"Backward" Weather Coming To Vermont/New England

A computer model map for Wednsday. Strong high pressure
over far northern Canada causing a strong east to west flow (the rather
tightly packed lines in Canada. A strong storm well off the coast
is contributing to the east to west flow. That green stripe
from New England into central Quebec is a band of
moisture, essentially a weather front, moving westward
from the Atlantic 

Almost all of time, our weather comes from a general west to east directions.  Cold fronts attack us New Englanders from the northwest, while surges of milder air come in from the southwest.

Or, little weather systems zip across overhead, racing due west to east. That's just the way it's done in the Northern Hemisphere.

Sometimes, especially in the spring, things get weird.  The weather starts coming from the east.  And when it does, more often than not we get a cooling trend, a reverse from the normal spring trend of gradual milder weather.

For both those reasons, we get into something called a backward spring.

We have an episode of that coming in the next few days. Fortunately, there are no worries about any extreme weather, which is also pretty common in backwards spring episodes.

In the early spring, weather systems often get blocked up in the North Atlantic. Things slow down or stall, or move in odd directions. In this case a strong high pressure system over far northern Canada and near Greenland s helping to gum up the works and get the air flow in southeastern Canada and the Northeast coming from the east, rather than the west.

Next, a storm is crossing the southeastern United States today, and will probably cause some strong thunderstorms and maybe a couple tornadoes down there. This storm will move off the Carolina coast and turn into essentially a huge nor'easter off the coast.

This big ocean storm won't come nearly close enough to cause any big weather in New England.  But it  will accentuate the odd east to west air flow over the Atlantic Ocean.  It means that what amounts to a cold front is moving from a position south of Greenland and move from coastal New England to New York Thursday.

This "front" for the lack of a better word, will be weakening as it crosses through.  It all means we're in for a spell of chilly light, but frequent rain showers, mixed with some snow. The snow would be especially prevalent at night and in the mountains, but it won't come down heavily.

We are in a cooling trend, too.  It'll only be in the 40s today despite sunshine, which is about average for this time of year. We'll only make it to the low 40s tomorrow, and some places won't get past 40 n Thursday.

That's not particularly cold for this time of year, but it is an interruption to our early spring.

That big ocean storm will begin to grudgingly move east or southeast at the end of the week, and the weather patterns will revert to its normal west to east flow. That will bring warmer temperatures ot us by the weekend. Forecasts calls for temperatures in the upper 40s to mid 50s during the weekend, which is a bit on the mild side for this time of year.