More Stormy New England Weather Coming?

Today, a good week into spring, I awoke around dawn in my St. Albans, Vermont home. I looked out the window and saw heavy wet snow, sleet and gusty wind.

The lovely spring scene in my St. Albans,
Vermont driveway this morning. Snow and sleet
and wind and yuck.  

Isn't springtime in Vermont lovely?

Looking at the forecasts it looks like there's more challenging weather ahead.

The worst news is, there's a chance the northwestern third of Vermont and much of northern New York and maybe northern New Hampshire ane western Maine  might get another big snowstorm Saturday night.

Oh, joy!

First let's deal with today.

Since my early morning bout of snow and sleet, the precipitation has changed to a cold rain, and that trend is continuing across northern New England today. Most of the region will get rain, not snow today.

There might be a few snow showers tonight as colder air returns, but nothing extreme.

However. And this is a big however. It looks like a storm that I originally thought might give most of New England only a glancing blow Saturday night and Sunday might hammer us.

The storm coming Saturday night won't be anything like that super strong nor'easter that roared off the coast Wednesday, bringing gusts to 82 mph to Nantucket and more than 110 mph to Atlantic Canada.

In fact Saturday's storm is middling, as far as strength goes. It won't be all that windy. But the issue is this next storm will have a lot of moisture to work with.

Here's what's going on:  The storm that's going through today, the one with this morning's sleet and snow and afternoon rain, has a cold front that goes all the way down to the Gulf Coast.

A new storm will form down there along the cold front and then move northeastward. On it's way out of the Gulf of Mexico, the storm will grab a HUGE amount of moisture.

With that big supply of water, the storm will be able to drop a LOT of precipitation on the Northeastern United States.

Yeah, but what kind of precipitation?

In most of the the Northeast, the answer to that question is rain. Maybe lots of it. Southeastern New York, and southern and central New England might get enough rain to set off some flooding problems.

In southern Vermont and New Hampshire, the heavy precipitation will probably be rain or a mix, so there's a threat of flooding there, too. And the threat of several inches of wet snow if the storm is colder than forecast.

Once you get into northern New York, northern Vermont and New Hampshire, whether there's rain or snow becomes a huge question mark.  Early predictions are that just enough cold air will bleed down from Quebec to give that region a heavy wet snowstorm. Maybe 6 to 12 inches or even a little more than that.

Since the snow would be wet and heavy broken tree limbs and power failures are a real possibility.

But wait! There's more!

It's unclear at this point what will win out in these potential snow areas.

Will enough cold air come down from Quebec to keep things snowy? Or will the wet storm be strong enough to throw quite a bit of warm air more north than we now think? If that happens, northern New York and Vermont and New Hampshire would get more rain and less snow.

There's a winter storm watch up in this area for the potential for heavy snow. Forecasters are reluctant to upgrade this to a warning because of the uncertainty about how much warm air is coming.

So, stay tuned to updated forecasts. A very white North Country might get even whiter to welcome April, or the first good rainy thaw of the season will come in. Time will tell.