Base building frozen precip is possible for New Years weekend and early Jan appears mild but not necessarily snowless

We've moved parts of the of the outlook in the right direction, but in the aggregate, we face the same headwinds as we move mercifully to 2021. A large area of blocking/ridging in the stream that stretches from Quebec through the Labrador Sea/Davis Straight, Greenland and all the way to portions of the Arctic Circle has become the big player on the chess board and has broadened its reach to include northern New England. Meanwhile the Pacific continues to be a nag, pumping a lot jet energy and unsettled weather into the western US while maintaining a bit of a road block for any arctic air trying to advance southward. These two features combined are likely to make it difficult on the supply of arctic cold in New England during the first 10-15 days of January. We've gotten a lot of bad luck with storm tracks in December and if our luck improves, we can still score some snowfall even without the cold air because, its January. I've seen a lot of banter that the pattern will mean invariable lake cutter systems and rain, but I've seen versions of this pattern produce. We just need some of that jet energy in the Pacific to undercut the blocking in the jet stream both downstream and to the north of us, a perfectly reasonable ask in this setup.

The storm passing well north of us Monday did manage to make the Sunday night football game white but its impact on Vermont is pathetic. We are simply in the wrong quadrant of this storm. The combination of a little snow across the higher elevations Monday and a very minimal amount of terrain enhanced Champlain snow Monday night will total about 1-3 inches and that's all she wrote. A brief surge of arctic chill will advance into New England by Tuesday morning and make for a chilly day followed by a 5-degree Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. It might be the coldest period we see through January 10 given how this pattern will evolve. 

The conglomeration of weather set to impact the MRV on New Years still doesn't look great but like I said above, we've been trending in the right direction. It will not be the rinse and repeat Christmas debauchery for starters and the American Model, as of Monday morning is showing a scenario that includes a bit of base-building frozen precipitation for the weekend. On New Years Eve however, another surge of mild air will push northward  and push temps above freezing and we could start our day with a few rain showers. Unlike the Christmas weather system however, this storm will not phase with any subtropical energy and moisture and any rainfall on New Years Eve will be light, brief and early in the day. By the time 2021 arrives we are back below freezing and dry. Then we have the subtropical moisture pushing north on New Years Day. The European continues to show that the weather system responsible will track north of the St Lawrence Valley. We would see some ice and a cold rain in this scenario late New Years Day and into Saturday and that's about it. Other models are further south with this storm however as mentioend. The American GFS model performed miserably with the Christmas system a few days out showing a rain to snow scenario. It was essentially off by 25 degrees Christmas afternoon and really missed the personality of the storm. With that said, it's hard to take the snowy/sleety GFS scenario seriously but the Canadian is even further south (it has us missing the precipitation entirely !). I know that's a lot to unpack there, but to summarize, I consider the notion of base building snow/sleet very unlikely yesterday and I would upgrade that to possible today. 

The first full week of January appears relatively mild. This stems from what was discussed in the opening paragraph regarding the limited supply arctic cold in eastern Canada. Temperatures are likely to climb above freezing between January 2nd and January 10th on a few occasions. That being said, it doesn't necessarily mean El Torchy or a persistent thaw and ultimately our outcome will depend on the fate of the what is likely to be our next possible storm between January 7th and 9th. If we get a better storm track, the pattern won't seem suddenly so terrible.