Vermont's Temperatures Have Been Breaking All The Rules

A rainy, warm Leap Day commute to work this morning in
St. Albans, Vermont, following a chilly, wintry
Sunday afternoon --backwards weather  

The temperatures in Vermont have totally backwards and weird in Vermont the past couple of days.

We've been having high temperatures for the days in the early mornings, low temperatures in the afternoon, and situations where, if you drive a few miles in the Green Mountain State, you go from deep winter to spring.

Yeah, I'm confused, too.

As all of us know, the coolest temperature of the day almost always comes in the early morning, because the sun has been gone all night, and heat was lost to outer space.

And the day's highest temperature pretty much always comes in the afternoon, after the sun has heated the atmosphere for hours.

Sometimes, especially in the winter, storms and weather fronts can overrule this regime, and that's happening in Vermont, big time.

We'll use Burlington to demonstrate how this is playing out. For instance on Sunday, Burlington had its high temperature of the day of 38 degrees early in the morning, when it's normally coolest.

Then the temperature fell for the rest of the day, reaching the low 20s by early evening. Overnight, temperatures rocketed upward, reaching a record high tying 50 degrees by early afternoon. During the day the temperature will start to fall again rather than rise as it normally should.

All this happened because a cold front slipped southward across the Champlain Valley Sunday morning. It ended up stalling a little north of Rutland. Then it came back north as a warm front overnight, passing over Burlington early this morning and putting the Queen City back into the toasty air.

A cold front will come through later today, making temperatures go in reverse again late this morning and early afternoon.

This wavering weather front has really caused some wacky temperature differences in Vermont, too. At mid afternoon Sunday, temperatures in Vermont ranged from  about 20 near the Canadian border to the mid-50s around Bennington.

At the same time, Burlington was in the mid 20s and Montpelier, just 38 miles away, was in the mid 40s.

It got even more extreme this morning. At 5 a.m. at my St. Albans house, with a stiff south wind blowing, it was 48 degrees. Just 10 miles away in Highgate, at a lower elevation protected from the south wind, and in a place where the warm front still hadn't quite made it through, it was still 28 degrees

Quite an incredible difference.

There might be more weird temperature gyrations coming.

 Another storm is coming Tuesday night and Wednesday, which at this point looks like will sock us with a mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain. Looking for winter storm watches or winter weather advisories to be issued for late Tuesday and Wednesday.

As it looks now, it appears temperatures might rise overnight Tuesday, then fall back down Wednesday afternoon. Our backwards weather looks like it wants to continue.