Wintry weather picture remains in place over the next two weeks but outlook is drier for northern Vermont

Hope everyone got a chance to enjoy the snowy weekend and a blustery, but bluebird Monday. In the near term we have a drier outlook, but both some new snow and especially wintry temperatures remain as two underlying themes in the forecast picture over the next two weeks. The big north to south temperature clash that has characterized this and many La Nina winters before this has proven very resilient. Vermont has been on the wintry side of all that over the past two weeks, rejuvenating ski conditions, but spring marches on down south with temperatures once again eclipsing 70 over the Ohio Valley east to North Carolina and Virginia. A weather system flying eastward along that temperature boundary is expected to spread some snowfall Monday night but will miss interior New England; instead, snowfall on Tuesday arrives as a result of moisture streaming in from the north. Occasional light snow, especially over the mountains should begin around midday Tuesday and continue sporadically through Tuesday night into early Wednesday until conditions are indicated to dry out some. Stability parameters do not indicate the possibility of a potential big surprise but the wind direction would allow for some minimal Lake Champlain enhancement. Accumulations will be slow, but 2 to as much as 5 inches of new snow are possible on the mountain by midday Wednesday. 

Some intervals of sunshine can be expected with the cloudiness late Wednesday into Thursday along with both mostly sub-freezing temperatures and a persistent northwest wind. Flurries are expected to continue as well although the accumulating snow is expected to generally be done after midday Wednesday. As a storm system begins plowing through the middle of the country on Friday, we may see more sunshine at least during the morning though clouds from that storm may overspread the region later in the day. I am less optimistic on our prospects for a big snow from this upcoming weekend storm as of Monday afternoon. Though we have a blocking mechanism in place and a major computer model still projecting a big pile of gold, a closer look at the data suggests that this may finally be the storm that hits areas farther south. This trajectory of this storm on Friday will appear terrific with snowfall impacting many areas of the Great Lakes, but this storm is a digger and ensembles from several models indicate a burrowing system with rain and snow confined to the southern New England coastline and points south. A northward shift is possible and certainly doesn't lack for precedent (thinking of you 2001), but I am not considering it a likely scenario but rather just a possible one. If the storm does indeed stay to our south, it might open the door for an extended period of sunshine which is something we haven't seen a lot of this winter.

In the aggregate, models did move away from the intense outbreak of cold that was indicated for an expansive part of North America around the Ides of March. Still the pattern continues to look wintry over the interior New England high country and there are some slight indications of a potential storm in the March 13th-14th time frame and maybe another for the weekend of March and 18th and 19th. Without intense cold present, the middle of March is often the period where it doesn't take much sunshine to warm temperatures to 40, but for the most part spring thawing on the mountain continues to look minimal.