Rinse And Repeat: Wintry Threats Continue North, Severe Weather South

A snow shower is seen dumping a quick burst of snow west
of St. Albans, Vermont last evening. Similar conditions are
expected today in Vermont 

As if there isn't enough out there to keep most of us unhappy, the weather pattern is also stuck in a way that gives many of us little to cheer about.

A winter storm is creating a narrow stripe of rather heavy snow from Wyoming to Illinois, and that stripe of snow will eventually extend all the way to southern and central New England by Friday night and Saturday morning.  

Meanwhile, in the South, another severe weather and tornado risk looks like it will appear Sunday, and chnces are high that there will be couple more severe weather threats afrer that in the same region after that.

Up here in Vermont, there was still a dusting of snow on the ground in my yard in St. Albans from last evening and it was definitely cold out, with frost adding more winter to that bit of snow.]

That evening snow was caused by a reinforcing shot of cold air from Canada.  The band of snow was in far southern Vermont and northwestern Massachusetts this morning, causing slick roads in a few spots down there

Today in Vermont will look a lot like yesterday, especially in the northern half of the state. We'll have what I call self-destructing sunshine this morning. That sun will warm the atmosphere, but there's a pool of very cold air aloft.

The warm sun will cause updrafts, causing clouds to form and pile up, obscuring the sun for the most part. Between remaining breaks of sun this afternoon and early evening, those clouds will produce another round of snow showers.

Luckily, the air near the Earth's surface is dry, so much of the snow will evaporate on the way down. Still, many of those snow showers will have enough oomph to give many of us another dusting of snow. Nothing consequential, but also nothing you want to see this time of year.

Meanwhile, a pretty compact but vigorous storm is starting to zip west to east across the middle of the country,  laying down that stripe of snow in the Midwest. Southern Iowa not far from the Missouri border, is expected up to a foot of snow out of this.

That's an awful lot for that area of the nation for mid-April.

The storm will weaken a little, temporarily, but still have enough power to dump a few inches of snow Friday night and early Saturday in southern and central New England away from the coast.

In Vermont, up to three or four inches of snow could pile up Friday night in the mountains east of Bennington.  Further north toward Rutland, at this point it looks like a dusting to an inch, with little or nothing further north

After a brief sorta, kinda warmup on Sunday, it'll go back down to below normal temperatures in New England next week. The Midwest will warm up, but nope, not us!

SOUTHERN STORMS

The South is still reeling from those tornadoes and severe storms Sunday and Monday.  According to the National Weather Service eastern region, a total of 105 tornadoes from April 12-13 have been confired.

Tornadoes touched down in ten states, and if you added up the miles each one traveled, you'd get a total of 771.86 miles. If you combined all those tornadoes into one tornado track, it would extend from about Louisville, Kentucky to Burlington, Vermont.

The weekend tornadoes killed perhaps 30 people, and more than 60 Americans have lost their lives to tornadoes so far this year. If nobody else dies in a tornado this year, (which would be nice) this would still be the deadliest tornado year since 2012, notes the Weather Channel.

There might well be more tornadoes, severe storms and flooding on the way to the South this Sunday.  The expected rough weather won't be as extreme, or cover as big an area as last weekend, but people from Texas to Georgia better watch it on Sunday,  and toward the east on Monday.

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center is already forecasting a few tornadoes and severe storms for that tie period.

The weather pattern is favoring pretty strong storms riding east from California through the South or south-central United States.  Two more storms are forecast to take relatively similar paths next week, which could again threaten the South with more tornadoes.