The rest of 2020 looks mostly below freezing except for 1-2 days, but those 1-2 days are concerning

 A narrow area of south/central Vermont are coming off a snow event for the ages. The corridor stretching from Pawlet, VT eastward through Ludlow and Ascutney saw 30-plus inches of snow and in some instances upwards of 40 inches. The two things that strike me in the aftermath of this storm was of course the late northward shift in the forecast for one. Areas that saw the deepest snow had cloudy with a slight chance of snow in the forecast 3 days prior. In some forecasts, there wasn't even that ! I've seen it happen often enough to discuss those possibilities in the blog but its very difficult to keep throwing cold water at data when it says reiterates the same conclusion. Secondly, and this has been discussed within the weather community, is the ability of high resolution more mesoscale models to pinpoint the existence of the pivoting snow band that deposited all that snow in the aforementioned corridor. It's actually been a thing for a few years but these same models often have a difficult time with the exact placement of these bands. As it turned out, the Vermont/Mass border was too far south missed out on the heaviest totals that our friends at Okemo saw Thursday. 

The bluebird day we saw on Friday will be replaced by a few more clouds Saturday and a lot more clouds Sunday. Temperatures will close to zero degrees Saturday morning but will rebound to a seasonable 30 degrees during the afternoon. Those clouds on Sunday are still expected to produce a bit of light snow but the area of moisture associated with this disturbance appears weak and disorganized and accumulations will be confined to less than 2 inches and occur late in the day or the evening. 

We've managed to greatly reduce the risk for above freezing temperatures for the remainder of 2020 for all but one 1-2 day period. Christmas Eve into early Christmas Day and I'll reluctantly get to that in a bit. Ahead of that we have a potent looking clipper-type weather system that will attempt to merge with a stronger than expected and active southern branch storm. The latter is presenting a bit of a problem. The southern branch of the stream, typically a bit more benign, during a La Nina has been active and very existent and will send moisture and a strengthening area of low pressure to the Carolina coast Monday. This strengthening storm will try and devour the advancing clipper and take all of the moisture offshore by Tuesday. There are a few different ways this can play out but I am concerned about the scenario that keeps all of the snowfall well east of Vermont on Tuesday. The forecast continues to evolve in this time frame however so stay tuned. 

I certainly hope the outlook for Christmas Eve continues to evolve. It really looked like we had weakened and shortened a potential Christmas thaw this year and we yet might do that. For now though, we have an over-amplified jet stream during the middle of next week and a troubling sub-tropical feed of moisture out in front of a strong arctic boundary. The storm will mature slowly out in the western Great Lakes while entraining all of this moisture and there's a risk that interior New England gets flooded with mild air and rain late Christmas Eve into early Christmas Day if we can't change the narrative. Fortunately we still have time to do just that and I do expect some changes to this forecast over the next few days. The biggest issue is all of the sub-tropical energy which has been poorly resolved by medium range models beyond 5 days. One way out of this scenario is for the midwest storm to simply occlude and let any southern stream energy to drive this boat as the moisture approaches. 

Cold weather is expected to follow what ever happens in the above paragraph and remain in place, as mentioned through the rest of 2020. In the aggregate it looks like garden variety chill and nothing especially extreme although there will be daily variations. The continued stalemate between the negative AO/NAO and somewhat angry Pacific should keep the storm track close enough for multiple chances of snow. It was nice to get the 6 or so inches from the recent nor'easter but it still appears like mother nature is playing dodge ball with us on the snowfall. I certainly expect that to change as we continue along but my biggest concern is Christmas Eve. I want no part of Santa Claus and 50-degree rain.