Sunday, March 9, 2014

If You Love Winter, Good News: Big Storm, More Cold

Wow, talk about a party goer who just won't leave!
There's a decent chance much of
Vermont and other parts of the Northeast
could end up looking like this
Wednesday and Thursday.  

Winter, which wasn't exactly fashionably late when it arrived last November, is hanging on in the Midwest and Northeast and it's not going to go home and sleep off another season of cold and snow anytime soon.

Look for a likely fairly big snowstorm midweek in parts of the Ohio Valley and the Northeast, (including here in Vermont) and no huge breaks from the cold in the Midwest and Northeast for at least a week to 10 days.

Here in Vermont, we have another sunny and bright, but chilly day, with temperatures that won't climb above freezing all day. (Normal highs this time of year are between about 35 and 42)

A couple of weak weather systems are zipping from northwest to southeast from the upper Midwest to northern New England.

One that was coming across Lake Superior Sunday morning will deposit a dusting to three inches of snow on Vermont and nearby northern New York and New Hampshire Sunday night and Monday morning.

A similar system will drop about the same amount of snow on the same region Monday night.

Then we watch a storm developing around Missouri and Kentucky Tuesday. The forecasting computer models are in better agreement on what's going to happen with this storm, though pesky details still need to be worked out.

It's thought the storm will pick up quite a bit of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico as it moves from the Ohio Valley to pretty near Cape Cod Thursday morning.

If this bears out, there will be a stripe of fresh snow, six inches deep or more, from central Illinois through Ohio into interior Pennsylvania and New York and into much of New England.

It remains to be seen exactly where the heaviest snow will set up.  Here in Vermont, it looks at this point like the entire state will get at least a few inches of snow, with up to a foot possible in the southeastern half of the the Green Mountain State. Those high totals are also a decent bet in much of southern New Hampshire and the Capital District of New York.

This isn't set in stone yet!   There's still a chance the storm could move more to the south than we're thinking now, in which case northern New York, and the northern halves of Vermont and New Hampshire won't get much snow

What this blog, this space, for updates as the event gets closer.

What snow is on the ground, and any new snow that comes in the next week isn't going to melt anytime soon. It is March, not January, so temperatures will manage get a little above freezing in many areas Monday and Tuesday, but it won't be a huge thaw.

After the larger storm goes by, it will pull more cold air from Canada to keep us wintry. There could be a bit of a mini thaw next Saturday, but it won't be warm enough, or last long enough to melt much snow.

The first glimmer of hope for a thaw that could last maybe three or four days comes around in about 10 to 14 days. But if long range forecasts are right (definitely an iffy proposition) more Arctic blasts come after that.

It looks like winter might last well into April this year.

Not good news in my book.  

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