Thursday night and Friday. 

The timing of this has slowed down from previous forecasts, so now it looks like the worst of it won't come through until late Thursday night and Friday. 

It's too soon to know precisely how much rain will fall or how windy it will get. We'll have that information in a day or two. 

Broad brush, it appears we might have at least a half inch of rain, and maybe up to or even over an inch in spots. We could even hear a rumble of thunder thrown in. The storm will be that dynamic. 

All that, combined with snowmelt, will have us watching the rivers. So far at least, nobody is expecting a major flood, but it's still ironic that at least a little flooding is possible given parts of the Vermont are still technically in a drought. 

The next question is winds. The gales will howl a few thousand feet overhead. But we don't know yet how much those high speed winds would mix down to where we live. In fact, for awhile, protected valleys might not have much wind at all during the rain. That's a recipe for dense fog in this situation, so that's another consideration. 

Some time during the day Friday, the storm's strong cold front will come through. Temperatures should start to crash Friday afternoon, and all that water will start to freeze. We also don't know whether there will be a burst of snow at the tail end of the storm. Another unknown is the precise hour or hours the colder air blasts in on Friday. 

Again, we'll get that defined more in the coming days. 

After the thaw, it looks like it will stay cold most of the time though the end of the month. There will be occasional brief warmups as quick-hitting systems come through, but we in northern New England will ,mostly miss out on a warm weather regime that will embrace most of the U.S. in the days around Christmas. 

As for a white Christmas in Vermont, even if all your snow melts with the storm Thursday night and Friday, there's still a chance that a couple small storms could deposit a little snow by the big day.