Cruel, Foolish April Will Toy Harshly With Vermont

April Fool coming from Ma
Nature: After warm springtime
weather to close March and open
April, midwinter style cold to
hit Vermont Sunday through
at least Tuesday. Ugh. 

Today, the last day of March, will be warm and quite windy, especially in the Champlain Valley as Mother Nature gets set to toy with us mercilessly to celebrate April, and April Fool's Day.

Before we get into that, a bit of a warning for today. Don't do your burn pile today, don't throw your cigarette butt out the car window and just generally be careful with fire.

The dead grass and leaves of last autumn have dried out. The dry weather and today's strong winds would make fires spread very easily. This is especially true the further east you go, because showers will start to arrive from the west.

But we careful everywhere.

Now, on to April cruelty. April Fool's Day will dawn in Vermont kind of like a muggy July morning.

Low temperatures in the Champlain Valley early Friday might not get below 60 degrees, which is a normal low for July. Other areas will be in the 50s.

Temperatures will stay in the 60s most of the day, with humid air and frequent showers. Maybe there will be a couple rumbles of thunde. Ahhh, Spring! Won't it be nice!

Then the hammer drops. As noted in previous posts, Ma Nature, cruel harridan that she is, will bring us that mid-winter style cold wave Sunday through at least Tuesday.

Amid snow showers scattered about the Green Mountain State Sunday, strong north winds will send temperatures plunging. It won't above freezing Sunday afternoon. In fact, once temperatures go below freezing Saturday night, temperatures in many places won't get above freezing until Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday in some northern sections.

Wind chills in those strong winds Sunday will be at or below zero. A helluva nice switch from Friday's expected mugginess, no?

Forecast weather map depicts strong north winds
and frigid temperatures over the Northeast Sunday.  

Overnight lows Sunday night and Monday night will range between 5 and 15 above in  Vermont. So we go from a low Friday morning that's typical of July to one by Sunday night that's typical for January.  

This will all literally put the freeze on spring. So much for those early green perennials that are coming up in your garden.

Expect a lot of them to die, unfortunately. Eventually spring will get her and things will green up again, but we certainly have a major postponement to spring coming.

In fact, long range computer models, which I admit are not the most reliable, hint at quite a chilly April overall. Maybe we'll have to wait until May for spring?

Or we can hope the long range models are wrong. They often are. We'll see.

I knew we would pay the price for a record warm winter and early spring.