Forecast Bust: Vermont Storm Was Mostly Rain. Now What?

Bright blue skies greeted northwest Vermont this
morning, behind a storm that turned out to be much
more wet than white. A return to winter is coming, but
it will take a few days to get here.

One of the few things that were correct about the forecast for last night's storm was that it had a high chance of being wrong. 

And it was. 

Temperatures were marginal throughout the atmosphere over Vermont for rain, sleet, freezing rain or snow. Just a degree or two more of warmth than expected enveloped the state, so it was mostly a cold rain. Or at least definitely more wet than white. 

There was a little snow, especially toward the end of the main bout of precipitation early this morning. But predictions of one to as much as five inches of snow, mostly in the Northeast Kingdom, pretty much didn't come true. 

I imagine a few spots up there got an inch or two, but that's probably it from last night. There were a few pockets of freezing rain, mostly in the southern Green Mountains, but it wasn't overly extensive. 

Do note that I've noticed that even in places that never went below freezing last night, there was, as of  mid-morning  still a LOT of black ice untreated surfaces, pretty much statewide. Be careful on corners, on bridges, at stoplights and stop signs, and on foot!

Not only was the type of precipitation mostly wrong, the storm moved on just a little quicker than forecast. When we got up this morning around Vermont, many of us were greeted by sunshine. 

The area of sunshine is pretty typical for a storm like this. A narrow band of dry air is often drawn northward immediately behind a departing storm.  Other than some fog and low clouds in some areas east of the Green Mountains, the start of today in Vermont is rather bright and springlike. 

It's kind of nice break from the general overcast and darkness we've endured lately. 

Clouds typically fill in later as moisture wraps around the back side of the storm on northwest winds. That's what will happen later today and this evening. The sky will gradually get cluttered with clouds, the temperature will slowly fall and winds will pick up this afternoon. 

Winter, sort of, is coming back. Snow showers will break out this evening and overnight. Some of them might even be briefly heavy in a few spots.  But overall, this won't amount to much. Most valleys will see an inch or less of snow. Some of the central and northern Green Mountains could end up with a few inches of windblown fluff.

WINTER RESURGENT

For a week now, we've been advertising a big return to frigid winter weather. That's still definitely coming, but it's going to take a few days. 

An enormous blob of Arctic air is gathering forces and strengthening as it prepares to invade the United States. But there's a bit of a traffic jam on the East Coast as an offshore northward bulge in the jet stream temporarily holds firm

A sharp, narrow dip in the jet stream is developing behind that bulge on the East Coast. At first, this will keep cold fronts to our west at bay. We'll stay on the mild side. Monday will end up being seasonably mild with highs within a few degrees either side of 30 degrees.  

Tuesday and Wednesday will warm into the 30s. There might be a few snow and rain showers thrown in both days, but they shouldn't amount to much. 

We'll finally get into the cold air Thursday, but there's a complication. The weather pattern is still gummed up. That atmospheric traffic jam looks like it will give a nor'easter an opportunity to evolve somewhere near or off the Northeast coast.

At this point, it looks like it'll get going too far south and east of Vermont to do us much good in terms of snow. And the cold air coming in is super dry, which discourages snow.

That being said, all this is several days away.  There could be some atmospheric tricks that we're not aware of yet.  One of those tricks could bring the nor'easter closer to the coast, which would put Vermont in play for some snow. 

Right now, the betting is against a snowstorm. But, who knows? I might be singing a different tune by Wednesday. 

A Cold Monday, Then A Pre-Christmas "January Thaw" In December?

Henry the Weather Dog huddled under
some thick blankets yesterday after
venturing outside on yet another cold
December day. He's a native of
South Texas, so it turns out he's
not a huge fan of Vermont winters. 

This month in and around Vermont has been a lot more like January than December. 

We usually ease into winter during December, but it's been like the depths of the season all month. It already feels like it's been winter forever. 

As you've noticed, it's cold again today. It snowed just a tiny bit again overnight, and as dawn broke, temperatures were back down into the single numbers. This afternoon, everybody except the warmest valleys will stay in the teens.  

I know we're in the last month of the year, but one tradition we tend to see the first month of the year is the January thaw.  For some reason, that thaw in many years tends to hit the third week of the month. 

Here we are going into the third week of December, and it looks like we have a "January" thaw coming. An interesting note leading up to the thaw is that some of the colder spots around, like Saranac Lake, New York, have not been above freezing at all this month. That's a real rarity for December.   

That's about to change. South winds will begin a warming trend tomorrow, and by Wednesday afternoon, we should all be at least a little above freezing. 

The core of the thaw will come Thursday and Thursday night. Strong south winds, especially in the Champlain Valley, will transport warmer air into northern New England. Meanwhile, a strong cold front, with a pretty good supply of moisture will be approaching from the west. 

The rain with this probably won't start in earnest until Thursday night. Temperatures will continue to warm up at night as the rain comes down. 

We're definitely going to melt some snow with this one. Valleys that have just a thin snow cover will probably lose it temporarily. 

But there's no way we'll get rid of all the snow in the high elevations. There's just too much of it. Your Vermont winter sports dreams won't die Thursday night. They'll just need to be readjusted a bit. 

Almost every time we get a January thaw, you have to worry about ice jams on the rivers. The rain and melting snow swells those rivers, which breaks up the ice. Those big shards of ice can sometimes get caught on a river bend or on bridge abutments. They dam the river and you get a flood behind that dam.

Usually, ice jams aren't a problem in December as there hasn't been much time to build ice. However, this year it might be a little bit of a problem. The ice isn't all that thick yet on the rivers, but it is something to watch.

At this point, I don't think the rain and thawing will last long enough to cause any real flooding across the state, but that's also something we'll watch as we get close to the event as well. 

Another thing to watch is Friday. We're not sure yet, but we could have problems with rain changing to snow and temperatures crashing to create a flash freeze on the roads sometime during the day. 

There's plenty of time to adjust the forecast, and we'll keep you posted.  

Weather Patterns Are Setting Up For A Shift, That Doesn't Necessarily Mean Nicer Vermont Weather

Still looking blizzardy this morning along Route 105
in Jay, Vermont. Nearby Jay Peak Resort received
about a foot and a half of snow in the past 24 hours. 

Instead of getting colder and colder overnight like it usually does in a Vermont winter, it actually warmed up a tiny bit in the wee hours of this morning. 

It was still chilly for sure as dawn broke, with temperatures mostly in the teens. But what's with the slight warming? Winds were still coming out of the northwest, shouldn't be getting even colder?

Usually, it would. But remember that storm that gave most of us several inches of snow on Wednesday? It's now a slow, big lumbering thing up in the Canadian Maritimes. 

It's pulling in air off the North Atlantic, swinging it westward across Quebec and them southward into New England. That Atlantic air is cold, but not nearly as cold as the stuff coming out of the far north Canadian Arctic. 

So we warmed up a teensy bit. We'll take any victory against the icebox whether we can get. By the way, a quick spoiler: It's eventually going to warm up a fair amount. More on that in a bit. 

Since this morning's air originated from over the cold Atlantic waters, it's kind of moist. Which explains the clouds and flurries that are still hanging tough in much of Vermont, especially central and north.  At least in the valleys. 

This whole thing is a perfect setup for a lot of snow in the northern Green Mountains, and sure enough, they've been getting it. 

Stowe Mountain Resort reports seven inches of new snow in the 24 hours ending at dawn today. They've already had a really impressive 97 inches of snow this season, at least according to the resort workers who measure all that fluff. 

Smugglers' Notch had five inches of new snow for a season total so far of 106 inches. 

The "Jay Cloud" works overtime when the north winds suck moisture off the cold Atlantic waters. The Jay Peak Resort in far northern Vermont was reporting 16 to 20 inches of new snow in the past 24 hours and it was still snowing. 

The northern Green Mountains can expect a few more inches of snow today before the winds finally die down and shift. 

NEXT FEW DAYS

Vermont has a quiet, cold weekend on tap. A weak system will throw a few more flurries and snow showers our way, mostly Saturday afternoon and evening. Most places will get less than an inch of snow out of this, with our way.

The next in a series of cold waves starts Sunday and lasts into Tuesday. Unlike this past Monday, low temperatures for most of us will be in the single digits above zero, not below. The only truly cold day will be Monday, with highs in the teens. It'll be in the still rather chilly but ridiculous 20s for highs Sunday and Tuesday. 

DROUGHT UPDATE

As an aside, the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor came out Thursday and it shows Vermont conditions absolutely unchanged from the week before. The drought is still largely over in western Vermont and continues in the east. 

Places outside the mountains did not get all that much precipitation in the past week, and what did fall came as snow. Snow doesn't help with drought conditions until it melts, so it's just banked moisture.

I had to shovel a path through the snow in part of my yard yesterday (long story as to why).  I noticed the snow came so fast this year that the ground is still not frozen, despite the subzero temperatures earlier this week. 

I don't know if that unfrozen ground is widespread across Vermont. But if it is, the muddy surface beneath the snow would readily absorb water when the snow melts. 

I bring this up because it looks like a little thawing might be coming our way.  

PATTERN CHANGE

It's still looking like the whole of the United State will have a big shift in the weather after the latest cold spell comes through. Most of the Lower 48 looks like they'll have a balmy time of it starting the middle of next week and going through Christmas.

Notice I said "most of the Lower 48"  Any warmup here in Vermont is uncertain. Cold air will be lurking through the month just north of the border. That cold air can easily slip south out of Quebec right past Highgate, Derby Line, Alburgh and Norton.

The bottom line is it looks like Vermont will start to have shots at some thawing weather between now and Christmas, but it won't necessarily be super warm. 

It does look like it will get above freezing toward the second half of next week. How much above and how long a thaw might last is still TBA. 

Holding Our Breath Until Winter REALLY Hits In Vermont

Snow is finally almost melted away in my yard in St.
Albans, Vermont after the storm 12 days ago. For the
next few days, we'll be in a never never land that
is past autumn but not quite winter. 

We're getting a semi-break from winter between now, as we brace for a possible, uncertain first Arctic blast of the season sometimes in the opening week of December.

Maybe. 

It looks increasingly likely that somebody in the Lower 48 in the United States is going to suffer through subzero Arctic cold and brutal wind chills once we get into the final month of the year. 

Whether any of that nonsense will affect us here in Vermont is still very open to debate.

Before we get there, we will be stuck in a sort of no man's land that's not really late autumn, and not really winter, either. During that time, the forces of winter will be adjusting themselves, getting ready for their first frigid act of the season.

For us, that means variable weather.  Since the mountains got all that snow, some Vermont ski resorts opened a week earlier than they anticipated. Lifts are going this weekend at places like Jay Peak Resort, Stowe Mountain Resort,  Sugarbush and Okemo.

And of course Killington opened earlier this month. 

In our holding our breath period as Thanksgiving approaches, the weather outlook is mixed for those ski resorts. And the rest of us for that matter. 

Today will be a typical late November day. That means quite a few clouds, some periods of sun, with daytime temperatures near 40. 

The approaching winter will throw down a few snowflakes tomorrow afternoon and night. Some valleys could see a dusting to an inch of snow. Maybe the ski areas will get a couple inches.

The weather pattern is active, so the next storm in the pipeline should arrive Wednesday. It looks like it'll bring along a squirt of warm weather for a change. Temperatures should get up to 50 degrees or so in many valley spots. The mountains, unfortunately, should get some rain. Not a huge amount, but rain and thawing.

Here's where the change to winter starts. It's going to be a slow, uneven process. The first of the cold fronts should come through at the end of the week. 

That means some light snows starting on Thanksgiving and into the weekend. It'll be cold, too, with highs near the freezing mark. Chilly, but not that unusual for the end of November.

EXTENDED OUTLOOK

Once you get beyond a week or so, it's hard to make an accurate forecast. You can only do a broad brush kind of prediction. 

It looks like the increasingly strong cold outbreaks might want to enter the United States in the northwestern Plains, places like Montana and North Dakota. Then the cold air sweeps east. 

By the time that type of cold air gets here, it will have modified some. Also, storms will form on the leading edge of these cold outbreaks. At this point, it's impossible at this point to know exactly where these storms will go, and how strong they might be.

Their tracks could mean the difference between skier delight snow dumps or disappointing schmutz. But at least we'll keep getting some type of precipitation to keep eating away at the lingering vestiges of drought. 

A lot of factors seem to be coming together to bring a cold December to much of the United States. We in Vermont will need to stay tuned to see how much we share in that likely chilly regime. 

A Surprise Overnight Heat Wave In Vermont, Late Night Record Highs

It's becoming  weird late December tradition around my
St. Albans, Vermont house. Record warmth has 
caused these daffodil shoots to sprout out of season
Same thing happened in recent Decembers. 

 We knew it would get warm here in Vermont overnight and this morning, but what happened is kind of ridiculous. 

Rather than reach the low 50s by this morning, Burlington, Vermont's temperature rocketed upward last evening, peaking at 61 degrees at around 11 p.m. That was good enough for a record high for the date, the old one being 58 degrees in 1984.

As you well know, 11 p.m. is an odd time of day to see a record high.  

Burlington was probably the warmest place around, because winds from the southeast had some compressional warming as gusts flowed down the western slopes of the Green Mountains. Still, it did manage to reach 58 degrees in Bennington, 55 in Rutland, and 57 in Plattsburgh, New York.

Place east of the Green Mountains have mostly so far missed out on the warmth.  The mildest it got in Springfield so far is 48 degrees. St. Johnsbury has thus far only managed to get as mild as 41 degrees. 

As of early this morning, it look like Burlington at least tied the record high for today's date of 58 degrees.  We'll see how that sugars out.

We've been re-writing the record books for late December in recent years. In 2015, it was 68 degrees in Burlington on Christmas Eve, the hottest December temperature on record. Our hottest Christmas was in 2020, with a temperature of 65 degrees. Just two years ago, in 2022, the record high that was probably tied today was set. 

COOLING TREND

I hope you got outside to enjoy Vermont's tropical warmth early today as you won't see temperatures like this again for a long time. 

Temperatures will gradually cool today behind a cold front that was on our doorstep as of 8 a.m.  It'll remain mild all day, but temperatures will fall through the 50s and 40s and into the 30s by sunset late this afternoon.

We could even see a snow shower or two this evening. It is winter, after all, though it didn't feel like it the morning.

New Year's Eve looks quiet and mild for the season, with highs in the upper 30s to mid 40s. Pretty warm, still for this time of year, and made all the better by some expected glimpses of sun, especially in the first part of the day. 

We're still looking at a new storm for New Year's Eve and Day.  It'll be a frustrating storm for snow lovers, because its path would normally be perfect for laying down a nice Vermont snowpack to replace what we lost in the heat wave we just had. This system will basically follow a path from New York City to Boston to Portland, Maine on New Year's Day. 

But alas, there won't be enough cold air around, so deeper valleys still look like they'll have a cold rain for most of the storm.  Higher elevations have a better chance of seeing some snow. 

Once the storm gets past us, it'll help introduce a long period - probably lasting at least two weeks - of cold air.  That storm will probably stall for a few days in eastern Canada, dumping more snow on Vermont mountains, but leaving valleys with little new snow. 

So expect a thin snow cover in the valleys for at least the first few days of the upcoming long January cold spell.  High elevations should get a decent share of their snowpack back. 

 Subsequent storms might come along to allow the valleys to join the January snow party, but it's too soon to tell how that will play out. 

Supply Of Winter Arctic Air Is Drying Up

This image from Weather Bell depicts what is known as the
winter "cold pool" basically outlined in yellow. 
Scientists say the cold pool has been shrinking over
time due to climate change, leaving less frigid air 
to spill south in the winter. 

 There are plenty of reasons why we in Vermont just completed the warmest meteorological winter on record.  

Dumb luck. El Nino. A persistent weather pattern. Almost certainly climate change played a role.

One intriguing way climate change might have played a role is that the supply of frigid Arctic air up by the North Pole has been diminishing in recent years and decades. 

Almost every winter, there is at least one or two occasions - sometimes several or many - in which the weather pattern draws big packets of that frigid Arctic air southward into the United States. 

There's usually big pools of Arctic air way up north to supply repeated bone-chilling outbreaks. 

Historically, some of the worst of these outbreaks have given us in Vermont several days in a row of temperatures in the teens to 30s below zero.

You might have noticed our frigid spells have gotten shorter and less intense in recent decades. This winter, it hardly got cold at all. 

As the Washington Post tells us, that wintertime cold pool up north has been diminishing in recent decades  due very likely to climate change. 

Reports WaPo:

"There cold air supply in the Northern Hemisphere is being evaluated using temperature dat from out 5,000 feet high in the atmosphere. For about a decade, Jonathan Martin, a professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, has analyzed the size of the cold pool at this level - or the area of the hemisphere covered by temperatures at or below 23 degrees. 

This winter's cold pool will finish the winter as the second smallest on record, Martin said."

Of course, using the size of the cold pool as areas 23 degrees or colder is pretty generous. That includes northern New England most winters. Including much of what we loosely call the winter we just had. 

All of the top 10 smallest winter cold pools have happened since the winter of 1997-98. Six of the top 10 smallest cold pools have occurred since 2013-14.

This look at Arctic air 5,000 feet above the ground makes sense. 

People who are skeptical of climate change will often say the "heat island effect" of urbanization where ground temperatures are measured are responsible for the observed rise in temperatures. 

Scientists are aware of the heat island effect and adjust data using peer-reviewed research methods. But Martin's research gets around that issue by measuring air temperature that can't be influenced by warmth generated by cities and commerce. 

The Washington Post also says that Martin's research shows that the shrinking cold pool is not influenced by El Nino.

El Nino is a periodic warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean.  El Nino was in full force this winter, and was at least partly blamed for the warm winter over most of North America. 

A shrunken cold pool does not mean everybody escapes frigid weather.  Jet stream patterns can ensure some places remain in the deep freeze even with a relative lack of cold air in the northern hemisphere. 

The smallest cold pool on record was in 2014-15.  That winter, much of the eastern United States was quite cold due to a persistent southward dip in the jet stream.  Here in Vermont, February 2015 was the third coldest on record, an exception to the mostly warm winters we've seen over the past two decades. 

Even with those exceptions, you can see the waning effects of cold air blasts, at least in the United States. For instance, nearly 8,000 warm weather records were set this winter, but only around 2,300 cold weather records, says the Washington Post. 

 

Snow Cover, Terrain Cheated Champlain Valley Out of A Gorgeous Spring Day Today

Bare ground around Bennington, Vermont helped 
temperatures warm up to 61 degrees there Wednesday afternoon.

 You start to get these days in March. Where it really warms up and you think spring is on the way. 

It was 61 degrees in Bennington. Rutland was 55 degrees. Even in northern Vermont, Montpelier managed to reach 50 degrees. All these readings were warmer than forecast. 

The Champlain Valley, though, was stuck in the low 40s all day. Though that's not terrible, the Champlain Valley is usually a banana belt region of the state, Is usually not the ice box of Vermont. What happened?

It was mostly a mix of snow cover and terrain.

The snow is pretty much gone in Bennington. Around the valley floor in Rutland, the snow cover is  patchy at best. In the Champlain Valley, there's certainly bare patches. But there's still quite a bit of snow on the ground, and parts of Lake Champlain are frozen. 

The Montpelier area still has quite a bit of snow on the ground. But the chillier air hugging the ground in the Champlain Valley couldn't quite make it over the mountains to Montpelier, so even they were relatively warm. 

Several thousand feet above us, winds were from the south today.  That warmed the atmosphere, making it possible for low elevations in much of Vermont to warm up. Especially where snow cover is lacking. 

Bare patches are forming, but snow cover in the northern
Champlain Valley was one ingredient that helped
that part of the state stay chiller than the 
rest of Vermont. 

Meanwhile, dense cold air hugging the ground in Quebec was able to easily flow southward into the Champlain Valley. 

It was partly the weight of this dense air that prompted north winds that pulled the chillier air into the space between the Adironadacks and Green Mountains in northern Vermont, 

Strong March sun would have heated bare ground, helping to beat back the cold air from Quebec. 

But the snow and patches of lake ice reflected the sun's heat to some extent, so the northern Champlain Valley could only reach the low 40s. 

It was still nice, but it was not the gorgeous snow melter that at least I hoped for. 

The snow cover outside my St. Albans, Vermont home is interfering with outdoor work I want to get going on. Today's insistence on relatively chillier air is, in my worst moments, has me thinking the snow cover here in permanent. (Not really) Especially since we have a chance of more snow this weekend. 

This cold dense air might have some implications late tonight as the next storm moves in. As I noted this morning, the precipitation should be exclusively rain. But lingering cold, dense air could open the door for a bit of freezing rain in the pre-dawn hours Thursday. 

This won't amount to much, and stiff south breezes should scour out the cold-ish air out of the Champlain Valley by daybreak.