The Mayuary Snow And Cold Just Keeps Coming in Vermont

Web cam image from the Vermont Agency of Transporation
shows a wintry, hazardous high elevation Route 17 in
Buels Gore, Vermont around 6 p.m. Monday. 

Boy, we really added insult to injury in parts of Vermont on Monday!

We knew were in the midst of a remarkable May cold wave.

We also knew a quick moving storm would drop a little snow on some of the high elevations yesterday, but the snow overperformed once again.

North central Vermont seemed to be in the sweet spot for snow, far enough north to get into the best cold air for snow but not so far north to escape the moisture from the storm, which was crossing southern and central New England yesterday and last evening.

The result was a surprise snowfall, even at pretty low elevations.  Parts of eastern Chittenden County seemed to be one bullseye, with one to three inches of snow reported at elevations of about 600 or 700 feet. Pretty low. So this wasn't just a high elevation snow.

The snow fell so heavily at times that roads gots slush covered and slick. That's an incredible rarity for a mid-May snowstorm that hit during the day and early evening. Pavement temperatures, and weak warmth from the sun getting through the clouds would normally largely prevent that.

Some snow reports from yesterday in Vermont include 4.4 inches in Hyde Park; 3.2 inches in Greensboro, 2.6 inches in Underhill, two inches at an elevation of just 600 feet in Huntington and 1.5 inches in Hinesburg.

Looks like this Vermont landscape photo was taken in January, but it
was taken by a Vermont back country skier in northern Vernont
this morning. Photo credit to @NewEnglandTommy on Twitter. 

Mountain peaks are buried in snow along the spine of the Green Mountains. By yesterday, the stake near the summit of Mount Mansfield measured a snow depth of 58 inches, and it kept snowing after that measurement was taken. Normally the snow depth there should have dwindled to 30 inches or so. 

Back country skiers are reporting excellent conditions way up there, at elevations above 3,000 feet.

I guess if we can take any solace from this precipitation, northwestern Vermont has been dry and needed the moisture.  Forecasts called for less than a tenth of an inch of rain in the central and northern Champlain Valley.

Instead, in  Burlington, where it didn't snow, there was 0.64 inches of rain.  It also didn't snow on my parched, chilly gardens up in St. Albans, but I did receive a solid half inch of rain. So there's one glimmer if good news.

In a way, the worst is yet to come, unfortunately. The problem going forward for the next day or two will not be snow, but frost and freezes.

There will be a some scattered rain, and yes, light snow showers around this afternoon and evening, but unlike yesterday, they won't really amount to anything.  Today will be a chilly and blustery day for May, with highs only in the 40s, despite a fair amount of sun.

Tonight's a real trouble maker. There will be a harsh freeze in most places.  Continued overnight winds might prevent a lot of frost from forming, but that doesn't matter.

Almost all of us, though, will be in the 20s overnight. Temperatures will drop around Vermont to close to record lows. For instance, the record low tomorrow in Burlington is 30 degrees, and the forecast low is also 30 degrees.

With a little wind, that's enough to possibly freezer burn a lot of the tender new leaves on trees that are leafing out.  I hope that doesn't happen, because brown leaves going forward for the rest of the spring would be terribly depressing.

Early apple crops could also be damaged with this.

By tomorrow afternoon, you might be led to believe this cold awfulness is over.  Temperatures will rise well into the 50s, which is still cool for mid-May but a definite improvement. It'll be the warmest afternoon since last Thursday.

But the air will be dry and that cold high pressure system will create clear skies and light winds Wednesday night and during the pre-dawn hours of Thursday. That's perfect for radiational cooling. Expect temperatures to go back down into the 20s most areas. There will also be a heavier frost by Thursday morning, which is definitely damaging to leaves, crops and gardens.

After the frost melts Thursday morning, we can finally, definitely say good riddance to this Mayaury weather. A pattern change will take hold, and the chances of frost for the next ten days at least evaporate to zero.

A west to east flow will mostly block Canadian cold fronts for the next couple weeks at least. Cold fronts will occasionally come through during that period, but they won't bring any particularly chilly air with them.

We also have a couple decent shots at rain late Thursday night and Friday, and again Sunday or Monday.  It will definitely be too warm for snow during those two little storms.  (It might be warm enough for a little thunder, but that's OK.)

There are even some computer models that suggest that in a little more than a week, we could get into some summertime weather with highs in the 80s. I'm NOT promising that because the prospect of such warmth is iffy at best.

At least that's a sign that prospects for another cold blast later this month seem to be off the table.

Another Big Interruption To Spring For Us Suffering Vermonters (And Many Others)

The sky looked summery and the trees were greening up in the warm
sunshine in St. Albans, Vermont on Sunday, but spring is about
to go into another chilly stall. 

It seemed like spring really, finally hit its stride the past few days in Vermont.

Sunshine and warmth over the weekend had the trees racing to green up. Flowers bloomed, lawns got their first mowing and people ventured out in shorts and t-shirts.

It made it all the way up to 76 degrees in Burlington on Sunday, making it the warmest day since last September 23.

There was even lightning visible to the north last night, a sign that summer would like to approach. And yet......    

Vermont weather always finds a way to disappoint, and the upcoming trends do look kind of bleak. Let's just say I hope you didn't get too overenthusiastic getting your garden plants in.

As has happened frequently since mid-April, the forces of winter want to make another push.  Hopefully, this will be winter's last stand.

It'll certainly be cooler this week, startind today.  This week's temperatures will be five to 10 degrees below average, which means highs in the 50s for the most part and lows in the 30s, with risks of frosts on a couple nights between now and Thursday.

Then it manages to get worse, as forecasts now indicate. An odd mass of Arctic air will plunge south, putting the northeastern third of the United States at least into some really cold temperatures.

We can blame something call cross-polar flow. The weather pattern is orienting itself so that a batch of cold air from northern Siberia is going and over the North Pole, then southward across eastern Canada into the United States.

Spring blooms enjoy some warm evening sunshine Sundau im
St. Albans, Vermont.  These same flowers will be shivering
in the cold over the next 10 days or so. 

This type of thing happens occasionally in the winter, giving us some of our deepest cold spells. But cross-polar flow is almost unheard of for May, so this is something.

On forecast maps, this looks like a giant blue and purple bowling ball of cold air hitting a strike on the Northeast.

As dire as that sounds, this probably won't be the worst May cold snap on record. But it will be uncomfortably chilly.

If you're a gardeners, you'll want to be on frost alert for the next ten days or so. Not every night will bring a freeze, but pay attention to forecasts daily, and protect those early plants.

It wont be just us that's affected.

With spring well under way, there's a widespread risk of damaging frost and freezes across the Great Lakes states and across the Northeast and all the way down into the South. I anticipate a lot of crop and fruit orchard damage in these areas by this time next week.

Since the worst of this is a good five days away, teasing out precisely how this will play out. We know it's going to be awfully cold for this time of year. But how cold? And will it snow?

Here in Vermont, we might have quite a few clouds, some wind and showers of rain and snow through most of this upcoming cold wave.  In a way, that would be good. If we get a night during the cold snap that's clear and calm, temperatures would really bottom out and the freeze would be all the more damaging.

That might happen during this, but the trends in the forecast so far favor clouds and wind.

There's the risk of late season snows, too, but at this point, it's not looking like much. (But that could change if a coastal storm really gets going. That's possible early next week, but no likely.

This will be a long lasting cold wave, too.  It won't start to warm up until the middle or end of next week.

Another concern I have is how dry it is out there, especially in the Champlain Valley. Drier conditions make it easier for temperatures to really bottom out at night.  Wet ground adds humidity to the air, and that helps keep temperatures up a little bit.

You don't want to put hoses, sprinklers and irrigation out yet, either. Freezing temperatures could damage all that. So watering gardens is difficult for the time being.

Even without the cold in the forecast, we could use some rain.  Deep soil moisture is still OK, but the surface is dusty as hell. No soaking rains are in the forecast for the next week or so.  Just scattered light rain and snow showers that won't amount to much.

As much as we all like spring sunshine, it would be nice if we got into a wetter and warmer pattern during the second half of this month. We have no way of knowing whether it will do that just yet, so for now, ugh, bundle up.

A Decent Friday Sunset In St. Albans, Vermont

This might be old news, and maybe I should have shared these last night, but I had  pretty decent sunset Friday evening in St. Albans, Vermont.

Skies were still rather dark and cloudy after a weak cold front passed by. As we approached sunset, a narrow band of clearing set up on the western horizon.

First, the low angle sun lit up the trees in the woods in back of my house. Then the sun went below the horizon, and the sky lit up.   It was definitely nice to enjoy this from home!

You can make the photos easier to see and bigger by clicking on them. Scroll down for a look at all of them

My Own Little Holiday: "Leaf Out Day"

A first hint of green in the woods behind my St. Albans, Vermont home
with some lilac buds in the foreground. 

Every spring I celebrate my own totally arbitrary holiday with my own personal arbitrary rules in which I  arbitrarily pick the date based on some green I see in my surroundings.

It's called Leaf Out Day.

Every spring, I note the first time I see any fairly sizable tree around me with new, tiny fresh green leaves. This year, the moment came two days ago, on Tuesday.

The celebration will now go on as as Ma Nature picks away at the predominant brown surroundings and turns them green.

The first "green" tree of the season is usually a very hardy poplar. They're not my favorite trees, usually, but some varieties are the first to green up.

As I said, my rules for Leaf Out Day are totally arbitrary. The scrubby invasive honeysuckle bushes on the side of the highway turned a little green more than a week ago, but I don't count those. Some willow trees seem vaguely green, too, but I don't count those, either.

I also know the spring green up in Vermont is a months long process, starting with the first crocus shoots in March and ending with fully mature summer leaves around Memorial Day, when you can finally plant your tomatoes.

The entire greening process is wonderful, but for me Leaf Out Day is the time to really start celebrating spring full blast.

Leaf Out Day's date cannot really be foretold in advance. It all depends on weather conditions. This year's was about normal as far as schedule goes. I've lived in Vermont all my life, and Leaf Out Day has changed.  It used to come in the first week of May, decades ago when I was a kid. Now, it almost always hits during the last week of April.

The earliest one I can remember was in 2002, when an early season April hot spell of 90 degrees made Leaf Out Day come on April 17.

There are other aspects of Leaf Out Day that I love. It's about the time daffodils are peaking. I also love the landscape. In areas with a decent sugarbush, you have lush green fields bordering those maple trees which have gone from winter gray to this rich reddish brown as their buds reach to a point where they are juuustt prepare to open.

Soon, those buds will pop into green, too.

Daffodils and hyacinth continue to bloom in my St. Albans,
Vermont garden. 

The greening process continues into what I call Vermont's real foliage season in May. Everybody is in awe of Vermont's autumn, but the spring foliage season is far better.

True, in the spring, most of the colors are green, but they are every imaginable shade of green. And the way the sun backlights new green leaves into this shimmering emerald is just spectacular.

The pace of Leaf Out Day, and the subsequent Leaf Out Month as I call it. The pace of that also depends on the weather. This might be one of those years where the pace is relatively slow. (In recent years, we seem to go from winter to summer in a blink of an eye.

Temperatures are forecast to be mostly cool through the middle of May. In fact, I do worry about signs that one of these cold shots might be too strong, and deep frost could kill some of these new leaves. But that remains to be seen.

All of what I just talked about is very familiar to any Vermonter who has so much as stepped outside to enjoy spring.

But do what I do. Especially in troubled times, it's great to create your own happy holiday. Leaf Out Day isn't just mine. It's everybody's. And you get to choose all those arbitrary rules as to what constitutes the holiday. Your rules might be totally different from mine, and that's part of the beauty of it. It is your own personal holiday.

It's a rolling holiday, too, starting way early in the South, maybe in late February and going up into Canada as the month of May rolls through.

Happy Leaf Out Day, everyone!

Spring Snow To (Temporarily) Crush Spring Hopes

A spring snowstorm in Burlington, Vermont back on April 27, 2010.
See? This kind of thing HAS happened before. 

It seems hard to believe, this late in the season, and after a really nice spring day on Saturday that brought sunshine and temperatures near 60, that much of Vermont is under a winter weather advisory for snow.  

But yep, much of Vermont is under a winter weather advisory.

It's a tricky forecast, so I'm anticipating some of the forecasted amounts of rain and snow with this system are going to off in some areas.

But I guarantee snow in at least part of Vermont and some flakes will probably make it down to valley floors in many locations, even perhaps the "tropical" Champlain Valley.

For snow die hards, some of the highest peaks, especially in central Vermont, could get buried. What I said yesterday about Killlington Peak probably managing a foot of new snow out of this still holds.

In lower elevations where most of us live, it won't be that bad. But still, a late April forecast that features a few to several inches of snow, the risk of slick roads and a few power outages, is not exactly encouraging.

The majority of Vermonters, I would say, live at elevations below 1,000 feet. In those spots, if any snow accumulates tonight, it'll be a slushy coating to an inch, which will melt on Monday despite continued chilly temperatures.

There is one interesting thing, tbough that the National Weather Service in South Burlington has picked up on. Some high resolution computer models have a particularly heavy band of precipitation setting up across central Vermont tonight.

Heavier precipitaiton will more likely be snow, so it's possible a narrow band in central or north central Vermont could pick up as much as half a foot or even more of snow. This is uncertain, but something to watch.

The higher you go above 1,000 feet, the more snow you'll get, especially in the southeastern ntwo thirds of Vermont. I'm guessing perhaps two to six inches will pile up in some areas above 1,500 feet in elevation.

The winter weather advisory (I'm sick of those three words at this point) cover all of Vermont except the Champlain Valley, lower elevations of Rutland county and the Connecticut River Valley from about Springfield south.

TRICKY FORECAST

There are a lot of complication to this forecast, as I mentioned above. The air to start this morning was very dry. Temperatures were able to get up to the low 50s by mid morning as a little sun was easily able to heat that dry air. Those will be the high temperatures for the day.

This sounds odd, but a warm front will create most of our snow risk.  The warm front, well to our south this morning, will strengthen as it moves north, but it won't ever quite make it through.

Precipitation will start to fall from the thickening clouds overhead early this afternoon.  At first, rain will evaporate on the way down as it encounters the dry air.

Eventually, as the air moistens, the rain will make it to the ground, and the temperature will fall as the rain continues. Eventually, tonight, it will cool off enough to change the rain to snow, starting at the highest elevations then working downhill.  When precipitation starts to fall especially heavily, that would pull more cold air down to the surface, encourage snowflakes to reach valleys, and create quick hits of one inch snow accumulation rates up high.

Another tricky thing is a dry high pressure system to the north. As the moisture comes in, the dry air to the north will battle it, possibly causing bits and pieces of that dry air to get mixed in with the flow of air north of the warm front.  That could cause the rain and snow to be spottier and more intermittant at times, especially along and north of Route 2.

The heaviest rain and snow will have passed by Vermont by early Monday morning. This storm is a slow mover, though, which is typical of spring storms. (The snow is unusual for this time of year, but the forward speed of the storm is not).

That means cold rain showers and high elevation snow showers will continue all day Monday, Monday night and into Tuesday. The rain and snow won't come down hard, and be mostly focused on the mountains, but the start of the week will be nasty for the closing days of April.

High temperatures both days will only be in the 40s, compared to normal temperatures near 60 degrees. On the vaguely bright side, nighttimes won't be nearly as cold in the coming days as that wintry blast we had last week.

Instead of teens and 20s for lows, temperatures will stay in the low to mid 30s tonight, Monday night and Tuesday night, though there will probably be some upper 20s showing up in colder spots Tuesday night.

OUTLOOK AND HISTORY

We get another brief break on Wednesday before the next storm lumbers in on Thursday and hangs around for a few days after that.  It still looks like that next storm will be mostly or exclusively a rainy one.  There is the potential for a lot of rain with that one. We'll have to wait and see.

The weather pattern continues to look on the cool side at least into the second week of May.  There will probably be a few warm or warm-ish days thrown in, too. And remember, normal temperatures keep rising, so the cool spells will keep getting less and less cool.

For the moment, at least, I'm not seeing signs of any more snowstorms after this one. I'm hoping we're done until  about Thanksgiving. Then it can snow again.

History doesn't always repeat itself, but I'll give a grain of hope for those longing for some hot summertime weather.

On May 9, 1977, a record late snowstorm struck New England, including much of Vermont. Up to 20 inches of snow fell on central Massachusetts, felling lots of trees that were already in full bloom. Parts of Vermont got more than six inches of snow.

Just eight days later, on May 17th that year, it was up to 90 degrees, and a few days after that, Burlington set its all time record high temperature for May of 93 degrees. (The record has since been tied).

In 2010, five to 12 inches of snow fell on parts of the Champlain Valley and northern Vermont on April 27-28. Five days later, temperatures were in the mid-80s.

That won't happen this year, but it is a sign that spring and summer will get here eventually.

Did Someone Say Snow? Again?

Despite the recent chill, I'm starting to see more pops of spring
color around the shed on my St. Albans, Vermont property. 

It's the end of April and spring should be in full swing.

But is it?  

This year, occasionally, at least, it's hard to tell. March and the first half of April in Vermont were pretty good in the spring department, at least by Vermont standards.

Temperatures during that time were generally warmer than normal, and some of the early spring garden plants got off to a roaring start.

Since the middle of the month, things went down hill,  back toward winter. Sure, there's been a couple nice days thrown in there, and today is certainly going to be nice enough. Sunshine and temperatures in the 50s to near 60 is not far from normal this time of year, after all.

But another chilly storm is on our doorstep, and for some Vermonters, it means, yes, more snow.

This next storm is going to be a pretty strong one.  It was developing around Missouri this morning and will steadily move northeastward toward New Jersey or so by Sunday night, all the while gaining more oomph.

Since it's going by to the south, central and southern Vermont, and by extension, central and southern New England, will see the most action from this.

The storm will spread a cold rain across New England Sunday, and it will come pretty hard at times Sunday afternoon and evening.  In Vermont, that's especially, I would guess, south of a Middlebury to Wells River line.

Temperatures will be close to cold enough for snow in the higher elevations. The heavier precipitation will probably bring down some even chilier air, bringing some snow Sunday evening down to elevations as low as 1,000 feet.

Having mostly survived a nasty cold wave earlier this month, spring
blooms in my St. Albans, Vermont ard bask in a little warm sunshine
this  morning before the next cold storm arrives tomorrow. 

A slushy coating is a good possibility in central and southern Vermont at 1,000 foot elevations and that will gradually increase as you go up in elevation. By the time you get to the top of Killington Peak, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a foot of new snow way up there.

Other high elevations of New Hampshire and Massachusetts will also probably see areas of accumulating snow out of this. It won't be the latest snow on record, but it is awfully late in the season.

Southern Vermont could get more than an inch of rain (and melted snow) out of this. It's been dry-ish, so this amount of rain shouldn't cause any flooding  problems.

As noted, northern areas should escape the worst of  the weather because they will be furthest away from the storm. Also,  dry air will feed down from Canada, making the precipitation a little lighter and spottier. There will only be probably a quarter inch of rain or melted snow north of Route 2, which isn't so bad. And that northern snow wil only accumulated above 1,500 feet in elevation, and amount to only an inch.

Unfortunately, there are few signs of a big warmup anytime soon, NOAA's extended outlooks call for mostly below normal temperatures in all of New England through at least May 9. Grr..

The storm from Sunday will meander off the coast until later on Tuesday, which will keep cold, light rain showers and a little bit of higher elevation snows going at least into Monday night.

The next good sized storm looks like it will arrive Thursday. I'm hoping and thinking that one will be a little warmer, so it would produce almost exclusively just rain

If you think the current weather pattern and forecast is bad, let's take a trip down memory lane. Just to prove it could be much, much worse.

Let's take the spring of 1971 for instance.  In Burlington, Vermont's banana belt, there was 33 inches of new snow in March and there was at least a foot of snow on the ground every day through March 30.

In April that year, there was at least some snow on the ground every day in April until the 22nd. Six nights that month got down into the teens, and only ten days cracked the 50 degree mark. Note it was colder and snowier, as usual, back then, outside the Champlain Valley. But we survived.

So yeah, mentioning snow in a Vermont weather forecast this time of year is a little disheartening. But we get through it. Everything does.

Remember the other day I was lamenting the likely loss of my early season flowers because of the sharp cold wave earlier this week? Well, as I said, everything copes. I would say 90 percent of the blooms and buds survived.  A little sunshine yesterday sprouted more blossoms and I expect more in today's sunshine.  Hope springs eternal. Literally.

Snow, Record Cold, Hail, Storms, Twisters: We Just Can't Have Nice Things

Springtime killed. Amid a dusting of snow, the sagging blooms and
the dark color leaves on these daffodils in my yard indicate
they might have been destroyed by the frigid temperatures. Photo was
taken while temperatures were still well below freezing. The
damage will probably be more apparent later. 

In the grand scheme of things, the losses and potential losses I found outside my house in St. Albans, Vermont this morning were pretty small.

But they were still disheartening.

I kind of expected it, but it was a shame to see the daffodils and other plants and flowers that had been coming up likely ruined by the intense cold from last night.

If any of them survived, they won't tonight as temperatures are likely to be in even colder tonight. I'll know at the end of the week what, if anything, survived. I have a feeling I won't even get to enjoy lilacs this year. Those buds could be damaged, too.  

Who knows? Maybe most of the plants will recover.  But I'm not optimistic at this point.

Amid everything that has been going on, it was nice to get some peace in my gardens from the early season blooms. Now those are gone, at least for now. So that was taken from me.  Everything had been coming up, so I don't know what kind of flowers and blooms I get later in the spring or summer.

Well, there's always next year.

As if to add insult to injury, as I started to write this, snow began to briefly fall pretty heavily. The sickening winter sound of a snow plow scraping by bothered me, too. There's not much snow, but it's blowing around and making the roads slick. It's not the usual April wet snow. It's powdery. Roads are frozen. Like January. Ugh.

At last check it was 18 degrees up in Saranac Lake, New York. The "warmest" parts of Vermont were in the upper 20s early this morning.  Snow covered the ground across most of northern Vermont, and I'm sure gardeners statewide found the same depressing sight out their doors that I did this morning.

Tonight, Vermont is in for record or near record cold. The record low tomorrow morning in Burlington is 23 degrees and in Montpelier it's 21 degrees. Those records are in jeopardy. Some areas of the Northeast Kingdom will probably be in the mid-teens tonight. A few places up there might not even get above freezing today.

Again, my "suffering" isn't that at all. Just a little disappointment. But you can't help but think the weather has gotten pretty mean-spirited.

I can't attribute today's weather to climate change.  It could be random, and you really can't take one weather event in one little spot on the globe and point at climate change.

However,  in a perverse way, it's consistent with it. We've been warned by scientist - as I recall since the late 1980s at least - we were heading toward a future that was generally warmer, but with a higher risk of sharp day to day jolts in temperatures and weather conditions. We were warned of warmer temperatures interrupted by sharp, damaging cold spells. That future is here.

Like what has been happening in lots of places, increasingly in recent years, things get going early in the spring due to oddly warm temperatures. Then an old fashioned quick freeze comes and ruins everything.

For me this year, it was just a bummer. For many agricultural interests in much of the eastern United States, this will be a disaster at a time they really don't need anothe disaster.

Freeze warnings are up for a broad area of the Middle Atlantic States, with temperatures likely to reach the 20s as far south as Virginia. Orchards and early crops in this region are in big trouble.

SEVERE STORMS

Gigantic hailstones came down overnight near
Devol, Oklahoma. Photo via Twitter/KOCO

And, as I've mentioned practically every day this month, severe storms keep rolling on.  Here's the latest update.

Those severe storms in the Middle Atlantic States certainly materialized.  Though tornadoes were not expected, one might have hit Toms River, on the Jersey shore. There's a lot of damage to trees and some houses, there, so the weather folks will probably investigate that today.

There was a tornado warning at one point for pretty intense rotation on the Bronx/Yonkers border yesterday afternoon, ut I don't know if anything actually touched down.

Yesterday, overnight and this morning, large hail, sometimes baseball sized, pelted parts of Oklahoma.

Tornadoes are in the forecast today for a broad area centered on where Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana meet. The tornado threat will spread into much of the rest of the Southeast tomorrow.

Back up here in Vermont, we're not expecting any severe weather. The frigid weather is enough, thank you. Although it will warm up somewhat starting tomorrow afternoon, it looks like it's going to stay colder than normal into early May.

If any of our garden plants can grow back, they'll have to wait awhile.

Wintry Blast Heading To New England; Southern Tornadoes

Daffodil blooming in my St. Albans, Vermont this morning.
Let's hope this little fella survives temperatures in the low to
mid 20s Wednesday night! 

As expected tornadoes and severe weather rocked the South yesterday, though thankfully this one wasn't as bad as the outbreak a week earlier.

There were several tornadoes, and reports of one particularly large, strong one in Mississippi.

It appears that tornado mostly went through rural and pretty unpopulated areas, so not too many houses got wrecked this time. And thankfully, so far, no deaths have been reported.

It looks like there will be one more threat of some severe weather in the South, midweek, and then there will be a brief break lasting several days, in which there will be relatively few reports of severe weather and tornadoes.  At least that's the way it looks at the moment.

Up here in Vermont, we don't expect anything dramatic like tornadoes, of course. But after an early spring, winter still wants to regain control.  Watch out for wind gusts, and then a hard freeze.

We have another system coming in similar to what we've seen a few times this month already: A very dynamic, energetic disturbance will come in from the west and northwest.  Like the previous systems, recipitation amounts won't be overwhelming at all. Still,  you'll notice the weather on Tuesday.

Out ahead of the storm's strong cold front, gusty south winds will blow Tuesday morning, especiall in the Champlain Valley, where winds could go over 40 mph at times.

Crocuses like these blooming in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens
look fragile, but they're pretty tough. We'll see how well they do in
a really hard freeze expected Wednesday night. 

A band of showers, and maybe some thunderstorms will accompany the cold front, which at this point  looks like it will enter western Vermont in the early afternoon and then sweep east.

The front might be energetic enough to set off a few thunderstorms, especially in southern Vermont.  NOAA's Storm Prediction  Center has much of the Northeast in a marginal risk zone for severe thunderstorms and that zone extends into the southern half of Vermont.

There might be a few isolated thunderstorms that manage to create damaging wind gusts. In Vermont, if this happens at all, the damaging gusts will be few and far between.

The real story will be the intense cold behind the cold front, at least by April standards. After snow showers dust a few areas Tuesday night, high temperatures Wednesday will stay in the 30s in many northern areas, with a stiff northwest wind. The Champlain Valley and southern Vermont could squeak into the low 40s, but that's a far cry from the mid and upper 50s that are normal for this time of year.

Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to lose some of the early blooms that are out there right now.  Temperatures Wednesday night will bottom out between 15 and 25 degrees, with the teens up in the mountains and colder hollows.

Early flowers like daffodils and crocuses are pretty tough, but early varieties that are blooming now might not fare that well in that level of cold.  The plants themselves will be fine, but the some of the blooming daffodils and other flowers could wilt and die in those temperatures.

It depends upon how hardy yours are, but the prospect of even losing a few is a bit depressing.

Temperatures will kind of, sort of warm up later in the week and into the weekend, but still remain below normal, unfortunately.

Spring On Temporary Pause In Much Of Nation, Including Vermont

Chilly winds, and even a few morning snow showers kept me bundled up Tuesday in St. Albans, Vermont as the weather here in Vermont turned a little more March-like again.

Get used to it.  The weather gods have pressed the "pause" button on spring.

All that dark blue in a huge aera of the nation's middle was
freeze warnings this morning. The lighter blue to the south
were frost advisories. We've hit a temporary halt to
our rather early spring. 

A persistent dip in the jet stream will keep us Vermonters kind of shivering most of the time, probably through the end of the month at. There might be a few warm days thrown in, but generally speaking, the spring green up is about to slow quite a bit.

I have a couple hundred daffodils in my yard that are this close to blooming. They might stay in that budding stage for awhile.

At least it's not record cold, and at least so far, not much snow is in the forecast.

The initial blast of cold air contributed to a stripe of snow Easter Sunday from Colorado, through the central Plains and up into the Great Lakes. Record cold followed, with temperatures dipping into the teens in cities like Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Denver, Colorado, among many others places in the middle of the nation.

Actually, Denver has had three consecutive mornings in the teens, the lowest being 11 degrees. The "high" temperature in Denver Tuesday was a wintry 25 degrees. Normal high this time of year there is around 60 degrees.

The Texas panhandle also had a few inches of snow this week.  Snow flurries dusted Nashville, Tennessee Tuesday at a time of year when daytime temperatures there should be around 70 degrees.

Even worse, in Chicago this morning, snow led to a 50-car pileup on an expressway, injuring something like 15 people.

Spring had come very early to much of the eastern two thirds of the nation, and earlier this year, I posted here on this blog thingy that I feared there's be a late season freeze do damage fruit crops and other agriculture later in the spring. Sure enough, freeze warnings were up this morning for a vast part of the United States from Texas to Tennessee

Frost advisories extended southward into northern Alabama and Mississippi.

For us here in Vermont, so far at least, I don't see extreme cold coming, though a real nasty, damaging to early plants blast is not entirely out of the question from now until early May. Snow is certainly not out of the question through the end of the month, especially in the higher elevations.  Right now, there's no signs of any kind of big winter storm, though.

Of course, as noted, we could easily get a few brief squirts of mild air thrown in, just to remind you it is still spring, in case you forgot.

As we enter into this cool period, we have one other sign of spring to warm your heart.  The famous Joe's Pond ice out contest ended this morning.  Whoever guessed closest to 6:07 a.m. this morning when the block on the ice fell through, stopping a clock attached to it by a cord, was the big winner.

A quick scan of Joe's Pond ice out dates suggests this year's was the fourth earliest on record.

Two Gorgeous Days Before We Tap The Brakes On Spring

NOAA's 8 to 14 day outlook has cold weather in most of the
nation through at least around April 19, with the core
of the cold seeming to be over the Midwest. We will
be chilly here in Vermont, though. 

It's been relatively warm the past few days and spring plants and buds here in Vermont are well ahead of schedule.

Two mainly sunny and delightful days - today and tomorrow - will keep that early trend going, but we will get pretty much an interruption to spring later this week.

That might actually be a good thing. The plants and buds that are up now can withstand some freezing, and a cool spell will slow things down.  If things blossom too soon, they could be wiped out by a late April or May freeze.

As much as we need spring to soothe our frazzled nerves, we don't want too much of it. Yet, anyway.

If you can go outside today and tomorrow to get some exercise do it! As long as you keep your social distance, sunshine and mild temperatures well into the 50s each afternoon will do your body and mind some good.

After Tuesday, the weather will get unsettled and cooler, but a lot of the details still have to be worked out. It surely looks like the mountains at least will get some snow, but we don't know how much yet.

One system will slide by to our south Wednesday, forecasters think. It's unclear how far north the rain will get in Vermont that day, but the clouds will keep us cooler.

Then, a strong cold front will come through Thursday, ushering in the chilly air that will generally stick around - possibly for as long as two weeks. Which is a too long in my opinion. A string of chilly days is fine, but I don't want it to last all month. We'll see how that all works out.

A pretty good storm will get going near the Maine coast Thursday night, but the heaviest rain and snow will probably fall well to our east.  Still rain and snow showers look like a good bet in Vermont Friday and Saturday.

There might be a brief break in the chill Sunday or Monday, maybe. But then it looks like a potentially even colder push of air might spill in after that.  The deepest cold will mostly stay in the middle of the nation during the next week or two, but we will be pretty chilly, too.

The good news is that this is going to hit in mid-April, when temperatures in our region are on average going through a steep warming trend.  So if we do get snow, and we probably will during the next couple of weeks, anything that accumulates will melt pretty rapidly.

You take what you can get, right?

As You Suspected, Vermont Had A Very Warm March

Daffodils in my garden in northwestern Vermont were getting ready
to bloom yesterday, March 31, among the earliest I can remember.

Up until this year, the past few Marches in Vermont have been pretty wintry, with big, sometimes immense snowstorms and subzero chilly periods.

This year certainly broke the pattern, didn't it?

The stats from Burlington are kind of impressive, actually. The average temperature for March was 37.3 degrees, which was 6.3 degrees on the toasty side.

That was good enough to make the month the ninth warmest March on record, out of the past 135 years or so.

The warmest March on record was the insanely summerlike March of 2012, which feature three days that topped 80 degrees!

The warmth was statewide, with most places running around four or five degrees warmer than average this March.

This March, the warmth wasn't nearly as extreme as 2012, but if anything, was more consistent than in 2012.  The coolest it ever got all month in Burlington was 11 degrees above zero. There have been a handful of Aprils with colder temperatures than that.  The only day all month that failed to rise above freezing was March 1.

The result is one of the earliest starts to spring I can remember, as far as what the Vermont landscape looks like. In my memory, only 2012 had a "greener" look at the end of March..

Yesterday, the final day of March in Vermont, lawns are greening up around me in and near St. Albans, up in the northwest corner of the state. Most of my perennials in my gardens are up, and some early daffodils have flower buds and are almost ready to bloom.  That usually doesn't happen until the middle or third week in April.

March, 2020 was also relatively gentle in Vermont in terms of storms, especially compared to what many Marches bring.  Precipitation across the state was near average, with snowfall at or below normal.

A mourning dove, lower left, checks out some very early season
green spring shoots in my St. Albans, Vermont garden on Tuesday.

No storms were particularly heavy, so the typical March ice jams and flooding during thaws never happened.

There were some early season thunderstorms in parts of the state on March 20 and especially on March 29, which is about a month before we Green Mountain boys and girls usually start seeing lightning an hearing thunder.

The March warmth this year was widespread, covering most of the nation, especially from the central Plains eastward.  Final numbers aren't in, but I know many cities in the East will list March 2020 as one of their top five warmest on record.

An exception is northern Maine, where Caribou still had around a couple feet of snow on the ground as of yesterday. It was snowing there this morning.

As always, who knows what this new month will bring in terms of weather.  The first couple of days will be coolish, but a milder trend is forecast to start Friday.  Which means our very early spring will continue on, at least for now.

Spring Sunshine Really Nails Vermont Snow Cover

7:47 a.m. Tuesday: A winter wonderland in St. Albans, Vermont

In scenes surely being replayed through Vermont over the past couple of days, the snow from Monday night's storm is disappearing super quickly in the face of the strong spring sun. .

There's still snow on the ground in places where the storm was bigger. Places that had 10, 11 inches of snow will go at least a couple more days before the white ground turns brown again.

Here in St. Albans, we only got 3.5 inches of snow Monday night, so the process of melting went faster, as you can see by the series of photos in this post.

4:53 p.m. Tuesday: The melt is definitly underway. 

Tellingly, there is still an inch of snow on the ground in protected areas that got zero sunshine.  The rest is gone.

Temperatures since the storm have been mild, but not wildly warm. High temperatures Tuesday were only within a couple degrees of 40, and Wednesday got into the mid-40s after an overnight freeze.

Had this storm hit in December with its low sun angle, we'd still probably have most of the snow cover left.

But the sun is high now, so those who were disheartened by the snow get a break.  It melted. Relatively unfrozen ground also helped with this melt.

3:42 p.m. Wednesday. Almost gone! 

Of course, there's a declining but still real risk of big snowstorms right through mid-April at least, though there are none currently in the forecast.

The next real storm, expected Sunday, is likely to be mostly rain, with perhaps a little snow in the mountains and Northeast.

If we do end up getting a new snowstorm in the coming few weeks, take heart. It will melt very quickly.

The landscape emerging from the snow is pretty brown, as you'd expect during mud season in March.

6:36 p.m. Wednesday. The snow is gone! 

However, it's been a relatively warm month. I've got daffodil shoots coming up everywhere on my property. Other plants are showing signs of life, too.

The initial, tentative green shoots are about as far along as they were around April 10 last year, so we're doing pretty well.

I could hear all the spring birds chirping happily outside as I write this morning.

Given the awfulness of what's going on out in the world right now, we all need this springtime hope.

In this time of anxiety and fear, it's great to latch onto something that gives us peace and something to look forward to.

Spring weather in Vermont is imperfect and sometimes frustrating. But the greening up will come. If you can and are able to maintain your social distancing, go out and enjoy the season.  Trust me. It will help.

We Always Seem To Get At Least One Winter Storm In The Spring. Update Here

The latest, dreaded National Weather Service snow prediction map
for this storm.  Southern areas look to be under the gun but
northern areas will just get a glancing blow Click on the map
to make it bigger and easier to see. 

We're a few days into spring now, but par for the course, a good chunk of New England is in for a winter storm later today and tonight.

How hard you're hit will depend on where you are.

This storm will focus most forcefully on New York's Catskill Mountains, far southern Vermont, southern and central New Hampshire, southwestern Maine and western and central Massachusetts.  All these places are under winter storm warnings for an expected five to 10 inches of heavy, wet snow.

South of those places and in lower elevations away from the Catskills, a lot of rain will mix in, so it won't be that big a deal. North of the winter storm warning areas, the snow won't be as heavy.

After the crystal clear skies we had on Sunday, it has already clouded up in Vermont and most of the rest of New England as of 7 a.m. this morning. Those clouds will yield snow starting this afternoon and continuing on into tonight. In some of the warm valleys, including the Champlain Valley, precipitation might start as rain, but will quickly change to snow.

I know a lot of you are working from home, but those who aren't can expect some iffy road conditions at best this evening. That'll be especially true in southern Vermont and other areas that are under the winter storm warning.

Overnight, the areas under the warning could receive enough heavy, wet snow to break branches an power lines, so keep that in mind. (Spring snowstorms in New England usually feature heavy, wet snow, so there you go).

As it stands now, total accumulation looks to be in the six inch range, give or take, in the southern third of Vermont. Areas between Route 4 and Route 2 should see two to four inches, with lesser amounts possible in the Champlain Valley.

North of Route 2, it looks like this will amount to two inches or less, except in the Northeast Kingdom where totals might be closer to three inches.

If the storm is a tiny bit colder than forecast, snow totals would go up a little.

Late tonight, the snow will taper to scattered areas of freezing drizzle, says the National Weather Service.  Roads will probably be a little slick in many areas Tuesday morning.

This storm is a quick mover, and will be out of our hair by Tuesday. There might even be a little sun in the afternoon to start melting that newly fallen snow.

As mentioned yesterday, the rest of the week looks unsettled, with frequent chances of light rain or a little snow, but for now, none of these storms seem like they will be blockbusters.

Warmth Means Plants Blooming Too Early In Much Of Nation

Areas in dark read are up to 20 days early with spring budding and blooming
this year, says the National Phenology Network. 

Another burst of warmth is hitting the eastern United States today, bringing forecast temperatures to the 60s as far north as here in Vermont.

A warm winter and early spring has brought early blooms to much of the nation, especially the East and South.

In Vermont, we're far enough north so that we only see budding lilac trees, a few crocuses and sprouting daffodil shoots so far. That's awfully early, but these early signs of spring are not enough to endanger any fruit crops or anything else for that matter.

Which is good, since nighttime temperatures during an expected chilly snap this weekend will be in the single numbers and teens.

Elsewhere, there is concern for crops further south. There's fears that this year will be like 2012 and 2017, which also brought very early spring conditions. In those years, frosts ultimately came, nipping things that had started to blosssom to early in the eastern half of the nation.

A tree blossoms in my St. Albans, Vermont back yard last May.
The way things are going, the  tree will probably bloom
much earlier than usual this spring

Washington DC's famed cherry tree blooms are expected to peak in about a week, which is nearly a week ahead of normal.

Also, according to Scientific American, this year,  "Spring leaf out - the appearance of tiny leaves that signal the start of spring - arrived 24 days early for places like Washington"

And, according to the National Phenology Network, Boston is 23 days ahead of schedule for early spring leafout progress.

Long range forecasts, for what they are worth, predict generally above normal temperatures going into early April at least in the eastern United States. But even a warm pattern can be interrupted by a quick blast of frigid air from Canada.

Remember, it only takes a few hours of subfreezing air to cause damage to tender fruit tree blossoms.

In any event, I guess this year's early spring in terms of weather matches the astronomical calendar.

Astronomical spring began late last night, March 19, which is the earliest that has happened since 1896.

Vermont Spring Warmth Overperforms; No Super Cold Weather In Sight

Before I left town yesterday, I noticed some daffodil shoots in
my gardens were really coming up in the unseasonably
warm early March sunshine. 

Boy, was yesterday a hot one! At least for March 9 in Vermont.

Under a lot of sun and gentle south winds, temperatures got into the 60s for most of us, which was several degrees warmer than forecast.  Valley locations, at leas,t are really starting to see the snow disappear.  

Burlington reached 65 degrees, which wasn't a record high because it fell on the fourth anniversary of what is now the second earliest 70 degree day on record.  If we had that same 65 degrees today or Monday, it would have been a record high.

Temperatures followed the same pattern I thought they would, with snow-covered areas being slightly cooler than towns with bare ground.  But everyone was milder than forecast.  Places like Montpelier, St. Johnsbury and Morrisville, where there is still snow cover, were in the low 60s.

That 65 degree reading in Burlington came with the ground just partly covered in snow. Springfield, with even less snow got to 68 and pretty much snow-free Bennington touched 70 degrees.

The early season warmth has prompted an early start to spring garden shoots coming up.  Little green sprouts of daffodil, day lily and sedum are apparent.  We even have reports of crocuses blooming in sunny corners across Vermont. It's a bit early for crocuses, but we'll take it.

There doesn't appear to be any really cold weather in the offing in Vermont, possibly for most of the rest of the month.  It's very mild today, but cooler than Tuesday due to clouds and rain.  A cold front coming through tonight will drop us down to near normal levels (30s to near 40 for highs) Wednesday and Thursday.

A stronger storm Friday looks like it will bring us wind and rain, but it's a little early to say how much. And some of Friday's precipitation could be snow in the mountains.  After a brief cool down during the weekend, it gets warmish again next week.

Much of the nation is experiencing odd March warmth.  Some trees are beginning to sprout leaves as far north as Philadelphia. Some of the early cherry trees are blooming in Washington DC.  Daffodils are already blooming in Boston.

I'm out in Yankton, South Dakota this week instead in Vermont. It was 71 degrees here on Sunday.  The forecast high on Wednesday in the southeastern corner of South Dakota is 62 degrees before much cooler, but not frigid weather arrives at the end of the week.

Spring Sprouts, Tornado Joggers and Googly Eyes. A Few Notes

Look very closely  and you can see daffodil shoots trying to
emerge from the soil next to the retreating ice on Thursday
in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens. 

It's been a relatively warm week for early March in Vermont. The snow is retreating the sap is running and it feels like spring might get here. Eventually.

True, it's going to be on the cold side tonight and Saturday and we surely have more cold spells and snowfalls to come. But we've made a little progress.

It's hard to see in the accompanying pboto, but I spotted such progress in my yard amid the Thursday afternoon sunshine.

Next to the retreating ice in one of my garden beds, the first hint of daffodil shoots appeared.  It's not much, but a guy looking forward to spring will take anything he can get.

I don't anticipate anything blooming until April.  Still, it was nice to see something green, however tiny, instead of the shades of white, gray, black and brown we've been limited to since November.

Daffodil shoots are tough, so I'm not too worried about what will happen in cold weather. Today, a  huge nor'easter that's developing well off the New England coast today but it will miss us. The storm will throw a brief shot of gusty winds and chilly air at us, but nothing odd for early March.  It'll warm up again Sunday afternoon.

Given that the weather is relatively quiet, here's a couple other odd, unrelated things I've noticed recently, including an odd jogger and a googly-eyed TV reporter in a snowstorm:

THE TORNADO JOGGER

As soon as those awful tornados in Tennessee passed early Tuesday, first responders, as always, swooped in and did their best to help.

This brief video is a little strange. It shows firefighters arriving in a tornado-battered Nashville neighborhood. The power was out, and you could see little in the darkness.  But in firetruck headlights and firefighters' head lamps, you could see downed power lines, glimpses of debris and hints of chaos.

As the firefighters started heading into the neighborhood, presumably to pull people from the wreckage, a female jogger zips on by.

No, she's not running from the wreckage. Nothing, not even a tornado, complete darkness, debris and possibly live downed wires is going to interrupt her odd 1:30 a.m. running routine.  I love the look on the face of the firefighter at the end of this brief video:



SNOWSTORM REPORTER'S MANY FACES

In late February, a snowfall hit Asheville, North Carolina,  Justin Hinton, a reporter for television station WLOS was out in the snow, giving a live update for viewers via Facebook Live.

He said he somehow activated some sort of Facebook filter and this is what viewers saw as Hinton gave his report.

Why It's Hard To Predict Whether Vermont Will Have Spring Flooding This Year

Motorists slog through spring floodwaters near Enosburg, Vermont
in April, 2011. 

We here in Vermont are getting toward the start of the spring flood season, so it's only natural to start wondering if this year will be bad for that kind of nastiness.

At the moment, there are plenty of mixed signals on what kind of spring flooding, if any, the Green Mountain State sees this year.

First, some background. Flooding can and does occur at any time of year in Vermont. Ice jams during rainy, very warm January thaws can trigger floods, as they did in 2018.

Late spring and summer torrential thunderstorms can set off big local flash floods, as they have in many years, like in 2013.  Tropical storms heading north into New England we know can cause serious floods, as we remember from Irene in 2011.

Large autumn storms can sweep through and cause floods, as we saw big time last Halloween.  And of course, rain and melting snow can cause spring flooding in March and April.

Quite frankly, Vermont doesn't need any more flooding.  Last April, the kind of spring flood I'm talking about hit parts of central, southern and eastern Vermont, prompting a federal disaster declaration.

Then that even worse Halloween storm a few months back triggered serious flooding across the northern half of Vermont, prompting another federal disaster declaration. Yep, two such declarations within about seven months.

So, on to this spring. We might as well talk about it today, Sunday, since the outdoors does have a mild, spring-like feel.

Today's weather signals that we are now entering our first good thaw of late winter and early spring.  The first chance of any late winter or spring flooding comes late this week, but that is decidedly iffy. The chances that an expected pretty big storm late this week are pretty low.

That's because at this point, the storm looks like it will bring us a mix of stuff. It will probably include rain, but that rain will likely mostly just soak into the existing snowpack. Plus the storm will probably bring other types of precipitation, like wet snow, sleet and/or freezing rain.  If the storm ends up being mostly snow or mixed precipitation, that would actually add slightly to the risk of flooding later.

That's because there will be even more snow and ice locked up on the ground, waiting to melt.

Even if that happens, the amount of snow on the ground, and the amount of water locked up in that snow, is roughly normal for this time of year, says the National Weather Service South Burlington.

That NWS office issues a winter/spring flood outlook every other week this time of year, so that's where I'm getting this information.  A normal late winter snowpack implies a normal spring flooding season, if you ignore all other possible factors, which of course you can't do.

Moisture in the soil is near to just a little above normal, which is largely a legacy of last year's very wet autumn. River flows currently are also near or a little above normal.  There's ice in the rivers which could cause ice jams, but it's not a huge amount of ice. We've had a warm winter.

Lake Champlain also has a near normal level heading into the spring flood season.

All this means is it's a tossup as to whether you should think about any spring flooding in Vermont this year.

Spring flooding is a major concern for much of the nation this year.  

Last spring brought widespread, disastrous and in some places unprecedented flooding to much of the central United States, especially in places like South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri.

The outlook for this year is pretty grim, especially in the eastern Dakotas, the upper half of the Mississippi Valley, around the Great Lakes and other parts of the Midwest, as The Weather Channel reports.   Of course, we've already had super serious flooding in the South this month.

In the bigger river systems like the Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio and other large rivers, you can make an educated guess ahead of time as to how serious flooding might be a month or two down the road,

Vermont lacks those big rivers.  In the large river systems further west, floods are slow rolling disasters.  Vermont floods are like a mugging.  They hit you in an instant, and just as quickly, they're gone.  It's hard to predict a mugger, and it's hard to predict a Vermont flood well in advance.

In some years, when the snowpack and the soil moisture and the rivers are high in late February, you can safely anticipate at least some flooding later in the spring. In normal-ish years like this, it all depends on what March and early April does.

If we have a lot of very wet storms over the next two months - either rain or snow - that can make the flooding risk skyrocket.  If we have a March and early April full of perfect sugaring weather - mild thawing afternoons and freezing nights - the snow melt is slow and we have a low flood risk.  A big bout of super warm, record temperatures, especially if accompanied by heavy rain, you get floods.

Long range forecasts are tricky, but some of those forecasts do predict a relatively stormy first half of March. Beyond that, you might as well flip a coin.

Climate change adds an additional twist.  The risk of heavier individual rain storms is getting higher.  However, that overall risk is a big picture thing.  You really can't tell when those bigger, heavier storms might hit.  The next monster storm could be next week, or it could wait five years or more. Who knows?

The only thing I can say is have your sump pumps ready, just in case. This year truly is a tossup.

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!


i