Dry weather dominates the rest of the week with another spring onslaught looking more likely next week

 If I officially declare this as the "give up on the winter" update, you might as well pencil in the April two footer somewhere into the calendar. Though the first half of the month has seen below normal temperatures in northern Vermont, in spite of the torch last week, it has been unusually dry with most of these same locations seeing less than a quarter inch of melted precipitation. This means that new natural snowfall has been elusive. I've actually been pretty amazed at the amount of sunshine across the northeast both during the warm and cold weather days. It is unusual for March almost anywhere in the northeast. 

So, if you're a fan of winter weather, this is not the update for you. Winter has returned to firm things up across the northern Vermont high country and is expected to remain mostly in place through Saturday with the exception of a few afternoons. Snowfall however appears to be one giant miss. The remnants of the giant Colorado snowstorm will evolve into a very meager overrunning type system and track well south of Vermont late on Tuesday. I am a little surprised that this system is expected to make so little northward progress as it progresses east but March is full of absolute randomness when it comes to how the weather behaves, often defying conventional wisdom by not aligning with what a forecaster might expect in a given weather pattern. The late week storm continues to look intriguing with a potent polar impulse just out ahead of an even more impressive southern streamer. This could have been the big elusive storm for northern Vermont but the two jet stream features are out of phase with the polar impulse arriving out in front of the southern branch feature and effectively flattening the pattern and keeping the track of this storm further south. A strong dose of sunshine on Tuesday will bring temperatures from near zero in the morning to near the freezing mark during the afternoon and we will improve on that on Wednesday with readings up near the 40-degree mark at the base. That potential late week storm will bring some clouds into the region Thursday but unless we see some big changes with how these two jet stream impulses interact, the mild air early Thursday will simply give way to cold dry air on Friday with very little snowfall during this transition. Sunshine looks to be another dominant force for the upcoming weekend, again helping temperatures recover from single digit start on Saturday to 35-40 and well into the 40's on Sunday. 

The "give up on the winter" vibe comes from what now appears to be a very mild week beginning on Monday March 22nd. The outlook was already trending warmer in this time period several days ago and it now looks like the 2nd big spring onslaught of the month with 60 degree readings possible on 2 days and 50 degree readings for as many as 4 days. The duration and intensity of the warmth stems from and depends on the evolution of another big weather system in the southern Rockies, this time further south.If the weather stays unsettled in this region of the country for an extended period of time it has the effect of pushing temperatures warmer over a large swatch of eastern North America and longer range forecast models are really keying in on that now. The European/Canadian ensembles are suggesting a cool down for the last weekend of March while the GFS Ensembles do not but the pattern overall does not support sustained amounts of winter weather at mid-latitudes, at least over North America after we pass the Spring Equinox.