Spring On Temporary Pause In Much Of Nation, Including Vermont

Chilly winds, and even a few morning snow showers kept me bundled up Tuesday in St. Albans, Vermont as the weather here in Vermont turned a little more March-like again.

Get used to it.  The weather gods have pressed the "pause" button on spring.

All that dark blue in a huge aera of the nation's middle was
freeze warnings this morning. The lighter blue to the south
were frost advisories. We've hit a temporary halt to
our rather early spring. 

A persistent dip in the jet stream will keep us Vermonters kind of shivering most of the time, probably through the end of the month at. There might be a few warm days thrown in, but generally speaking, the spring green up is about to slow quite a bit.

I have a couple hundred daffodils in my yard that are this close to blooming. They might stay in that budding stage for awhile.

At least it's not record cold, and at least so far, not much snow is in the forecast.

The initial blast of cold air contributed to a stripe of snow Easter Sunday from Colorado, through the central Plains and up into the Great Lakes. Record cold followed, with temperatures dipping into the teens in cities like Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Denver, Colorado, among many others places in the middle of the nation.

Actually, Denver has had three consecutive mornings in the teens, the lowest being 11 degrees. The "high" temperature in Denver Tuesday was a wintry 25 degrees. Normal high this time of year there is around 60 degrees.

The Texas panhandle also had a few inches of snow this week.  Snow flurries dusted Nashville, Tennessee Tuesday at a time of year when daytime temperatures there should be around 70 degrees.

Even worse, in Chicago this morning, snow led to a 50-car pileup on an expressway, injuring something like 15 people.

Spring had come very early to much of the eastern two thirds of the nation, and earlier this year, I posted here on this blog thingy that I feared there's be a late season freeze do damage fruit crops and other agriculture later in the spring. Sure enough, freeze warnings were up this morning for a vast part of the United States from Texas to Tennessee

Frost advisories extended southward into northern Alabama and Mississippi.

For us here in Vermont, so far at least, I don't see extreme cold coming, though a real nasty, damaging to early plants blast is not entirely out of the question from now until early May. Snow is certainly not out of the question through the end of the month, especially in the higher elevations.  Right now, there's no signs of any kind of big winter storm, though.

Of course, as noted, we could easily get a few brief squirts of mild air thrown in, just to remind you it is still spring, in case you forgot.

As we enter into this cool period, we have one other sign of spring to warm your heart.  The famous Joe's Pond ice out contest ended this morning.  Whoever guessed closest to 6:07 a.m. this morning when the block on the ice fell through, stopping a clock attached to it by a cord, was the big winner.

A quick scan of Joe's Pond ice out dates suggests this year's was the fourth earliest on record.