"Omega Block" Offers Promises Of Vermont Sun, But Bad Storms California, Atlantic Canada

Schematic of an "omega block" weather pattern, similar 
to what we are in now. Black line would be roughly the
center of the jet stream. This means storms near the
West Coast and off the East Coast, while sunshine
breaks out in parts of the U.S, possibly here
here in Vermont for a welcome change. 

We in Vermont slogged through another day Friday with the ever-present thick overcast, fog, drizzle, wet, inconsequential snow flurries and just general ick. 

Friday was the 11th day in a row that most of us in Vermont saw absolutely no sun. Today, the sun did come out, for at least part of the day in part of the Green Mountain State. So I guess that's an improvement

But pretty much all winter, it's been overcast and foggy. I can't remember the last time we had two sunny days in a row.    

We finally have a chance -  chance, mind you - of actually seeing some fairly decent sun for more than a day  thanks to a weather pattern known as an Omega block.

It's called that because the jet stream maps under this pattern look like the Greek letter Omega. In this case, it features a big bulge northward in the jet stream over southern Canada and the northern United States.

To the east and west of this bulge are deep dips in the jet stream representing nasty storminess off the east coast of North America and along the West Coast .

Storm tracks are being pushed southward under the high pressure in southern Canada and the northern United States.

One such storm hit California Thursday, dumping heavy rains and causing flooding in cities like Long Beach and other southern California cities.  That storm is scheduled to pass through Florida Monday, and become a nasty gale far off the East Coast. 

The next California storm, began hitting California Saturday night and will continue today. This one promises to be even worse. This one could be deadly and disastrous, with severe flooding, mudslides and lots of wind damage. 

Given the dense population this storm is hitting, it will probably be another $1 billion plus disasters. I'll have more on this storm in upcoming posts.  

In a hopeful sign for Sunday, large parts of the sky over
St. Albans, Vermont were clear at sunset Saturday.
This could herald a long awaited somewhat sunny 
period after an incredible stretch of overcast weather. 

Meanwhile, the middle old the northward bulge that makes up the center of the omega block   is producing near record high temperatures in parts of the upper Midwest and south-central Canada. The light winds associated with this also helped produce another big dense fog attack, this time in the central and northern Plains on Saturday. 

For us, we are on the front side of that big northward jet stream bulge in that Omega pattern. 

 Near record warmth will stay confined well to our west, near the Great Lakes and south-central Canada. Northerly winds will keep Vermont's temperatures for the next few days close to normal.

Ho-hum.

The beautiful thing is, the high pressure accompanying this omega block weather pattern might just be enough to finally scour out that low overcast and fog that have kept us without sunshine for nearly two weeks.

Some low clouds will probably sneak in from time to time.  Also, perhaps some other clouds might swirl in every once in awhile from those storms far off the East Coast.  Still, starting Sunday, we have our best chance at seeing some blue skies and sun in quite awhile. These breaks of sunshine, if we're lucky, could last into at least part of Thursday. 

The omega pattern should begin to shift and start to break down towards Friday.  That giant California storm will head our way, but it will weaken tremendously. As it stands now, it looks like that storm will just bring us a return to overcast skies and a chance of some light rain or snow. 

January Weather Review In Vermont: Warm, Gloom, And On Occassion Doom

Crows gather in a St. Albans tree last Saturday amid
overcast, dense fog and freezing drizzle. The overcast
and fog persisted all month, keeping especially
nights oddly war in January. 

January has blessedly ended in Vermont, and it's time to go over the receipts.

Usually, when we think of a rough January in Vermont, it involves frequent blasts of bitter Arctic air and tons of snow. 

Neither of which we had in January, 2024. But the extraordinarily persistent overcast, the inability to maintain a snow cover amid frequent thaws and a couple destructive storms thrown in all made the month challenging for Vermonters.

 By at least one measure, January, 2024 was the cloudiest since at least the 1950s, as reported by WPTZ meteorologist Andrew Grautski. He said that 87 percent of the days during the month in Burlington were overcast at noon, compared to an average of 51 percent.

Frequent bouts of fog, drizzle and freezing drizzle made the overcast all the more depressing. 

WARM TEMPERATURES

The month's weather was driven by the ever-present overcast. The clouds kept nights bizarrely warm, since heat couldn't radiate out into space like it does on clear nights.

The clouds also suppressed daytime temperatures. High temperatures for the month were warmer than normal, but not by all that much. 

For instance, the average high in Burlington for January was 32.3 degrees, or 3.4 degrees warmer than the current, climate change driven normal. Normal is based on the average of the years 1990-2020, when things had really started to warm up noticeably.

Meanwhile in Burlington, the average low was 21.6 degrees, which was whopping 8.7 degrees warmer than average.

This all worked out to a January in Burlington that was the 12th warmest on record in data going back to 1902.  (I find a little data missing from the 1880s and 1890s, so I don't use those years in Burlington's record books).

A January in Burlington that never got below zero was once exceedingly rare. Now, it's starting to get more common. We had yet another such January in 2024. 

The only Januaries that stayed above zero in Burlington were in 1906, 1990, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2023 and 2024, 

In those winters, the only ones in which December also stayed above zero were in 2001-02, 2015-16 and 2022-23, and now 2023-24.

The overall pattern of super warm nights and sort of warm days under the grip of our cloudy January held for other parts of Vermont as well. The difference was really shocking in Montpelier. Average January highs were a so-so 3.1 degrees on the warm side, while low temperatures were more than 10 degrees above normal. 

All weather stations that I could see in Vermont had a strongly warmer than normal January, driven by those warm nights.

At least we saved on our heating bills. Heating degree days, a measure of how much fuel might be needed to warm a house or building, are running well below normal. 

PRECIPITATION

All those clouds yielded above normal precipitation in Vermont, but since it was so warm, much of that came down as rain.  

A large tree crashed through the roof of this St. 
Albans house in January 10, one example of the 
widespread destruction from two powerful wind storms
that hit Vermont mid month. 

Burlington's precipitation for January was 3.08 inches, which is nearly an inch more than average. By my reckoning it was the 16th wettest January in Burlington, with records beginning around 1900.

Everyone else in Vermont had a January solidly on the wet side. Rutland was especially soggy, with 4.09 inches of precipitation, nearly an inch and a half on the wet side.

This might surprise you, but snowfall in Vermont was actually very close to average.

 Burlington was only about an inch on the light side with 19.9 inches for the month. Rutland and St. Johnsbury were actually a couple inches on the snowier than normal side. 

But all that warm air kept melting the snow. Snow cover in Burlington was only at or above five inches on five days. St. Johnsbury's snow cover never amounted to more than nine inches, despite the 23.5 inches of snow that fell there in January. 

STORMS

There were really only two big storms in January, as the rest of the inclement weather was pretty modest. But those two storms were doozies.

They came back to back on January 10 and 13. Both storms packed very damaging winds, with gusts exceeding hurricane force in some spots.  The state is still recovering from widespread tree and structural damage.

Several homes suffered serious damage in St. Albans on January 10 when trees fell on them. Roofs were blown off structures in and near Cambridge. 

The storm on January 13 ripped the roof off a Richmond home, caused other structural damage across the state and cut power to thousands.

OUTLOOK:

As always, I don't put a huge amount of faith in long range forecast. But those forecasts point to at least the first half of February lacking the drama that January brought to Vermont.  

The storm track looks like it wants to stay mostly suppressed to the south and east of Vermont. If those trends continue - a big if - we might have our first decidedly dry month in quiet since last spring. Time will tell on that one. 

Those long range forecasts also hint at near normal to above normal temperature into the middle of the month. After that, the forecast gets really murky.  Do note that in winters with El Nino, we often, but not always have the harshest winter weather of the season arrive in late February and March. 

Not sure if that will be the case this year, but that's the only hope I have if you love old fashioned Vermont winters.  

Constant Vermont Gloom Continues On; Freezing Drizzle To Return?

Those black specs in this photo are crows flying beneath
yet another day of thick overcast above St. Albans,
Vermont this afternoon.

As I write this at 4:30 Wednesday afternoon, the sun - whatever that is - will set at 5 p.m., continuing Vermont's long stretch of exceptional sunshine-free drabness and gloom. 

Some of us optimists out there had pinned our hopes on bits of dry air Tuesday and today that would have created a few brief breaks in the clouds and thus glimpses of sun.

But nope! The low level moisture in the atmosphere stayed put, and so did the low, gray overcast. 

I don't have the stats to prove it but this has to be close to the cloudiest January, and possibly cloudiest winter so far in Vermont. 

The last time most of us saw any sun was on the morning of January 22. By my count, 22 days this January were either completely overcast or very nearly so. 

We're going to endure more dreary weather for a couple more days. 

But here's a tidbit I found in this afternoon's forecast discussion from the National Weather Service office in South Burlington: "Finally for the weekend, we promise, you'll see the sun!"

I'll get into that in a moment. 

First, the dreary outlook for Thursday. Forecasters have a worse outlook on tomorrow than they did. They had initially told us there's be some light mid and high elevation snow in Vermont with rain mixed in down in the valleys.

At least the higher spots would get their snow cover freshened up a bit right? 

Not so fast. 

Now, the updated forecast for Thursday afternoon has trended in the direction of drizzle and our, um, beloved freezing drizzle or, frizzle as I call it. 

The "frizzle" will be very light and spotty and confined pretty much from the Green Mountains east. It won't cause enormous problems, but those icy patches on untreated roads will return, much like we had to endure during most of last week. 

The freezing drizzle will start to trend toward snow showers on Friday but those snow showers will amount to almost nothing. A few mountain locations could get a whole inch of snow.

SUNSHINE?

Now, that promised sunshine. 

I'm skeptical, but there are signs the sun could break through Saturday and Sunday. A high pressure system is forecast to feed dry air from Canada toward us over the weekend. Also, high pressure areas create sinking air, which tends to erode cloud cover.

The National Weather Service isn't promising wall to wall sunshine over the weekend. Instead, they're saying skies should go partly cloudy. That means periods of sun and sizable gaps in the clouds revealing big patches of blue sky.

We shall see.

If we do see that weekend sunshine, chances are it won't last long. A cold front from northeastern Canada and a storm far off the East Coast will probably throw enough moisture back into northern New England to cloud over the skies next week. 

 

December Weather Was Extreme One In Vermont; Made Several Top 10 Lists

Floodwaters cover fields near Williston, Vermont on
December 19. The month was wild, with a destructive flood
combined with extreme warmth for the entire month in Vermont.

 I'll have a post later today with some wild weather news about the just-ended year of 2023, but I figure I'll start with an appetizer by reviewing December in Vermont.  

There's plenty to cover. If you thought the weather in December was weird, you're absolutely right. 

 Burlington, Vermont had its second warmest, second wettest and eighth least snowy December on record. It's very rare to have so many different items in the Top 10 list. 

INCREDIBLE WARMTH

December, 2023 would have easily been the warmest on record if not for the absolutely bonkers month of December, 2015, which was off the charts warm by nearly seven degrees above the old record. The just past month was an impressive 2.2 degrees hotter than what until now had been the second warmest December. 

The warmth was consistent, and most prominent at night. Burlington only had the fifth warmest average high temperatures for December, but easily the second warmest average minimums (again behind the tropical December, 2015).

An impressive 13 days during December never went below freezing, and the low for the entire month was a balmy 14 degrees.  I believe all Decembers in Burlington dating back to the 1880s - except for 2015 and 2023 - got into the single number at least once. Most had below zero readings. 

All of Vermont was - of course - wicked warm in December.  Many places, including Montpelier, Rutland and Bennington, were more than 7 degrees warmer than average. The average low temperature during December in Rutland was a whopping 10 degrees above normal. 

The warmth was also widespread beyond Vermont. It looks like all of the Lower 48 might have had a milder than  normal December. Areas around the western Great Lakes and northern Plains were especially warm. 

Normally frigid International Falls, Minnesota, known as the "Icebox of the Nation", was a whopping 15.8 degrees warmer than normal and never got below zero during December.  Mornings there are normally below zero in late December and it's been as cold as minus 41 degrees there during the month

I'll have complete national statistics for December in a week or two.

RAINFALL

December was punctuated by yet another destructive Vermont flood, so of course it was wet. Burlington saw 5.78 inches of rain during the month, easily the second wettest on record. Only 1973, with 5.95 inches, was soggier. 

Not only was December warm and wet, it was also gloomy.
Most days were overcast and fog was frequent, like
in this scene from St. Albans on December 28

Woodstock measured 6.05 inches during the month, and more than half of that came during the December 18-19 flood storm. 

The damage tally for the flood is still being assessed, but I'm sure at least parts of Vermont will be declared a disaster area again. 

And that wasn't the only impressive storm of the month. Systems on December 3-4 and December 10-11 deposited fairly heavy rains in the valleys, certainly enough to pre-soak the ground for the December 18 deluge.

Those two early month storms also featured heavy, wet snow in high elevations, which each cut power to more than 10,000 Vermont homes and businesses. So definitely a rough month. 

The month was remarkably gloomy as well.  I count 23 out of 31 days that were overcast.  December is normally a cloudy month, but 2023 was especially so. We had a number of foggy days as well, especially toward the end of the month. 

SNOWFALL

You'd think with such a wet December, a fairly big portion of the precipitation would fall as snow. In the valleys, that definitely wasn't the case. Burlington only mustered 2.9 inches of snow, making this the 8th least snowy December. 

For comparison, that super wet December, 1973 in Burlington included a respectable 24.1 inches of snow for the month. 

Other valley locations were on the light side with snow, too. St. Johnsbury, for instance, only had 7.5 inches, more than a foot below average. 

OUTLOOK

As always, it's not really worth it to get into any detailed forecasts beyond five days out. But, for laughs and giggles, the temporary period of relatively quiet weather we're enjoying as the New Year dawns might not last. 

Long range forecasts into the middle of the month suggest it might turn stormier, though it could stay relatively warm. Not bonkers warm like December was, but still, a little milder than average, in general. 

That doesn't mean we won't have a hard core winter. There's plenty of time for that in the second half of January, February and much of March. 

New Year's Eve Is Here: What To Expect In Vermont Tonight, Tomorrow

Yet another day of thick overcast kept Vermont dreary on
New Year's Eve, but at least there's no ice or snow to mess
up the roads tonight. The low clouds might interfere a 
bit with midnight fireworks shows, though. 

 It's been a day of low, dark overcast as a temperature inversion - common for this time of year - has kept clouds trapped below a lid of slightly warmer air several thousand feet above us. 

This continues our long streak of bleak days, but at least we don't have the dense fog that pestered us Vermonters for days this past week.  

The weather forecast continues to look pretty safe, though not gorgeous for any outdoor New Year's Eve festivities tonight. 

A few snowflakes might flutter down from time to time this evening, but they won't amount to anything.  Roads should be in good shape, with no surprise icing like we saw Saturday afternoon.

Temperatures under the thick clouds held in the 20s all day today, as they prevented any weak December sun from boosting readings just a bit.

Those same thick clouds will keep the temperature from falling much tonight.  It should be somewhere between 18 and 25 degrees at midnight, which isn't bad for the season.

We do see one problem with tonight's weather: Fireworks and the low clouds. The overcast is so low that it might interfere with viewing midnight fireworks. Especially in towns that launch them from relatively high elevations, or if they involve fireworks that go way up into the sky before exploding. 

Another problem is the same temperature inversion that's keeping the low clouds locked in place will probably also trap smoke from the fireworks beneath the clouds. The smoke won't disperse all that easily, so we could see some local air pollution problems with this. 

New Year's Day still looks pretty good, fingers crossed. A very weak cold front early in the day should touch off more snow flurries, especially in the mountains and along the south and east shores of Lake Champlain early in the day. 

The cold front doesn't really have much in the way of cold air behind it, but it does have drier air. That could set us up for some - YAYYY! --- sun in the afternoon. No promises, the inversion could hold, but let's be optimistic. If the sun does come out, that would be the first time most of us have seen any sun since Tuesday. 

Temperatures will still be OK tomorrow with highs in the 25-32 range for most of us. 

Happy New Year, everyone!

Cloudy Autumn: Vermont Is Not The Place To Be For Sunshine

The sun finally broke through in Shelburne, Vermont,
leading to this dramatic scene of bright sunlight
and dark clouds. 

On paper, it looked like Vermont would finally break out into the sun this past weekend. A strong high pressure system was moving in. That meant sinking air that would finally eat up the clouds to yield blue skies.  

But this is Vermont. In November. You are really hard pressed to see sunshine this time of year. 

Many weather forecasts were optimistic. Some sun was supposed to break out Saturday afternoon. It would clear up Saturday night and Sunday would be a very bright, albeit chilly day.

Cue the game show "Wrong Answer" buzzer.

As is so often the case in November and December, the clouds won. A relatively thin layer of moisture got caught a few thousand feet overhead.  If we had a steeper sun angle, some of the sun's heat would have gotten through, causing some updrafts that would  have broken up the clouds. 

But the sun is feeble this time of year. We're only five weeks out from the winter solstice, after all.  The high pressure system was pretty much overhead, meaning there was no wind in the atmosphere to effectively push the overcast out. 

The clouds hung tough, leaving many meteorologists with egg on their faces. And our sunglasses sitting uselessly in the center console of our vehicles. 

It's very hard to get sunshine this time of year anyway. The storm track is active, so one disturbance after the other come through with their batches of clouds. The Great Lakes and most of the lakes in southern Canada haven't frozen yet.  Cold air flowing across them creates a lot of clouds over New England and southeastern Canada that are hard to disperse. 

Further north in St. Albans, Vermont, the sun didn't break 
through until right at sunset.

Some areas in southern Vermont did manage to have a partly sunny weekend. 

And the clouds broke up in parts of the Champlain Valley Sunday afternoon, leading to dramatic scenes of bright sunshine agains dark clouds to the east and north. 

It cleared out overnight statewide except of the Northeast Kingdom.  That lead to a calm, clear night that brought the lowest temperatures of the season. 

Many places were in the teens at dawn. Except in the Northeast Kingdom, where the clouds kept temperatures in many places up there in the 20s to near 30.

NEXT UP: MORE CLOUDS. AND SNOW! 

You'll see some sun for awhile after dawn today but don't get used to it. The next small storm is coming through with a batch of snow and rain showers. Those should move in this afternoon and linger off and on overnight and into Tuesday morning. 

It'll be light, but by the time you get up in the morning, even most valleys should see a dusting of new snow on the ground. A couple inches could pile up at ski area elevations, with four or five inches possible at the summits.

The little storm will be departing Tuesday, but we won't see any clearing to speak of. Again, November. 

Warmer south wind will bring temperatures up to at least normal, or even a little above average for the second half of the week. Enough wind in the atmosphere could also bring in breaks of sun, which would be a nice change of pace.

Another, milder system will bring mostly rain showers to our area Friday night, followed by what looks to me to be another overcast weekend coming up. 

It's been a really cloudy autumn anyway.  All but the first week of October was unusually cloudy. WCAX-TV meteorologists crunched the November numbers so far and determined the sky over Burlington was 82 percent cloud covered for the first 10 days of this month. 

 Last year was much, much sunnier. It included a record breaking, sunny heat wave that left us with just 38 percent cloud cover for the opening ten days of November.

Those of you with solar panels on your roofs have surely had a disappointing autumn.  Let's hope for a brighter winter.