Vermont Weather To Go From Wild To Mild, But For Rest Of Nation, Just The Opposite

A spring snowman in Peacham, Vermont today. Photo via
Twitter from Tim Scott Real Estate.

As expected, snow was falling in the higher elevations of northern New England, including here in Vermont.

Web cams from the ski areas all show snow covered slopes. According to National Weather Service reports this morning,
Greensboro and Woodford reported four inches. Danville, Vermont has seen 3.5 inches of new snow, with 3.3 inches on a hill above Ludlow; 2.5 inches in a high spot in Plainfield, and 2 inches at the 1,600 foot elevation in Marshfield.

After today, the weather in Vermont will improve through the rest of the week as we head toward near normal temperatures, we think, by the weekend. The weather will probably remain unsettled, but the snow will be over by Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, big trouble is brewing in much of the rest of the nation. It's peak tornado season. We're in a bit of a lull with the severe storms, which is great, but that's not going to last. Things might get very bad in the middle of the country by the weekend.

It looks like there will be a multi-day outbreak of severe storms and tornadoes in the middle of the nation. It will begin Friday and last through at least Monday. Weather pundits are saying this could well be the most impressive and potentially dangerous weather pattern in the Plains since 2003 or 2004.

It could also possibly be the worst outbreak of severe weather for the nation as a whole since 2011 or 2012, but that remains to be seen. The potential is there.

Details of how this possible outbreak of severe storms and tornadoes plays out is TBA, but I think you will be seeing such weather on the news by the weekend.

Vermont Agency of Transportation web cam image along
Interstate 89 in Brookfield at mid-morning today. 

The stormy weather will also dump a lot of rain on the Mississippi River Valley and surrounding things. Not good, considering all the flooding that's been going on in the region since March.

Meanwhile, on the West Coast, an unseasonably cold and wet storm is expected to come in this week.  By this time of year, the kind of storm that brings inches of rain to the lowlands of northern California and feet of snow to the Sierra Nevada mountains is pretty much over.

But that's exactly what they're going to get. Several inches of rain could fall in northern California over the next week. Winter storm watches are already up for the Sierra Nevada above about 6,000 feet in elevation.

California already had a wet winter, and there's still plenty of snow still on the ground in the mountains to keep already full reservoirs filled to the top. I guess these storms are the icing on the cake.

All of the weather drama I've described above is all related to each other. A deep dip in the jet stream is about to carve itself out along the West Coast. That'll drive the big storms inland into California and Oregon.

Then, pieces of storm energy will eject through the Rockies into the Plains. This will draw warm, wet air northward into the Plains. This will also cause strong wind shear in the atmosphere. (Wind shear is  wind direction and speed changing with height, which is one necessary ingredient for tornado outbreaks.)

The dip in the jet stream out west will build a northward bulge in the jet stream in the East. That will be one way to keep the warm, wet air flowing into the potential tornado zone, and it will warm much of the eastern United States up to summertime levels.

But that warm outlook is super uncertain here in Vermont. We'll be on the northern edge of that northward bulge in the jet stream, which means we'll be close to the border between summer like air to the south and springtime chill to the north.

Weather disturbances will zip along this boundary, whipping it up and down like a rope. That makes it impossible to time out when it will rain in Vermont over the next week and when it won't rain. It also makes it almost impossible to tell more than a couple days in advance how warm or cold it will be coming up.

As usual, what will happen next with Vermont's weather is anybody's guess.