A Couple Reasonable Vermont Days, Then Gusty Icebox

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm having emergency eye surgery today. I will be fine, but you'll notice I'm posting infrequently over the next few days. I apologize in advance for being MIA

Another view of frozen Lake Champlain on Monday 
Photo taken at St. Albans Bay. Although parts of the
lake are solidly frozen, other parts still have weak
and thin ice. Be careful out there! 

We in Vermont have a couple more days of reasonable weather before the bottom drops out again and we freeze our tushes off. 

It was nice and toasty Tuesday with highs again mostly in the 20s. Burlington reached a high temperature of 30, so it was the warmest day since January 22. 

By the way, if you're venturing out onto lakes, be careful.  The ice out there  can still be dicey, despite the recent cold weather. That's especially true on Lake Champlain, which still has some open water out in the middle. 

Vermont State Police said five skaters got stranded on Lake Champlain Tuesday near Charlotte when a section of ice they were on broke free and started to float away. 

The skaters were about 675 feet offshore of Charlotte, Vermont. Rescuers used an inflatable boat to cross 200 feet of open water to take the skaters one at a time back to stable ice. From there, the skaters were able to walk to shore. They're fine. 

But, it's a sign we shouldn't go too far out onto Lake Champlain. Let's just say don't walk from Burlington to Plattsburgh or anything stupid like that. 

FORECAST:

We've got just a minor cool down today and tomorrow, but nothing extreme. At least not yet. 

You'll want to be a bit careful driving to work or school this morning, especially in northern Vermont, as some snow showers are passing through.  

So far, the snow didn't look too heavy or particularly widespread on radar before dawn today.  I expect there might be a few slick spots on the roads, though. 

But it will pretty much clear out this afternoon. It'll be cooler than yesterday with highs near 20, which is still not bad for February. A tiny piece of Arctic air will sneak in Thursday night, dropping temperatures to near 0 again before we recover to the low 20s again Friday.

Then we get blasted by a strong cold front Friday night with a burst of snow, maybe amounting to an inch or two. By Saturday morning, temperatures will be in the single numbers and still falling.  Some of the colder places could fall below zero by late morning. 

It's going to be a frigid weekend, with lows below zero through Monday morning at least. Next Tuesday morning could be below zero as well. Those temperatures in single numbers during the day Saturday will repeat themselves Sunday 

Howling north winds will send wind chills far, far below zero, especially on Saturday. Sunday will have some north breezes, too,so the chill will be an issue then. But it probably won't be quite as bad as Saturday.  

The wind might finally die off Sunday night, which would drop our temperatures into the teens below zero in many areas.

One saving grace is that the Arctic cold this weekend won't be quite as intense as some earlier forecasts I saw. Also, the wind might also not be as strong or long-lasting as those earlier forecasts. Even so, it'll be a brutal weekend out there. 

We're hoping temperatures get close to normal again by midweek. And we're still banking on a weather pattern change that would put us up for at least several days after midweek in which temperatures will be near or even a tad above normal. It won't be springtime, but at least it might be tolerable!