Record Warmth Today In Vermont, But It's Still Winter Here and Elsewhere

My St. Albans, Vermont yard looked like a winter wonderland
through Sunday. Today, after a thaw, it's looking like March, with
bare patches and branches littering the lawn.

Just before a cold front starting blustering through early this afternoon, the temperature in Burlington, Vermont reached 53 degrees, setting a new record for the date. The old record was 51 degrees in 1991.

A number of other weather stations in the Northeast and Ohio Valley set record high temperatures yesterday and today, so a lot of us got a break from winter.

Funny, our esteemed president used the so-called "polar vortex" last week to dismiss the idea of global warming. Why isn't he sounding the alarm about global warming today? After all, it was in the low 60s yesterday in Bennington, Vermont, which is supposedly part of the Great White North.

Maybe this yo-yo temperature pattern is proof that weather is not climate, but I'd had to complicate the president's day on the eve of his State Of The Union speech.

Anyway, it's still winter, despite the brief shot of springlike weather. Videos keep coming in to prove it. (A couple good ones are at the bottom of this post.)

For us in Vermont, the "heat wave" is over. It'll keep getting colder for the rest of the afternoon. It'll be below freezing for most of us by evening.

And, Oh joy! We've got more mixed precipitation on the horizon!

It looks like we're going to get a little more snow, sleet and freezing rain Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning. It won't amount to much, but it's enough to be annoying on the roads.

The main storm with this upcoming messy spell of weather looks like it'll come in Thursday night and Friday morning. At this point, it seems this next storm will go by to our west, like the last one did, so it'll be primarily a rain event.  I don't think the rain will be super heavy, so flooding seems unlikely. Or if it does occur, it won't be extensive.

This being still winter, it'll get cold again this weekend, but nothing outlandish. Just normal wintertime chill.

Any unpleasant wintertime weather we get here in Vermont over the next few days pales in comparison to what other people are getting.

For instance, Chicago can't seem to catch a weather break lately.  After having warmed up from their record cold last week, now they're facing an ice storm warning for tonight. There might be enough freezing rain there tonight to down trees branches and power lines. What a mess!

If you like snow, head to the Sierra Nevada mountains. Gawd, it has snowed there!  June Mountain got a little under 11 feet of snow since Saturday, with six feet of that coming in just 24 hours. I can't even imagine shoveling that.

A bit of snow on the ground outside this Mammoth Mountain,
California ski lodge.

June Mountain is a ski resort, as are Mammoth Mountain and Kirkwood Mountain Resort. They actually had to close because there's too much snow.

The snow at Kirkwood Mountain is up to the bottoms of the ski lifts. Once the resorts dig out, I'm sure the skiing will be mighty fine there.

All this snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is great news for California. During their epic drought a few years ago, there was hardly any snow in those mountains, which led to some near-water crises.

This spring and summer, all that snow will melt, and keep water reservoirs nice and full.

The weather pattern appears as if it's going to stay very active coast to coast at least for the next two weeks, with plenty of storms, and occasional Arctic cold shots here and there.

We'll just keep enjoying our big winter weather ride.

Now for some videos:

During last week's Arctic cold snap, there were numerous intense snow squalls across the Northeast. I love this compiliation of New York City snow squall time lapses. I especially like the street view one:



Here's a 24 hour time lapes of snow piling up in the Tahoe area. Note the cars in the background that keep getting stuck, but then are pushed out by other people: