Given the weather pattern and specifically the limited cold air over southeastern Canada, we managed to do OK on a storm that tracked right over us. Lingering moisture and favorable flow out of the northwest would, in many cases, yield some significant snowfall over the Vermont high country late on Friday but the formation and strengthening of a second area of low pressure off the Carolina coastline is going to steal our thunder (in this case, upward motion and dynamics). This low pressure center is expected to track closer to Cape Cod than was predicted a few days ago and spread snow and some rain over southeastern New England. If your reaction to all this resembles "man this seems to happen a lot lately", then I don't think you are wrong. The relative warmth of the Atlantic (just off the NE coastline) has in my opinion, robbed interior sections of moisture by fueling storms in that vicinity and weakening potential snow situations in our region. This is a hypothesis I might point out and I don't want to masquerade as someone who has done academic research on the subject when I have not. I am also not resigned to thinking this is a permanent trend. Local phenomena such as relative areas of warm and cold SST conditions tend to be fluid and change over time.
As the storm offshore produces clouds and the aforementioned precipitation for eastern New England, it is still expected to eventually suck those clouds out of most of Vermont and yield the bluebird days I promised you all a few days ago, Sunday and Monday. At least I hope ! The closer proximity of the storm will produce more wind than I had anticipated a few days ago. Saturday is expected to feature clouds and snow flurries along with that wind and the blustery conditions should unfortunately be with us through MLK Monday. Sunshine should return for Sunday and my hope is this continues through the holiday but the offshore storm is close enough that it could muck up my expectations
After MLK day the weather situation continues to trend in a less bad direction. El Torchy should mostly stay south of Vermont and at no point does their appear to be any strong enough advection to produce excessive temperatures. A weakening weather system is expected to again envelop us in cloudiness on Tuesday and temperatures will climb above the freezing mark but stay in the 30's. When precipitation from this feature arrives, likely later in the day or at night, it should fall as some light rain in most places but it may become some wet snow across the high country Tuesday night. As I've mentioned, one of this pattern's preeminent lowlights is the lack of cold across southern Canada and though we will manage to position ourselves out of the torch, the arctic chill is simply way too far north over the continent to have any impact on us. Even with this said, a stronger storm system late next week could produce some winter weather given an optimal track and models have simulated such an outcome a few times over the past several days. At least we have shot and it gives me a chance to requote a line from the movie Braveheart. "You can take our powder, but you will never take our late January crust !!".
What about the pattern change ? It's still there around the weekend of January 21st and 22nd. From a hemispheric perspective, conditions appear favorable for some southward transport of arctic cold but they don't appear overwhelming. I am convinced however, that the pattern will initially become stormy, perhaps in a very good way for us and eventually turn much colder across the eastern third thirds of Canada by January 24th-26th. This sets up New England, especially interior sections for a cold and wintry finish to what has been a dismal month. Still, there are some lingering issues with the Pacific that might be a roadblock for cold weather in areas south of us or present problems for us more directly relating to a storm track. It looks like a more traditional La Nina cold weather setup in a year which has, in my opinion, defied some of those conventional expectations.
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