Last Warm Day In Vermont Today, A Little Snow And A Hard Freeze To Snap Us Back To Realit

First daffodils of the season in my St. Albans. Vermont
gardens. Will they survive the hard freeze expected
Monday night? Stay tuned!

The good news is a strong cold front that created a nasty tornado outbreak in the Midwest yesterday will not bring any severe weather to Vermont. We already had a tornado in Willliamstown, Vermont Thursday night, so that's enough.  

The bad news is the cold front will bring very cold air this time of year. So cold that it could well damage some or perhaps even many of the plants that have bloomed too early because of the recent warm weather. 

Vermont springs are never easy. 

Let's break it all down for you:

TODAY/TONIGHT

Early this morning, the sun was out, the birds were chirping away, the grass on the lawn is now green and there's buds on the trees. Ahh, spring!  The rest of the day will continue lovely. It will get increasingly breezy. Probably downright windy in the Champlain Valley by late afternoon.  

The winds will be from the southeast, off the Atlantic Ocean, so places east of the Green Mountains will be cooler.  In Brattleboro, where high temperatures have been in the mid 70s to low 80s most of the past week, will probably barely make it to 60 degrees this afternoon.  Meanwhile, the Champlain Valley should be close to 70.

You'll also notice clouds starting to increase west to east this afternoon. That's the first sign of the cold front that will spread rain across Vermont overnight. The rain will continue into Sunday with totals between a half inch and three quarters of an inch. 

SUNDAY/SUNDAY NIGHT

Oh, this is not going to be your day. You'll unfortunately need to huddle inside. Unless you love cold, wet, damp, bone-chilling weather.  The day will start off chilly and rainy and those temperatures should fall through the 40s.

In their forecast discussion this morning, meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in South Burlington tell us the computer models are struggling a bit with how Sunday afternoon will play out. We pretty much know mountain summits will see rain change to snow, probably in the morning. 

The valleys have some questions about snow. Sigh, I know. We shouldn't be talking about valley snow still, hut here we are. Some of the computer models end most of the rain before the really cold air arrives, so the valleys wouldn't see any snow during the day under that scenario. Those are the models we're rooting for. 

Other models bring the cold air in sooner, and also slow down and strengthen the cold front. If that happens, we could get a period of snow. Which could be briefly heavy. Even in the Champlain  Valley. 

I'll have an update on this first thing tomorrow morning. 

Whatever happens, Sunday will not be a nice day to say the least. So much for spring. Overnight Sunday, temperatures should fall below freezing almost everywhere, with continued snow showers. There won't be much accumulation, but that's literally cold comfort for April.

MONDAY/MONDAY NIGHT

Monday will bring us back to mid-March. It'll turn out partly sunny in many areas, which is nice, I suppose. But high temperatures will generally be in the 30s to around 40.  That's a good twenty degrees colder than normal for this time of year. Some southern Vermont valleys could make it into the mid-40s, but some high elevations in the north might not get above freezing all day. Yuck. 

Northwest breezes will make it feel colder. For the cherry on top, the Green Mountains might continue to have some light snow showers much of the day. 

Then the bottom drops out of the thermometers Monday night. It should clear up and winds will go light. 

Temperatures should end up in the low to mid 20s for most of us by early Tuesday morning. Colder spots should be in the upper teens. These won't be record lows, but this month's weather, and climate change in general, has screwed everything up. 

Plants are blooming earlier in the spring nowadays due to climate change. Southern Vermont has just gone through nearly a week of summer weather.  Not only has our springs turned warmer, they've gotten more extreme, consistent with climate change. That includes sharp, brief cold snaps that interrupt the warm weather. 

I don't know how much damage this weather will cause, but I think some places will miss out on some spring blooms. Plants and trees whose buds are still pretty tightly closed should be fine. Hardier early season blooms will probably do OK, too. I guess this weather will be an experiment on how much cold plants can take. 

BEYOND MONDAY

After the frigid start to Tuesday, the day will warm up, sort of, but still be much colder than average, with highs in the 40s. An early guess has the rest of the week will feature highs mostly in the low 50s, which is only slightly cooler than average. An improvement, I suppose. It also looks like we'll see very little if any rain next week.