Blizzards, Severe Weather Coming To Central U.S.; Yo-Yo Weather Vermont

A little snow from last night melts amid raw winds on a brown, messy
lawn at my home in St. Albans, Vermont. Classic March scene, huh?
Also classic March: Very changeable weather coming

As we all hunker down to protect ourselves from Covid-19, the weather rolls on and there will be plenty of weather to talk about over the next couple of days.

Severe weather, including the risk of tornadoes, will strike parts of the South, while a blizzard rages in areas of the Northern Plains later this week.  

For Vermont, this all means the weather will be all over the place.  The yo-yo weather has begun in the Green Mountain State, and will continue all week. More on that after I set up the national picture.

A  southward dip in the jet stream over the Southwestern United States has resulted in stormy weather there in the past few days.  Local flooding and severe thunderstorms have rattled around parts of Arizona and California over the past couple of days, and feet of needed snow has been falling in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

One piece or a couple of pieces of energy did eject from that southwestern mess over the past couple of days, resulting in some snow and rain from Nebraska and South Dakota Saturday, moving eastward to northern New England today.

Another piece of stormy weather will come out of the Southwest today, causing a risk of severe weather in Texas and heavy rains in North Texas and Oklahoma.  That'll head east and cause some rain and snow once again from the Midwest to New England by Thursday.

At the same time, the main show will start to get going as a larger storm gets going over Colorado and begins to travel to the northeast, toward the Great Lakes.

This will unleash a blizzard somewhere in the northern Plains, though the exact location of the worst of it is still unfolding. There are already blizzard warnings up southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska for Thursday and Friday. Those might eventually be extended into part of the Dakotas.

Meanwhile severe storms will move into more of Texas on Thursday, and into the lower Mississippi Valley Friday.

Flooding is also possible in Oklahoma Thursday, and then extending into parts of the saturated mid-Mississippi Valley and parts of the Midwest later Thursday and Friday.

VERMONT EFFECTS

People in northern Vermont and the high elevations of southern parts of the state woke up this morning to a return to winter.  Here at my St. Albans, Vermont home, I returned from the Midwest last night to find bare ground. I woke up this morning to a little more than an inch of snow on the ground.

More scattered precipitation is likely the rest of the day, but it will be mostly rain in the valleys, and it won't be particularly heavy.  It'll be raw the rest of the day, especially in the Champlain Valley where winds are pretty gusty.

After a pleasant enough day on Wednesday with some sunshine and temperatures near 40. Then that next disturbance arrives for Thursday.  It'll be another raw day, with more rain and snow, with the snow especially prevalent in the mountains.

Again, this one won't bring a huge amount of precipitation, but it's certainly is worth watching, especially because of the risk of slippery roads in mid and high elevation snows.  Any precipitation will change to all rain as the day wears on Thursday.

Friday looks very interesting. As the large storm moves through the Great Lakes, it'll swing a warm front through New England.  The warm front will probably give us a good dousing of rain late Thursday night and Friday morning.

The warm front will bring a burst of warm, humid air all the way into northern New England.

Forecasters are currently expecting high temperatures Friday in Vermont to get into the 60s. Normal this time of year is around 40 degrees). I wouldn't be surprised if a 70 degree reading or two popped up if we get a period of sun between the showers.  As the storm's cold front approaches later on, we could get the first round of thunderstorms of the spring season. It all depends on the cold front's timing as it runs into the very mild air.

This cold front means business, and temperatures will really crash Friday night and go back below freezing.  That'll instantly freeze any lingering water on roads, so be careful Saturday morning.  It is only March, after all, so you can't expect springlike temperatures to last

We'll be left with an almost wintry weekend, with some sun, some flurries and light snow showers and high temperatures both days barely making it to the freezing point.

Whiplash, indeed!