Early Winter Blast Coming Into Nation, Including, Eventually, New England

If you like winter, you'll love the weather in much of the nation
over the next week or two. The cold weather makes here into
Vermont this weekend and especially next week.

If you love winter, you're going to be ecstatic about the weather pattern across most of the nation in the coming week to 10 days.

What may well be the coldest spell of November weather since at least 2014 - and in many areas since long before that - is entering the picture.

Pretty much everyone east of the Rockies will share in this mid-winter type joy, if you can call it that.

The epicenter of this cold blast is, as usual, places like North Dakota, northern Minnesota, northeastern Montana, those types of areas. In some North Dakota towns, the temperature went below freezing yesterday and probably won't get above 32 degrees again until the middle of next week.

The cold from Canada will come in waves, which is normal, with the strongest shot likely to start plunging southward on Sunday and engulfing most of the eastern United States next Monday through Thursday.

Parts of the northern Plains could have overnight lows below zero next week. High temperatures in a broad area reaching all the way across New England could easily have high temperatures that never make it above freezing.

There are some signs the Southeast might really be super cold, relative to average. It won't be like North Dakota down there, but to them, it could end up feeling like the heart of January. We'll see.

It's a bit soon to say how this cold spell will rank historically, but given the warm autumns much of the nation has had in recent years, this will feel kind of shocking.

Of course, when it's that cold, it snows. It's a little hard to tease out at this point who will get the heaviest snows. There will certainly be some lake effect thumpers in places like Michigan, northern Ohio and western New York.

Here in New England, it's possible we could get a lot of snow from a storm or two, but that's still unlikely. But we will face the prospect of at least a little snow, and the first true widespread bout of icy roads, even in the valleys.

Us Vermonters can enjoy some relative warmth this week before the cold settles in. There will be a gradual cool down between Wednesday and Sunday, and the biting weather will come next week.

Before it gets too cold, another round of rain seems likely Friday and Friday night. Some of that might come down as snow in the higher elevations Friday night. We'll have to wait until they fine tune the forecast to see how much snow falls up there and to which lower elevations, if any, the snow reaches.