Winter to make a big recovery following our recent meltoff

I had a dream of a winter garden

A midnight rendezvous

Silver, blue and frozen silence

What a fool I was for you

RIP Neil Peart "The Professor"  - May your words, music and rhythmic harmonies remain timeless and continue to inspire us all 

And for those that are unfamiliar with Neil Peart, Rush and their musical catalog that spans 4 decades, you can help me honor his spirit by dreaming of our own winter garden, something we do plenty of anyway. It was certainly a dream this past weekend during the tropical onslaught but sub-freezing have returned and the snow is soon to follow. 

Though we are expecting a small accumulation of snow Tuesday night, there are two storms of greater significance that have our attention over the next 5 days. Both are products of an intense jet stream in the eastern Pacific but both should get considerably more cold weather support thanks to a weak area of blocking expected to develop over Alaska. Terrific news for snow-starved northern Vermont. 

The cold weather support is rather tepid for the next few days but it's enough. Glimpses of sunshine on Wednesday will push readings to near 40 across valley locations and at least close to freezing on the mountain. Clouds will arrive Wednesday night and wet snow should be falling beginning close to midnight and persisting through much of Thursday morning. This particular storm is the smaller of the two storms mentioned above, but more importantly, the storm is expected to track right through the heart of the state which means both the highest snow totals and coldest snow consistency will be over northern Vermont and extreme southern Quebec. The MRV should do decent enough, including 2-5 inches Thursday morning followed by another 3-6 later Thursday afternoon, evening and night. The early snow will be denser and wetter at the lower elevations, the later snow will be of the fluffier more convective variety and also be accompanied by much colder temperatures. 

It's modified, but it will be arctic. This being the airmass expected to arrive late Thursday with those accompanying snow showers. By Friday we should continue to see at least some flurries thanks to a favorable wind off an unfrozen Lake Champlain; mostly however, it will be chilly and blustery with temperatures on the mountain hovering in the single numbers. Winds will abate Friday night and we will wait the arrival of our weekend snow which as I mentioned stems from a more formidable storm. 

This particular system will enter the central Plains Friday evening and very quickly carve an east to northeast path across the eastern half of the United States. The initial storm is expected to track over Detroit, but the system will transition much of its energy to the New England coastline effectively keeping this a very cold storm for interior New England. Temperatures are expected to begin Saturday at sub-zero levels and only climb into the low teens during the day. Snow should begin sometime during the day Saturday and continue well into the evening. I'd love to get really specific but we should leave some room for alterations. I feel pretty good about our 2nd consecutive MLK weekend storm but changes in the track and evolution of this storm could certainly have an impact on total accumulations. For the time being, and consistent with some of the model forecast maps that are making the rounds, we stand a better than 50 percent chance of scoring at least 6 inches. Last year's MLK storm brought almost 2 feet to the Vermont high country (along with a lot of wind). I doubt we are capable of producing such results this go round given the speed of this system but stay tuned.

The pattern appears promising for the duration of the month and certainly a massive improvement over the first 15 days of January. This being said, I would still describe the pattern as marginal to favorable as opposed to anything historic. Both the AO and NAO are expected to become more neutral but not entirely turn negative and there are conflicting indicators regarding whether we can keep the action tempered in the eastern Pacific. More specifically however, we should expect modified arctic air to keep readings well below freezing for most of next week (through Jan 24). Beyond that I would expect more storminess, but hopefully its of the good variety.