Early End To Vermont Winter? Well........It's Complicated

Tonks the Weather Dog out in our St. Albans, Vermont
driveway today sniffing the air for early signs of spring.
Tonks says there are subtle, vague indications to be hopeful.

This seems to be turning out to be - at least from what I can see - as something I'd call a front-loaded winter in Vermont.

The winter hit earlier than in recent years way back in November and December. And as you'll recall, by the second half of December and early January, the weather got quite harsh.

Since then, it's been a relatively easy season, as far as Vermont winters go, and there's nothing in the immediate forecast that I would call all that wintry. In fact, there are signs most of the rest of February will be kind of gentle.

Looking back in more detail, November turned out to be a little colder than normal, and December was more than three degrees chillier than what we would normally expect.

Then there was that first week of January when the temperature fell to a record 20 below in Burlington, Vermont and close to 40 below in some of the cold hollows of the Northeast Kingdom.

Then we got a break, and despite some wintry shots, we've been coasting since. It's as if winter got all revved up and exhausted itself early. Like I said, front loaded. The second half of January was more than seven degrees warmer than normal.

February so far is running 3.5 degrees warmer than normal in Burlington. Though it's somewhat chilly today, the forecast indicates the running February average will get even more above normal in the coming days.

We're expecting highs in the 40s Wednesday and Thursday. After cooling off to near normal readings Friday and Saturday, we go back above normal next week, and could get all the way to almost the end of the month with the majority of the days being on the toasty side.

I would almost dare to bet my next paycheck that it won't get down to 20 below again in Burlington this winter.

By mid-February, the Vermont winter cold usually begins to show signs of abating anyway. It least in most years. The sun feels a little warmer in these longer days, and the normal average temperature begins to creep up. It's just this year, the early signs of winter's end seem just a tad more pronounced than in some years.

One thing this means is, I'm hoping Vermont sugarmakers are ready to start their season early once again. It's looking more and more likely there's some decent sap runs coming in the next couple of weeks.

There has been a general trend in Vermont and elsewhere for earlier seasons anyway in recent years.

You want to catch the sap now, in case March turns out much warmer than normal, which would end the season early. Of course, at this point, we have no idea what kind of month March will be.

March is, of course, a wild card. Probably the most wild card month of the year. True, we've had a warm March here and there, like in 2012, in which Vermonters spent a week during March in summery temperatures in the upper 70s and low 80s. 

We also know March can be extremely wintry. Just last year, after Burlington, Vermont reached an incredible, unprecedented 72 degrees in late February, March brought us the three-foot- deep Pi-day blizzard and a deep snow cover that lasted into the first days of April.

March, 2007 and March 1993 might as well have been midwinter months, they were so cold and snowy, so you can see anything can happen.

Winter might or might not be largely over, but we can now take comfort in the fact that this winter will not go down in history as severe as we thought it would be back at Christmastime. Even if March turns out to be rough on us.