The First Real Vermont Spring Snow Melt Attempt Is This Week

As seen through my back deck railing, a flock of turkeys makes its way
Sunday across my very snowy back yard in St. Albans, Vermont. Me,
and the turkeys, will be dealing with a lot less snow around by
the end of the week as a real March thaw approaches. 

Pretty much on schedule, this will be the week in Vermont where the white winter landscape will start to transition to the mud season scenery of early spring.

The sun has gotten stronger, and you might have noticed the beginning of this change Friday and Saturday. Despite temperatures that barely made it to the freezing mark, the sun really began to chew up the snowbanks.

With warmer weather on the way this week, expect more of the snow to disappear, and more mud to appear.  Some of us might not welcome the mud, but many of us will enjoy the milder temperatures. The maple sugar industry will be happy with this.

Like all March thaws, this one will come with its share of setbacks and stalls. The first one came yesterday, when some areas - like my place in St. Albans, Vermont - failed to rise much above freezing. Light snow and sleet left us with a slightly thicker winter cover than the day before.

But it was already above freezing before dawn today, and yesterday's sleet is beginning to dissolve.

Today will be a typically moody March day. There will be plenty of clouds around, and some rain showers, mixed with a few snowflakes. In the valleys, temperatures will reach to near 40 degrees, so a bit more snow will disappear.

It's almost always colder in the mountains, and today the temperature drop with elevation is even steeper than usual. That means anything that fall in the higher elevations will add a bit to the snow pack up there.

Tonight, the snow showers will really crank up. However, during the first part of the night, it will be warm enough so that the the snow won't stick well in the valleys, but piles up in the mountains.

Eventually, late at night it will go below freezing, so we'll have another minor setback to the snow melt. Valleys will accumulate a minor dusting to two inches of new snow, will the mountains pick up one to four inches, with locally higher amounts.

Tuesday will be chilly, but not that bad. Temperatures will be about ten degrees cooler than normal. In January, that would have meant highs only in the upper teens, but now, in March, it means highs near 30. As the sun comes out in the afternoon, a few snowbanks will erode just a tiny bit more. Gusty winds will temper the sun's warmth. Again, moody March.

Then the warmth really starts. Wednesday afternoon looks like a beauty, with sunshine and highs near 40.  For skiers and other winter sports enthusiasts, it will be one more perfect outdoor day.

The temperatures will keep going up, so that it will be in the 50s by Thursday. There will be a couple of overnight thaws, too. With temperatures remaining in the low 50s on Friday with some rain showers, the snow pack will really diminish, especially in the valleys. Things will look a lot different at the end of the week than they do now.

There is the possibility of scattered lowland flooding and ice jam flooding due to the thaw at the end of the week.

This is Vermont, however, so there's nothing to prevent a big snowstorm from replacing the lost white cover.  It's too soon to know if or when that would happen, but one computer model suggests we could get a decent sized snowstorm around March 19. All the other computer models say no, we're safe from that. Time will tell who's right, but at this point, I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Winter's back will be broken this week, though, so any of the inevitable setbacks to our spring thaw will be temporary. Just think, within a month, some early green shoots will begin emerging from perennial gardens, meaning we survived another winter.

Yeah, It's Cold In Vermont. Warm Up Still Coming, Though

My deck and driveway in St. Albans, Vermont still has
a slick layer of ice from yesterday's freezing rain,
topped with a dusting of snow. Tricky short walk to my
frozen truck this morning, let me tell ya.  

As we woke up this Thursday morning, the sun was coming up in a sky that was clear in most of Vermont, but don't let that warm looking sun fool you.

It was cold at dawn. Temperatures were mostly in the single digits, and a northwest breeze had the wind chills down in the teens below zero.

Expect another 24 hours of midwinter chill before a warming trend starts. The warm up will proceed slowly at first through the weekend, then really take off the first half of next week.

Arctic high pressure is to our northwest, and that's feeding in the cold air. In northern Vermont today, temperatures will only get into the teens this afternoon, despite a March sun that is much stronger and  at a higher angle than we had in say, early January.

Today's high temperatures will be a good 20 degrees colder than normal.  Tonight, expect readings under a clear sky to drop down to a few degrees either side of zero.

These temperatures won't help with the ice underfoot. A lot of driveways, side roads and sidewalks are still slick with ice after yesterday morning's freezing rain. Today's sun might melt patches of the ice, despite the chill, but much of the slippery stuff will remain  underfoot for the next few days.

The expected warmup is going to be slow Friday through Sunday, in part because of a strong nor'easter.

Don't worry, that nor'easter won't hit Vermont. It'll be way, wayyyyyy to far off the coast for that. Maybe Cape Cod and the islands will pick up a couple inches of snow, but that's it.

However, that nor'easter is gumming up the works a bit. We'll have to wait for it to move northeastward, past New England and past Maritime Canada to allow that Arctic high pressure to move east and away from us.

Still, with spring around the corner and the sun higher in the sky, it'll still get better outside each day.

Expect low 20s Friday afternoon, mid to upper 20s during the day Saturday and low to mid 30s Sunday. So yeah, wintry, but reasonable.

Then, starting Monday, temperatures really ramp up as the overall weather pattern changes. There will be a lot of storminess along the West Coast, which will create a southwest air flow over the East.

That means temperatures will zoom up. It'll get into the 40s Monday and near 50 Tuesday. It's possible that parts of Vermont could get above 60 degrees Wednesday.

I know 60 degrees is too warm for comfort this time of year for those out in the sugarbushes to make maple syrup.

We hope that there will be some good freezes beyond Wednesday and that could happen. But the overall pattern favors warm weather.

The Vermont sugaring season got off to an incredibly early start, with taps running much of February. With the weather pattern setting up the way it is, it looks like there could also be an early end to the maple season.

We'll see about that.

One more thing to watch out for when it warms up next week. The ground is quite frozen, having been exposed to near zero degree cold without much snow to insulate it. Mud season will probably start next week, and it could be a messy one.

A Harsh Winter's Legacy: Potholes, Frost Heaves, Mud Season

A little more than a quarter mile down the hill from my house in St. Albans, Vermont, is Interstate 89,  a major route that cuts diagonally across Vermont from White River Junction, to Burlington, then north through St. Albans to the Canadian border.  

A Burlington, Vermont street is broken up and heaved
after a tough winter in March, 2011. Things
are as bad if not worse this year.  

Even though the busy highway is close by, most of the time I don't notice the noise from the cars and trucks whizzing by.

I surely notice them lately, though. All the trucks carrying goods down from Montreal, and all the trucks heading up to Quebec go BANG BANG BANG over the frost heaves that have turned a ride along Interstate 89 into something like riding a bronking bull.

This usually sends Jackson the Weather Dog scrambling all over the house to see if he can chase down the noise makers and force them to shut up.

Good luck with that.

Usually, in most winters,  the Interstate doesn't fold up like a cheap rug in the face of winter's freeze/thaw cycle like many secondary roads do.

But this winter has been different than most. And we're feeling it every time we drive. Our cars' suspension systems are feeling it, too.

I swear this is the worst frost heave season in years.

This winter here in Vermont has been colder than many recent winters. It certainly wasn't even close to the coldest winter ever, but it's been cold. And it's lasted a long, long time, with subzero temperatures in some parts of Vermont lasting into the last week of March.

The frost has gotten deep into the ground amid an unrelenting parade of Arctic cold snaps

But those cold snaps have been interrupted by several rainy thaws so the water has seeped into the  cracks in bucket loads.  The water freezes, expands, and we get those huge bumps in the road. The more water, the more cold weather, the bigger the bumps.

I should have invested in alignment shops and manufacturers of car suspension systems last year had I knew this winter was going to be like this. Not only here, but in broad swaths of the U.S. I  can't wait to see the quarterly profit reports later this year of outfits like Koni, that make car suspension systems.

Now that we're into April, the frost heaves will start to subside as we get more and more warm days and the ice causing the frost heaves begins to melt.  

Mud season in Marlboro, Vermont, 2012.
Photo from Vermont Public Radio.  

Then we're faced with new problems. The broken pavement left behind by the frost heaves will morph into more potholes, joining the zillions of them that are out there.

And since the frost and cold lasted so long into the spring, we're more at risk of a sudden big thaw with no subfreezing nights and plenty of rain. That means dirt roads will turn to swamps, even more than they do already.

Mud season on roads usually isn't too bad if the thaw is gradually, with frequent cold nights and lots of dry, sunny days.

Get a very warm rainstorm that lasts a few days in there, and if you live on a dirt road, we won't be seeing you for weeks.

Basically, my suggestion is to avoid driving through Vermont until May at least, unless you like mud pies and collecting broken pieces of cars from the side of the road.