Ugly, mild rain event still poised to attack us Saturday with a slightly colder (but still not great) outlook after that

The scene stays wintry across the MRV and much of Vermont through Friday morning. Snow showers and a few squalls Wednesday will give way to clearing and temperatures near zero Thursday morning. The cold weather persists through Thursday with readings only climbing into the teens but that shouldn't feel too uncomfortable since we should have healthy amounts of sunshine and minimal wind. The milder air arrives very quickly on Friday on the wings of some strong south and southwesterly winds. Though temperatures will start near 15, readings are expected to approach 40 by the Friday evening.

Some adjustments are necessary to the weekend forecast but the news hasn't gotten much better. I know there are some folks that follow the forecast models somewhat religiously and I fully encourage that kind of passion. The two things I would keep in mind are as follows. 1) Computer model simulations can be like schooling fish, seemingly heading in a coordinated direction until some disruption sends them scattering and then they never seem to scatter the same way twice. 2) The upgrade to the GFS model has not done much for its performance beyond day 5. My sense is that the model has shown an improved ability to pick up on a trend here and there but run to run consistency is still not its thing.

For those that don't follow the forecast model stuff or the model hugging weather twitter universe we will move right along. The clouds that are expected to overtake the region Friday may be accompanied by a bit of light rain but this is not expected to amount to much; in fact, the forecast appears a bit drier albeit still very mild from Friday night through half the day Saturday. And by mild I mean temperatures rising into the low 40's by Saturday morning with persistent south to southwesterly winds. Glimpses of blue sky might even accompany the balmy, breezy weather early Saturday before the rain arrives Saturday afternoon. Those noisy forecast models, mentioned above, have been indicating some undercutting cold out ahead of the main wave of low pressure that is expected to position itself somewhere near Indiana late Saturday. That area of cold may or may not reach parts of northern Vermont Saturday evening but it is not expected to have an impact on precipitation type in VT. Temperatures will be near 50 when rain begins late Saturday and that rain is expected to become heavy for a time Saturday evening and night before tapering off Sunday morning. It's an ugly situation that could all end in a little snow during the day Sunday though I am not especially optimistic regarding accumulations right now.

Temperatures are expected to remain above normal next week but not excessively so. Next week is climatologically one of the coldest of the season in Vermont with low temperatures averaging between 5-10 and high temperatures only in the mid 20's. Even 10 degrees above normal can still mean mostly sub-freezing temperatures which is more or less what we should expect next week. There are a couple of opportunities for some wintry weather as well. A warm advection scenario in the Tuesday/Tuesday night time frame could mean snow for northern Vermont and a more organized storm system late in the week could mean snow or snow/wintry mix or wintry/mix rain.

The following weekend (January 18th & 19th) appears colder ! Though the prevailing evil empire dominated (positive EPO) pattern will remain, next weekend does appear to be one those wintry interlude situations where temperatures return to near normal and this might be accompanied by some snow showers. Speaking of this wretched winter weather pattern, it is still expected to linger through much of January and this means another push of milder air is possible before January 22-23. Thereafter, there are finally signs that the pattern will at least weaken. The jet stream in the Pacific still appears formidable but at least less formidable. The arctic still looks unblocked, but the positive AO is expected to weaken. The Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) which has been many forecasters pet toy recently is showing signs of moving out of the non wintry eastern North America phases. The MJO which is current sitting in the worst possible phase for Vermont snow/cold is expected to get close to phase 7 - a more neutral phase in about 2 weeks time. This means some more sustained relief is likely getting a bit closer and aside from Saturday, the forecast doesn't look like a sustained torch.