This Vermont February Hot Spell Will Be Really Weird. Strange Weather Everywhere

Snow was rapidly melting in my St Albans, Vermont
yard this morning. I expect pretty much all of this snow
to be gone by tomorrow with record heat moving in

As of this Tuesday morning, a warm front was slowly working its way north into and through Vermont and the rest of New England, setting the stage for that long awaited record heat.

This is just part of the extreme weather pattern I referred to yesterday that will keep forecasters veyr busy, and likely guessing at what's next for days, if not weeks

As the warm air comes in, signs of the strangeness are there already. Typically, warm air will come in at higher elevations first as a winter warm front arrives. That's true this time, but up above us, it's really warm. Atop Mount Mansfield at 8 a.m., it was already 46 degrees.

Even loftier Mount Washington was 40 degrees as of 10 a.m. Their all time February record high up there is 43 degrees, so they have a good shot.

The warm air will continue to creep in, southwest to northeast all day. High temperatures for the day will probably occur toward evening.  It'l be warmest to the southwest, where parts of New York and low elevations in southwestern Vermont will get close to 60 degrees.

Flood watches continue across the region, for good reason. Part of the problem, of course, is the rain that's falling across our area with this warm front. The air is humid, and will get more humid. Dewpoints will rise into the 50s, which is typical for summer.  When it's this warm, especially when the air is humid, melts snow really, really fast.

Rivers will rise quickly by later tonight through Wednesday. The biggest problem areas, of course, are where there's existing ice jams, but I imagine rivers will go over their banks to cause at least minor flooding across some river valleys in Vermont.

At mid elevations, there was two to four inches of "rainfall" locked in the snowpack. That snowpack will have completely disappeared by Wednesday. So that's two to four inches of "rain" on top of the actual rain coming out of the sky during this hot spell.

Actual temperatures overnight will also be in the 50s, possibly near 60 in some of the warmer areas as we get close to dawn. Again, that's something that we often seen in the summer, but not February!

The February heat here in Vermont will be brief, but intense. It's usually very hard for computer models, and human weather forecasters to get a handle on exactly what will happen, since this kind of thing is so unprecedented.

At the moment, the National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont is going for a high temperature of 69 degrees in Burlington on Wednesday. If not for last year, that temperature would have broken the record for the hottest February day by seven degrees.

That is, except for last year, when the February temperature in the Queen City reached an incredible 72 degrees. So we'll probably end up with the second hottest February temperature on record.

But the top two hottest February days coming in consecutive years?!?!? Wild.

The NWS in South Burlington looked at the trajectory of the air that is supposed to be over us tomorrow. That is, where it's coming from. Their answer: Grand Bahama Island.

Also, if it hits 70 degrees anywhere in Vermont on Wednesday, it will be the third winter in a row where it was 70 degrees somewhere in the Green Mountain State.

Depending on the timing of an afternoon cold front on Wednesday, we definitely have a good shot of seeing a spot 70 degree reading in the southern Champlain Valley, the lowlands of southwestern Vermont, or in the Connecticut River valley down by Brattleboro.

As noted, a cold front will come in during Wednesday afternoon. There will probably be a very abrupt drop in temperature into the low 50s during that time - still awfully hot for February.

OFF THE RAILS ELSEWHERE

This weather pattern, as noted, is causing all sorts of issues across the nation - and elsewhere, really.

Repeated thunderstorms and downpours have much of Michigan awash in floodwaters. Other downpours - amounting to more than half a foot of rain in many areas, will stretch from northeast Texas to the Tennessee and Ohio river valleys over the next few days, so major flooding will be in the news from there.

On the cold side of this weather system, an ice storm is unfolding in parts of Kansas and Missouri. As of this morning, those areas were getting freezing rain, punctuated by claps of thunder at times.

In Minnesota, freezing rain was also coming down. And, as expected, a hard freeze was killing crops this morning in California's Central Valley.

LOOKING AHEAD

The weather pattern across the Northern Hemisphere is turning "blocky." That means that big gyrations in the jet stream are slowing down storms and weather systems and making them move in odd and unpredictable ways at times.

For us here in Vermont, that means a gradual cooldown over the next several days, with several chances of rain and snow. Readings will still be warmer than normal heading into this weekend, just not extreme like we're expecting tomorrow.

With this blocky pattern, we could have some interesting weather much of next week, but nobody really knows yet what we mean by "interesting." Storms? cold? warm? Stay tuned.

This impending pattern is flooding the Arctic with what for them is unseasonably hot air near the freezing point. And very cold, possibly near record cold will spread across Europe and into Great Britain.

Never a dull moment, huh?