Calendar Says St. Patrick's Day, Weather Says Mid-January

Incredible, mid-winter conditions hang tough in the eastern United States today as the awesome, awful stuck jet stream pattern keeps winter holding on, seemingly forever.  

Deep snow and high snowbanks in my
St. Albans, Vermont yard Sunday.
No early spring outdoor work or
gardening looks possible for quite a while yet.  

At last check in Burlington, Vermont, the temperature early Monday morning was minus 6, tying a record set way back in 1885.

In Milton, a suburb of Burlington, the temperature was an unbelieveable 17 below early Monday morning.

It's as low as 26 below at Saranac Lake, N.Y. and I'm sure there are a number of other readings in the minus 20s in the cold hollows of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

This is as cold as it can possibly get in mid-March in northern New England.

This morning is already the sixth this month in Burlington that's gone below zero. At this pace, March 2014 will be among the coldest Marches on record,  if not THE coldest.

Meanwhile, the Washington DC area this morning is suffering through one of its largest March snowstorms on record, with around 10 inches of snow basically stopping the Monday morning commute down there.

Out in very winter weary central Minnesota, winter storm watches and warnings are up for a likely dump of 4 to 12 inches of snow late tonight and Tuesday.

While the weather will ease up and warm up somewhat in all these areas by the end of the week, the overall wintry weather pattern looks like it could continue well into April.

Of course April will be much warmer than the deep freeze going on now, just because it's April and you expect it to warm up. But in general, temperatures looks like they will mostly stay below normal on most days for the next couple of weeks or more, so spring is going to be delayed.

I do like snow in the winter. However, I don't know about you, but I'm done now. Time for a nice spring thaw.

We'll take any warm weather we can, as long as the thaw doesn't come so fast we end up with a flood.

But the snow is going to stick around for awhile.

In northern New England, expect another day of far below normal temperatures today, followed by more subzero cold tonight.

As I said, it will sort of warm up later in the week. But it won't really thaw grandly. Instead of temperatures way, way below normal, it'll only be a little colder than normal.

Expect one to three inches of snow in the northern New England mountains Wednesday night. The snow showers will probably mix with rain showers in the valleys so accumulations won't be so bad there.

There will probably be more snow showers Thursday, with little accumulation in the valleys but another few inches in the valleys.

There is a risk of a moderate strength snowstorm (3-6 inches) across northern New York and northern New England Saturday. Sigh. We seem to be in a pattern that every time a bit of snow melts, we immediately get replacement snow.

Of course, the Saturday snow is not guaranteed. It still could miss, or it could be warm enough in the valleys to have the snow mix with rain, so we wouldn't get much accumulation.

We'll see about that.