Relentless Cold December Weather Shows No Sign Of Breaking For Weeks

Winter tossed down a few more snowflakes in St.
Albans, Vermont this morning. We're stuck in a
pretty intense cold weather pattern and there's
no real end in sight. 

I'll give you the grim news straight up:

We here in Vermont are locked in an awful, cold weather pattern, one with super-unusual persistence and one we are completely unused to, since recent winters have been so warm.

I feel like a doctor giving a bad diagnosis. But this is just cold winter weather, not something life-changing. It's all about perspective. 

In fact, though some of us are dreading the uncomfortable cold, the claustrophobia of not wanting to go outside and the high heating bills, other people are far less gloomy. I imagine a lot of people here in Vermont are cheering the prospect of continued great early season skiing and riding, and the prospect of one of the earliest starts to ice fishing season in recent memory. 

THE SETUP

In hindsight, we could see the first hints of this near-constant supply of cold air from Canada back in late October.  The pattern kept getting its act together more and more in November. Finally, now that we're in December it's a full blown Arctic weather regime. 

It's now looking more and more likely that we're stuck in the cold air perhaps through December at least. 

Sometimes, once a frigid pattern like this gets set up in the winter, you can't dislodge it for weeks and weeks. The last time we got into a stuck pattern like this, it lasted from mid-January to about early to mid-March, 2015.

Even then, the cold pattern of 2015 didn't completely break dow until around April Fool's Day. 

Sometimes, these patterns shut down abruptly. An extreme example came in late November and December, 1989.  That December turned out to be by far Vermont's  coldest on record. Then the pattern flipped.  January, 1990 ended up being the second warmest on record

The bottom line is, we don't know whether this is just a December thing, or something for the entire winter. My gut tells me January and February might not be quite as much on the cold side, but who knows? We'll see.

All we know is we'll generally be in this cold regime for at least the next two weeks. After that, the forecasts get very, very fuzzy.  

Not all outbreaks of cold air will be as intense as the one we had Thursday and Friday morning, which brought Vermont its coldest December weather in 36 years. But it will be cold most of the time. 

This is a case in which climate change is sort of our friend. True, we'll have some days that are much, much colder than normal, even by the chillier 20th century measure. But since the world is warmer than it was decades ago, chances are most of these blasts of frigid air won't be as intense as they would have been 50 or 100 years ago. 

This type of weather pattern is usually dry. Typically, you get a series of Alberta clippers that throw down an inch, two, maybe three inches of snow each time they come through. Each Alberta clipper introduces another shot of horribly cold air. 

Sometimes, snow lovers can get lucky in these cold patterns. Every once in awhile, one of these Alberta Clippers can hook up with a wetter storm to the south. They combine to form a nor'easter that can dump a lot of snow. 

Also, every once in awhile, a rogue storm might also go by to our west, giving a brief interlude of  relative warmth and mixed precipitation before the deep freeze resumes within a day or two.

 SPECIFIC FORECAST 

We're getting a semi-break in the cold today, as highs in the low 30s. That's still a little colder than average for this time of year, but not by much. There were some snow showers around northern Vermont this morning but they didn't amount to much. Some sun is working its way through, so today's your day for winter sports fun. 

The cold returns tomorrow, and that intensifies tomorrow night and Monday. Highs will be in the 20s Sunday, which is about ten degrees colder than average. 

A reinforcing shot of cold air Sunday night will throw down an inch or two of snow, maybe a tad more in the mountains as it comes through. 

It'll be in the single numbers by the time you get up Monday morning. The snow will be pretty much over, but of course the roads won't be perfect quite yet. After high temperatures only in the teens Monday, most of us in Vermont will get below zero again Monday night. 

It looks like a pair of those Alberta clippers will then come through next week, one on Wednesday and one on Friday. 

Instead of coming right at us from Alberta, these storms look like they'll  take a curving path down into the central Plains and southern Great Lakes, then head northeastward toward us.

That will enable each storm to pick up a little extra moisture and a bit of warmth. That could mean we get moderate snowfall out of each, and maybe some rain or an icy mix thrown in with them. It's too soon to know for sure, so we'll need to keep an eye on them. 

The second clipper seems to want to introduce a massive Arctic air outbreak that will arrive in the northwestern Plains Wednesday, then spread through most of the eastern two-thirds of the United States thereafter. 

That frigid air would arrive in Vermont Friday right after the second storm passes.