Busier Weather Pattern Coming, Typical For March

Weather map showing the "Storm Of The Century on March 13, 1993.
We don't expect anything close to this extreme anytime soon in the
United States, but a stormier pattern is on its way, typical of March. 

Mid-March is typically a very busy time on the national weather maps.  There are frequently very big storms to contend with right around this time of year.

The past couple of days and today are the anniversaries of the Great Blizzard of 1888, which dumped up to 50 inches of snow on the Northeast with drifts to 40 feet. (!!!)

It's also the anniversary of the "Storm Of The Century" Superstorm  of 1993, which struck from the Gulf Coast to southeastern Canada (including Vermont).  It was the costliest non-tropical storm in U.S. history.

More recently, a bomb cyclone triggered record flooding in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota in mid-March last year. The Pi Day blizzard struck Vermont and surrounding areas in 2017 with more than two feet of snow in some areas.  

We don't expect anything like those storms in the coming days, but the weather pattern, already a bit active, looks like it will crank up a bit more.

An initial storm in the middle of the nation is no great shakes.  I'm out in Yankton, South Dakota at the moment and I awoke to an inch or two of snow on the ground here.  Down in Nebraska, there's up to six inches of snow. This small thing will gently slap Vermont with some rain showers on Tuesday.

The atmosphere is reloading, though.  California is in for a wet weekend, with lots of snow in the Sierra Nevada. That's actually a good thing. February was remarkably dry, so that rain is welcome. The several feet of snow expected in the highest elevations there will bring the snow pack there a little closer to normal.

That's important because California needs the melting snow from the mountains later this spring and summer to replenish reservoirs.

Eventually, a lot of this energy from California will emerge into the Plains states by the middle or end of the upcoming week.  It's way too soon to say exactly how this will evolve, but there's definitely a good chance of a northern or central Plains blizzard, and severe weather in the South.

I doubt this storm will reach the extremes I cited above, but it will probably cause trouble nonetheless.

We'll watch how this shakes out in the coming days.  I also have no idea at this point how or even if this storm will affect us in Vermont.

After that, more impulses will come in from the Pacific Ocean and cross the nation through the rest of the month.  They might not be gigantic storms, but it will keep the weather interesting through the rest of the month.

That's just another example of how busy March can be for weather forecasters.