Friday, April 7, 2017

Flood Watch Eases, Brief Winter Flashback, Then Spring

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Rain has tapered off across Vermont and the rest of New England as of early this Friday morning, so most of the flood watches have been dropped. 

Rivers largely behaved themselves. There's minor flooding around, and there will be some fields and maybe some low lying roads under water today, but that will be mostly the extent of it.

I imagine a couple flood warnings might still pop up along some rivers in northern New England today.

Even so, it could have been worse.

You'll notice it will be raining almost all day today, so you'd think there would still be a rising chance of flooding.

But the risk won't increase much. Here's why:

First of all, it won't rain all that hard. Sure, there might be brief periods when it comes down at a good clip, but those heavier showers won't last long.

Plus, it'll be getting colder as the day wears on in the higher elevations, where most of the snow and potential snow melt runoff remains. So we won't get too much water coming off the mountains. Which leads me to the famous four -letter word.

SNOW!

Yes, it's going to snow again, but before you panic, it's not going to be another big setback to spring. Just nuisance stuff. As noted, it'll first start snowing in the high elevations during the day today and the snow will slowly spread to valley floors by later tonight.

Even down in the Champlain Valley, chances are you'll find a slushy coating to an inch or so of snow when you get up Saturday morning. The mountains could easily pick up a few inches from this. Places like Jay Peak could pick up, say, four inches of relatively late season snow.

In the valleys, any snow that accumulates will melt quickly. Though Saturday will be pretty cloudy, raw and breezy, snow showers will change to light rain showers in the valleys as temperatures get up into the upper 30s and low 40s. Not balmy, but OK.

Next up:

SPRING!

Sunday will be much better than Saturday in the weather department. The sun will be out, though some clouds might come in during the afternoon, especially toward northern New York

But those temperatures! After probably a frosty start, readings will soar well into the 50s to maybe low 60s on warmer valley floors. That'll feel good.

Then, to start off the week on Monday, we're still anticipating temperatures to get up to near 70 for the first time since, well, late February.

This time, 70 degrees won't be anywhere near a record high for this time of year, but it will feel glorious.

Showers move in amid continued mild weather Tuesday, but the rain won't be all that heavy. It'll cool down again later in the week, but not turn frigid. Just seasonably cool for April.



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