Mid-February: When You Look For A Sign Winter Is Breaking. And It Has

Tuesday: The deep dark gloom of winter seemed like it would
never go away around my St. Albans, Vermont property

Much has been made about the mild winter across much of the United States, including here in Vermont.

However, here in the northern Vermont, this February has been a truly winter month.  Nothing extreme, mind you, but you know it's winter.  

Temperatures are running a little above normal so far this month, but we have also been making occasional excursions to below zero territory.  Snowfall is running a little above average, too.

Even though a lot of people like winter and want it to continue, I get a little ambivalent about it this time of year. There's certainly beauty in the white winter landscape. Dramatic, cold storms are fun for any weather geek.  Still, one often looks ahead, and so do I, toward spring.

Wednesday:  A chill north wind, but you could feel the warmth of the
February sun battling against winter. Photo was taken at 4:35 p.m.,
which would have been nighttime two months ago. 

Tuesday was dark, gloomy, wintry day in Vermont, I referred the weather then as the dog days of February.

 It was the kind of day when  you feel winter has been going on forever and it will never end. It snowed off and on. It was windy and raw. There was a thick blanket of snow and ice on the ground. It seemed a bit hopeless, frankly.

Wednesday was another day, and another attitude. If only in my imagination, the first crack in winter's grasp appeared to me on Wednesday, even if it was a wintry day by anybody's definition.

Now, I'm not saying winter is over, not by a long shot. Heck, it's going to be below zero tonight. And we will surely have our share of snowstorms, cold snaps, ice and winter chill to come in March and even in April.

But hear me out on what I felt yesterday was the first signs that this albeit tame winter is about to lose its grip.  It came when the snow lost its grip on my roof at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Hopefully, in less than three months, my yard will look like this.

Temperatures rose Tuesday night to near 40 degrees. Enough to cause a little thawing. Just before temperatures starting crashing downward again, a couple hours before dawn,  the foot-thick layer of snow and ice covering our roof let go all at once.

The house roared and shook and swayed as all the snow and ice on both sides of the roof all slid off at once.  It was a wonder to behold, even if I had to shovel the compacted ice away from the front door so we could get outdoors.

During the mid-morning, another Arctic cold front tossed down a handful of snowflakes amid gusty northwest winds. Then the sky cleared.

Earlier in the winter, when the sun was at a weak, low angle, the temperature would have steadily dropped all day behind that cold front.  With the stronger mid-February sun, the temperature held stubbornly in the upper 20s, despite the north winds trying to drive the frigid air in.

The bottom line is, winter and spring battled it out Wednesday afternoon, and that battle ended in a draw, at least until the sun went down and the temperature would plummet.

Before it did so, the better, higher sun angle did one more favor. Our winter of mixed precipitation left a nearly two inch sold layer of ice on our driveway. Michelle Kwan could win another gold metal skating on it.

But the sun wore a small patch of bare pavement near where my truck was parked. The sun warmed the pavement, melting the ice around the bare patch.  I was actually able to expand the bare patch a bit.

With the strongest grasp of winter now broken, it now feels like we are entering the see-saw war between spring and winter.  Already, the subzero readings expected Thursday morning will give way to 40-degree temperatures by Sunday.

True to form, as we go through pretty much the entire month of March, we will see a few more below zero readings.  Just as in 2017 and 2018, it's possible we'll see the biggest snowstorm of the winter this year in March.  That's not a forecast, but who knows? It could happen.

However, the chances of mild, perhaps even sunny days keep increasing. Already, the normal temperature for today in Burlington is four degrees warmer than it was on February 1. Onward and upward!

The sun will keep strengthening, and the days will continue to get blissfully longer. The sun was still blasting down nicely at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.  In December, it would already have been dark.

The battle for spring will be won several weeks from now, and maybe I'll fulfill my winter long fantasy of getting back in the garden, smelling the gorgeous organic aroma of mud and new blooms, and seeing the landscape turn to that delicious spring green.

I'll need to be patient with this, but bring it on!


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Cold and Snowy, Yes, But the Worst of Winter is Over: A Love Letter To Late February

The temperature where I live in northern Vermont only got into the low 20s today. The snow is deeper than it's been all winter. It's going to go below zero again tonight.

It was only about 20 degrees today around my
house in St. Albans, Vermont, but the February sun
has gotten strong enough to start melting the
snow off the stone wall near the south wall of my garden shed.  

So it might seem strange to hear me say it, but the signs around me on this beautiful February day tell me the worst of winter is behind us.

Oh, I know there's plenty of winter left. I wouldn't be surprised to see it go down to 10 or 20 below again before spring hits. Many of the biggest, baddest snowstorms we've had have come in late February and March.

But I do see winter's grip loosening. The sun feels much warmer than it did a month or two ago. The snow melts on the south sides of roofs, on the sunny side of snowbanks, and on steep slopes facing the south.

A cold 20 degrees really doesn't feel as bad as a cold 20 degrees did before Christmas, that's for sure.

I saw a goldfinch today. Their colors turn drab in the winter, but was that a bit of spring yellow starting to peek through on his belly?   And the chickadees are starting to break out their early spring songs.

I've noticed through the years the harshest winter cold ends around mid-February. The long spells of bitter cold below zero weather aren't as intense, and definitely don't last as long as they did in January.

For the record, the normal temperature in Burlington, Vermont today is three degrees warmer than it was in late January. That's not much, but it's a start.

When we get a half inch of snow in mid-February, like we
did last night, I don't obsess over clearing it out
of my driveway like I did in December.  I figure the strengtheing
late winter sun will eventually take care of it.  

This is the time for winter sports. The harshness of deep winter is diminished, the snow is probably as deep as it's going to get, and you can enjoy a full afternoon of the outdoors without worrying about it getting dark just after 4 p.m.

The sun set in Burlington, Vermont at 4:13 p.m. in mid-December. Tonight, it sets at 5:23 p.m. Twilight on a clear evening like this goes on until well past 6 p.m.

I don't mean to rain on winter lovers' parade. You still have plenty of days to enjoy it.

For those of you who are not really the winter type, though, hope is beginning to sprout like those flowers pictured in the seed catalogs flooding your mailbox.

You winter haters will have your share of disappointments with new cold snaps, new snowstorms between now and the time spring really sets in.

But you pretty much made it through another winter.

You can at least think about starting to celebrate.

Windy Weather Another Sign Of Fall And Winter

It's a bit breezy outside my house in St. Albans, Vermont this morning. Tomorrow, after another cold front goes through, winds are forecast to gust to 30 mph or a little more.

A kite surfer on Lake Champlain in the autumn
of 2011. The end of summer means more wind.  

This breeziness is another sign that summer is over, in case you needed it. In the summer, weather systems tend to be weak and slow moving. So you don't get a lot of wind. 

The exception is when you get a severe thunderstorm, when the wind really, really blows. But that never lasts more than a half hour.

When the seasons turn toward winter, the overall weather systems get bigger and stronger. That means more windy days. 

That approaching cold front, and the storm in Canada it's attached to, are somewhat stronger than a system you'd get in the summer, so of course it will be rather breezy in the Northeastern United States tomorrow. 

Hang on to your hat. Between now and the spring, expect plenty of days when the winds gust over 30 mph. I can already feel the winter wind chill with this.