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| A band of fairly heavy snow showers approaching St. Albans Vermont late Sunday afternoon, ending what had been a fairly springlike day. A weird weather pattern for late this week has meteorologists scratching their heads trying to figure out what kind of weather that would bring to Vermont. |
At Burlington, the recent warmth has outpaced the cold in the early days of the month. January is now running a little warmer than normal. At least through the first 11 days.
I still think the month will end up at least a little colder than average, based on signs we see in the upcoming weather patterns.
But it won't get cold immediately.
After those blustery snow showers late Sunday afternoon and evening, temperatures cooled into the teens overnight.
Which is still not bad, considering it's the middle of January. It'll get up to near 30 this afternoon. About normal, give or take.
A weak disturbance will come through this afternoon, spreading some flurried in northern valleys and some light snow in the mountains. The northern Greens could pick up couple inches out of this. Again, no biggie.
Next, it will temporarily warm up again.
A WEIRD "DIP"
A kind of weird weather pattern should start to appear tomorrow.
A narrow, sharp southward dip in the jet stream is setting up in the eastern parts of the United States and Canada. The base of the dip will start out over the Great Lakes and slowly move east.
The dip, known as a trough, is sharp and narrow, and the whole body of it will only slowly shift east. Those facts really complicate the forecast.
This type of set up usually sets up a sharp temperature grit fadient from east to west. Warm air to the east quickly gets frigid as you go west.
Storms love these sharp temperature differences, so we know the weather will get unsettled for us because of it.
At first, since the center of the trough will be well to our west, we'll be pretty mild. Weather systems will go hy to our west, too. So for Tuesday and Wednesday, we're pretty confident it will just be cloudy and mild in Vermont. Nothing extreme, but still warm with highs in the 30s to lower 40s in the warmer valleys.
There might be some snow showers, and valley rain showers around, but - once again - no biggie. As you can see the first half of this week is pretty tame.
That temperature gradient will slowly slide east with our trough. Remember how storms like temperature gradients? They also like to form near coastlines, as their supply of moisture becomes close to perfect.
It's pretty clear some sort of storm will form somewhere late in the week. Maybe in New England? Off the coast? Inland? Down in the Mid-Atlantic States? Southeast Canada?
Will the storm become strong? What would it mean for us in Vermont, if anything?
As you can tell, we absolutely have no answers to these questions yet.
At first, a couple days ago, it looked like the cold air would blast into Vermont on Thursday. That still might be true, but we're not sure. It could come in early in the day, or late.
That would determine the type of precipitation we get, if we get any. No promises, but if we get anything, it looks more likely to be snow. The best I can say today is late week snow accumulation will range from a trace to two feet. Though two feet is really, really unlikely.
That shot of cold air, once it gets here late in the week, doesn't look too terrible. Maybe it'll bring us highs in the teens and 20s and lows in the single digits. Manageable for January.
Other outbreaks Arctic air from Canada loom after whatever happens at the end of this week. The next Arctic blast after that would probably get here next week, and it'll probably be colder than the one that hits late this week.
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