Nation's Weather To Get More Interesting Over Next Few Days

An overwhelmed storm sewer creates a geyser in Portland,
Oregon Monday. Photo by Josh Makepeace via Instagram.

First the warmth, then the rains, and now all kinds of other stuff is going to happen, too.

Of course the warmth and the rains will continue as well.

The weather pattern this week has featured a series of storms slamming into the Pacific Northwest, causing flooding and high winds.

The mild Pacific air has flooded the entire nation, and is blocking any Arctic air from Canada from coming south, like it often does this time of year.

All areas of the country are warmer than normal today, except for a tiny corner of eastern New England, southern Florida and a sliver of California. Those areas are right at normal for this time of year.

This pattern is about to change a bit, but things will stay mostly mild across the nation, and continue wet across the West Coast. It'll turn colder and snowier in the Rockies, though.

Energy from this continuing parade of storms off the Pacific Ocean is carving out a southward dip in the jet stream over the Rocky Mountains, and this will spawn the first in a series of storms that will take shape in the southern Plains and move northeastward, roughly toward the Great Lakes.

The first one will get going Saturday with the risk of some severe weather just northwest of the Gulf of Mexico and possible flooding rains in the mid-Mississippi Valley.  Snow, maybe heavy, could fall up toward the Dakotas and Minnesota over the weekend.

The East Coast,  much of which has been damp and foggy and kind of mild all week, will really turn warm by Sunday out ahead of this storm. Areas from roughly Connecticut south could easily see record highs in the 60s and 70s on Sunday and possibly Monday.

Meanwhile, those Pacific storms will keep rolling in, spawning new storms to form in the center part of the country. It's too soon to say how many and how strong those mid to late month storms will be, and who gets rain, who gets snow and who gets wind, but it will be an active pattern.

While the West Coast is welcoming the rain to dent the drought, it's coming too soon too fast. Actually, the drought is pretty much over in Oregon and Washington, which is plagued by flooding and will be all week from these storms.

Seattle had quite a day yesterday if you like to see records broken. They had a record high of 60 degrees, and this was the first time in 120 years of record that it reached 60 in Seattle on two consecutive Decembers.

Seattle also had 2.13 inches of rain, making 2015 only the 9th year out of the past 120 with two individual days having more than two inches of rain. Tuesday was also the 13th day this year with over an inch of rain, the most of any year. The city also set a record high minimum temperature for the date of 50 degrees.

Portland, Oregon had its wettest December day on record on Monday, which was also its third wettest day of any month. Flooding in the region forced evacuations, closed roads and overflowed sewers in and around Portland, television station KATU reported. 

Northern California is in for boatloads of rain over the next week, which will ease their drought a bit, but again, the rains might be too torrential at once and cause flooding or landslides, especially near areas that had forest fires this year. The trees are gone, burned away in those spots, and there's nothing to hold the soil in place during heavy rains.

Parched southern California will get into the act over the coming week with some rain but at this point it looks like that precipitation won't be tremendously heavy.

VERMONT:

Yeah, this is a weather blog that looks at all aspects of weather and climate worldwide, it is Vermont based, so I sometimes try to highlight the Green Mountain State in some of my weather discussions.

The big news here is the lack of news. Specifically snow. On this date last year, we were entering a very snowy period that brought up to a foot and a half of heavy wet snow over a few days.

That caused a lot of tree and power line damage. This year, there's still pretty much not a lick of snow in sight. The situation is causing lots of consternation among early winter skiers and riders.

The weather pattern through the next couple of weeks favors warmer than normal temperatures. But it will turn stormier, so we'll get a few chances at snow before Christmas. It's too soon to tell how each individual storm will behave. But remember, you can get snowstorms in Vermont when temperatures are a little above normal.

Not so in the next storm, though. That large storm I talked about above that will take shape in the middle of the country will go by well west of New England. That puts Vermont in the warm, rainy side of the storm on Monday.

While record heat is likely along much of the East Coast, I'm not yet sure those record temperatures will make it as far north as Vermont. Still, temperatures will be way, way above normal up this way, with many places getting into the 50s on Sunday, as it looks now. (Normal this time of year is in the low to mid 30s)

It will turn vaguely colder in Vermont the middle of next week, which raises the possibility of a little mountain snow. Still, temperatures will remain on the warm side.




Since this is a Vermont-based blog (though I do