The torchy pattern already underway will hit us with 3 big upper cuts. The first having already happened on Saturday with the rain and wind. The 2nd came Monday and was a rather tranquil spring-like Vermont day with plenty of afternoon sunshine and near 50-degree temperatures across low lying areas. The third will come Thursday and continue into Thursday night and will feature more wind, maybe some minimal sun Thursday afternoon and readings as high as 60 in some valley locations. The strong and balmy winds will continue through the Thursday overnight but we appear to be mostly done with the "R" word and the outlook beginning as early as this weekend continues to improve and the holiday period continues to look more and more wintry across interior New England.
Two very important fundamental changes will be responsible for aforementioned improved outlook. Convective forcing in the south Pacific will continue to work at softening the jet stream and forcing much of the ridging closer to the Arctic. This along with the formation of a large ridge in the jet stream over Greenland will allow much of the arctic air over North America to make a southward push, even within a week ! We haven't eliminated all of our road blocks. The formidable ridge will get pushed southward across the eastern United States but will not be eliminated completely and thus the pattern will take on a classic La Nina look with cold and storminess focused on the west, mild weather confined to the southeast and winter assuming a tenuous grip on the Great Lakes and New England. I'll take tenuous over nothing and with that we can discuss our chances for snow.
Our first chance comes Saturday in a classic, if you don't like the weather just wait a day - fashion. Temperatures on Friday will be very slow to chill and are unlikely to reach the freezing mark until Saturday when precipitation is set to arrive. We won't have any cold/dry air to work with in eastern Canada but we will have incoming cold behind this system and this creates a scenario will temperatures will continue to fall late in the day Saturday allowing any mixed precipitation to turn to snow. We have two of the three major medium range computer simulations indicating this event and I am certainly at the point where I think it's more likely than not. What kind of event do I speak ? At least a few inches of snow followed by garden variety cold weather Sunday into Monday.
In addition to the event on Saturday, there are indications of another on Tuesday, the winter solstice and then another right around Christmas weekend. Most importantly (at least to my eyes) is this continued trend to place interior New England on the cold side of this Canadian cold vs southeast U.S. warmth battle. This alone substantially lowers the risk for any rain and above-freezing temperatures of any real significance.
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