More Extremes Due, But Vermont To (Mostly) Escape Again

What looks like a narrow line
of showers with a cold front
in Oklahoma uesterday was
a line of bugs, moarch butterflies,
a few birds and other critters getting
a push southward by the oncoming
north winds as they migrated
south for the winter. 

The wild ride of weather in the United States over the past month has been something. It's one that brought all-time record October record highs to no fewer than nine states and dozens of cities in the eastern United States.

It's also a pattern that brought record September snows and cold to the northern Rockies and southwestern Canada.

No rest for the weary, as a number of potential events are shaping up over the next week.  Details are uncertain, but I think the weather might end up in the news again.  Just probably not here in Vermont.

The heat wave in the Southeast is finally, slowly breaking down, pushed away by inevitable October cold fronts.

One of those fronts will arrive here in Vermont Monday and slow down. This front will grab lots of deep moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and dump a good slug of rain on most of us.  Places in southern Vermont and from the Green Mountains east will easily get more than an inch of rain out of this.

We'll have to watch this a bit, because parts of north central and northeast Vermont got a lot of rain last week, too. There could be some minor flooding, but nothing too horrible is expected.

While we enjoy some pleasant October weather after the front clears on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, some other interesting weather systems could take shape. How wild things get really kind of depends on whether things come together in just the right way.

A cold front, stronger than the one that is affecting us Monday, will take shape in the northern Rockies. That threatens them with another possible snowstorm.

Our friends in Cut Bank, Montana, an epicenter of the epic snowstorm in September, can expect another dump and near record cold by Tuesday and Wednesday. Luckily, the snow won't be as deep, and the cold not as long lasting as the last episode.

This time, though, forecasters say it's possible snow could spread over much of the Dakotas and a good chunk of Nebraska later in the week. It'll also be quite windy in these areas as the quick cold blast moves in.

The cold front will eventually reach us next weekend, but at this early stage I don't expect any super big drama in New England from that. But stay tuned.

Meanwhile, a weird storm is expected to get going and stall well off the southeastern New England coast. A strong ridge of high pressure - the same system that should give Vermont fine weather during the middle of the week -looks like it wants to trap that storm in place.

It's also possible that the storm, sitting over the warm Gulf Stream waters, could take on some subtropical characteristics.

Depending upon where the storm sets up and the position of the high pressure in southeastern Canada, coastal regions of southern New England could get a long period of persistent swells, wind and rain, which could end up causing some beach erosion. Again, we'll see!

The image I put in this post is interesting to us weather geeks, and maybe you.  It's been awhile since a decent cold front moved through Oklahoma, but one went through yesterday.   As it pressed south and the winds shifted into the north, and pushed a band of migrating insects, monarch butterflies and a few birds southward with it.

Weather radar picked up what looked like a thin line of showers heading south with the cold front. But that line of "showers" had no rain. It was those bugs and other critters being pushed southward by the onslaught of autumn.

Pretty cool!