Still Not Much Clarity On Vermont Weather Forecast But Some New Clues Emerging

A big icicle formed on my shed yesterday as the
warming sun of mid-February increasingly fights
against the cold. Today will actually feel rather
springlike but winter isn't done with us yet. 

 If you have plans for this coming Wednesday and Wednesday night in Vermont, we can't help you much with any weather forecasts Those annoying computer weather forecasting models are still arguing amongst themselves. 

Which is odd, since Wednesday is only two days away. More on that in a minute, but if you are more of in the moment type, we've got you covered.

TODAY/TOMORROW

For starters, today will be the most springlike day we've had yet.  Temperatures should get well into the 30s across most valleys, and we should have a fair amount of sun, which feels warmer and stronger now that we're nearly two months past the winter solstice. Winds will be on the light side too,

I get it. A day with a high of 37 degrees isn't exactly full-blown spring. But it's a start after the frigid weather we've had over the past month. 

Any hints of spring are fleeting this time of year, too, and so it goes this time. Yet another weak disturbance should come through later tonight and early tomorrow. As has so often been the case this winter, the system is no big deal, but might have atrocious timing. 

The problem is some light snow showers might switch over to light, patchy freezing drizzle just in time for the Tuesday morning commute. In the case of any kind of freezing rain, it takes only a tiny bit to send your car flying off the road and into a ditch if you're not careful enough.

The tricky thing is this will be patchy and temperatures will be just below freezing. So you'll be cruising along on just wet pavement, then all of a sudden it's ice and the cars and trucks on the Interstate are suddenly doing a literally smashing dance with each other. 

So, slow it down just in case Tuesday morning. 

WEDNESDAY QUESTIONS

We're to the point now in which we can say there will probably be some sort of precipitation in at least part of Vermont Wednesday and Wednesday night.   

Tbat's not very helpful, but that's all we've got for now. 

A storm in the Midwest will be heading in our direction but it will be shearing out on its way east. That means the storm will be pulled and stretched and weakened. And therein lies the forecast questions. 

By the time it gets to New England, it will be a fairly narrow band of snow or mixed precipitation. Colder high pressure from Quebec will on Wednesday try to nose down into New England, while to the south, moisture from the Gulf of Mexico will tried to feed into our weakening storm.

So, will the cold air win out and we get nothing? Or will the warm air win and we end up with a mix? Or, choice #3 favored by our winter sports industry, does this thing just drop a swath of snow right across Vermont.

For now, the best guess is far northern Vermont gets little or no snow, and perhaps far southern Vermont sees a mix with snow in the middle. Whatever happens, this doesn't look like it will be a blockbuster storm. 

But don't hang onto that gift to the ski gods scenario.  We should have a more clear view on this tomorrow. Or at least we'd better, as time is running out. 

After Wednesday, the weather pattern looks really active, so there will be several other chances for snow or a mix between now and early March.  I'm not even going to try and tease those out yet. 

"Chamber Of Commerce" Vermont Weather To Slowly Be Replaced By Lots Of Rain Chances

Thanks to my husband's hard work, our deck is all
set for us to enjoy the "Chamber of Commerce" 
weather we've been having lately. 

Since Thursday afternoon, most of Vermont has been enjoying what is known as Chamber of Commerce weather. 

You know what that means. Sunny days, low humidity, comfortable temperatures. It's the kind of conditions that definitely keep tourists happy, not to mention the locals.

 This type of weather keeps the cash flowing, as people want to be out and about and doing things in this great sunshine and comfortable temperatures. 

Enjoy it for a couple more days, as the bright sunshine will eventually fade into showers. 

One pretty interesting thing that happened both Saturday and Sunday afternoon is how the sun's heat created updrafts, which poked up to several thousand feet overhead. The atmosphere was dry throughout,   so that didn't generate any clouds or showers like what might happen on a humid day. 

The air aloft was even drier. Desert dry.   The updrafts made some of that upper level super dry air mix down. So in the mid-afternoon, the low humidity we were already experiencing really crashed. 

Dew points - a  rough measure of how humid the air feels -  fell into the 30s both weekend afternoons. That's super low for this time of year. For a comparison, if the dew point is at 60 degrees, it begins to feel a little humid-ish. Dew points in the 50s are considered very comfortable during the summer. 

Dry air can heat up much faster than humid air. So when the humidity crashed, temperatures rocketed right up into the 80s both afternoons. This type of situation is par for the course in deserts, but it a fun quirk to watch here in Vermont

TRANSITIONS

The weather pattern is gradually transitioning and we'll eventually have to say goodbye to that Chamber of Commerce weather for now. 

One reason why the weather is staying so nice for so long is that summer weather patterns don't change nearly as quickly as they do in the winter. But it does change. The whole set up over the United States will slowly shift eastward, eventually setting the Northeast up for a long spell of showery weather. Meanwhile, heat will build in what was previously the cool and unsettled western United States.

The first phase of that will make things even a little more summery for the next couple of days.  The sun will mostly stay out today, tomorrow and to an extent Wednesday, but the air will start to feel ever so slightly more humid, and still quite warm. The humidity will still be in the comfortable zone, but it won't crash as much in the afternoons as it did during the weekend.

And we'll start to hear about shower chances. There's an ever so slight chance of an isolated shower, mostly over the mountains Tuesday afternoon. We have a slightly better chance Wednesday, though the majority of us will stay dry that day, too.

As the new pattern establishes itself, we might finally get wet Thursday. By then, we will have needed the rain, because most of us will have been dry for a week.  It's still unclear how much rain we'll see Thursday, and what time of day will see the bulk of it. 

It's also still unclear if it will rain Thursday. Some models keep things to our west until Friday or even Saturday. Stay tuned. 

Given the slow pace of June weather shifts, the cooler, wetter regime should stick around all weekend and probably most of next week.  I'm not how cool it will get, but I don't expect anything that out of whack for this time of year. Chances are, it could even be fairly close to  normal. Again, we'll need updated forecasts to figure that one out. 

I don't think any given day after Thursday will be a washout, but there will be daily chances of showers. The distribution of showers and how much rain we'll see each day depends on the arrangement of small weather disturbances within this vast area of unsettled weather over the Northeast. It's way too soon to forecast those fussy details. 

The heat wave that is building in the West looks like it will be a record breaker in many areas. Climatologists and long range forecasters have been predicting blockbuster heat waves this summer in the U.S.

That prediction already seems to be coming true. 

We've already had impressive early season heat in Texas and Florida, and now it's the western United States' turn. 

We'll avoid heat waves in Vermont through the middle of June, but there's still plenty of time after that for hot weather. We're still obviously waiting to see how all that sugars out.

 

Perfect Weather: In The Eye Of The Beholder But Thursday Was A Good Candidate

I paused in under a sugar maple in my St. Albans, Vermont
yard yesterday to take note of the most perfect 
weather day of 2021, at least in my opinion

My bad.

Yesterday morning, I should have issued a Perfect Weather Warning for central and northern Vermont.

What wasn't to love about Thursday?  Deep blue skies decorated with just a few lovely clouds, wonderfully comfortable temperatures, a slight breeze, early hints of fall color glinting in the pristine air. 

Kinda why we live in Vermont, huh?

I declared yesterday the best weather day of 2021, at least in northern and central Vermont.  Sorry, far southern Vermont, you had a few extra clouds.

Perfect weather is in the eye of the beholder, of course. Some people think 95 degrees with high humidity is the best conditions possible. Others prefer winter cold and blizzards as their best weather.  There's a few crazy storm chasers out there who think perfect weather consists of powerful tornadoes marauding across the Great Plains landscape.

My definition of perfection was yesterday, though. Dawn broke with temperatures in the low 50s.  That meant it was comfortable for sleeping, but the air that got into the house through open windows wasn't too cold.

There was patchy ground fog around, and it's always wonderful to see the sun's rays pierce the fog brilliantly as it lifts.

The day went on to give us deep blue sky.  Air behind a cold front the day before came straight down from Quebec, shunting western wildfire smoke away from us.  Even from a distance, because there was no haze, Vermont's Green Mountains looked, well, green. 

The now lower sun angle of September made the light feel warm, but not hot. Temperatures climbed into the mid 70s by afternoon. I spend some time working rather hard digging in the garden.  I had plenty of energy because there was no heat or humidity to drain me. 

We have so many gloomy days over the course of a year in Vermont that a day like Thursday was one to savor. 

Delightful weather can treat us any time of year, of course.  But September is a prime great weather month here in New England. 

The summer heat has relaxed, so temperatures are often comfortable.   You can get weather like thi sin the spring, too. But spring is more volatile than September.  Spring storm systems, still energized by a just ended winter, tend to give us more extremes in the spring.

Which is why you need to brace for late season snows, severe thunderstorms and bouts of heavy rain in the spring. 

In September, storm systems in general are weaker because they haven't ramped up from the summer doldrums yet. Sure a cold front can still sometimes stir up some nasty thunderstorms every once in a great while. Wednesday was an example of that.   

Those days are exceptions, though.

The only extremes we get in September are when hurricanes venture north into New England, which is fairly rare. Of course when a hurricane does happen, things go from unpleasant to disastrous in a hurry.  Nobody wants a repeat of the Great Hurricane of September, 1938, for instance.

Overall, though, September is a moment on the weather timeline to pause and enjoy.  The sky is still blue the gardens are still providing a wonderful harvest. The air is often soft and bright and clean.

While we might not have the perfection of Thursday coming up every day for the next couple of weeks, there's plenty of wonderful weather in the cards.

The clouds you saw in the sky this morning should at least partly clear by this afternoon, giving us another bright, comfortable day. 

Though Saturday will features scattered showers and maybe a rumble of thunder, especially north, it will by no means become a washout. Sunday looks absolutely delightful and could rival Thursday for awesomeness.

The first half of next week looks nice, too.

Enjoy it.  Soon enough, you'll be shoveling snow, scraping ice off your windshield while you desperately try to warm up the car.  You'll be blasted by icy winds, and you'll fall and hurt your hip on your slippery driveway. Your heating bills will skyrocket, and cabin fever will inspire murderous thoughts about your loving significant other. 

Put that out of your mind. When the sun comes out today, put on your sunglasses, a little sunscreen and bathe in that wonderful early autumn air.