U.S. Extremes Coming Up: Montana Blizzard, Southeast Bakes, Stormy Middle

This weather pattern sill encourage record heat in the southern
and eastern United States, possibly a historic snowstorm in Montana,
and lots of storminess in the central and northern United States
over the next few days.

We've been talking about a weather pattern all month that features a strong ridge of high pressure in the Southeast, with a southward dip in the jet stream in the west.

That has contributed to record heat in the southeastern third of the nation, cool conditions in the northern Rockies, and some very stormy and wet Central Plains.

This weather pattern is about to get turbocharged.

The heat ridge in the East will intensify, and the dip in the jet stream out west will get much more pronounced in the next couple of days.

That means the heat records will really fall in the East, while a possibly historic blizzard hits Montana. Yes, a blizzard. In September.

The Montana situation is especially interesting and dangerous. Six inches to three feet of snow is likely Friday night into Monday, with deep, accumulating snow likely even in valley cities like Great Falls, Helena and Butte.

Leaves are still on the trees in these communities. The heavy, wet snow and strong winds with this storm are likely to cause tons of tree damage. The National Weather Service office in Great Falls, Montana is telling residents that "the combination of heavy snow with strong northeast wind will cause severe to extreme impacts to agriculture, trvel, recreation and likely power outages."

A few isolated mountain locations could get up to four feet of snow. It looks like it could well be a historic storm for parts of Montana.  It does snow in northern Rockies pretty frequently this time of year, but nothing close to what's forecast.

Meanwhile, the East Coast will bake in summerlike heat by early next week. (Probably not up here in Vermont, though. I'll get to that in a minute.)

Highs could touch 90 degrees as far north as Boston, and record heat will  keep summer going in much of the east.

Halfway between the western winter and the eastern summer, expect a lot of rain. Which is terrible because the central and northern Plains have basically been flooding since March. And it's going to continue.

A good two to five inches of rain, with locally higher amounts are expected in places like eastern Nebraska, much if Iowa and Wisconsin over the next week. That'll worsen flooding that's still ongoing. (Part of Interstate 29 in eastern Iowa were still under water as of this morning.)

Bottom line: The weather will really be in the news over the next few days. Look at it this way: It'll be a slight distraction from impeachment news, right?

VERMONT IMPACTS

The Green Mountain State will be on the northern edge of the big eastern heat ridge, which will make for a tricky forecast over the next few days.  It's unclear how far north the heat will get.  There's a good chance that they some days will have quite a large temperature gradient from south to north across Vermont.

There's also a chance some days will be much warmer than forecast. Or much cooler than forecast. Don't you love uncertainty?

To make things even more challenging for forecasters, bits and pieces of the storminess across the central United States will ride up and over the heat ridge in the east. That probably means they'll go right over Vermont or close to it.  So there will be frequent bouts of showers.

Because these disturbances will be moving so fast, it will be hard to judge the timing of them that far in advance. At this point it doesn't look like any of these rainy spells between now and the middle of next week will be all that heavy.  It also looks as if northern area of Vermont would get more rain than southern areas.

Expect the unexpected here in Vermont over the next week or so.