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Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Milder temperature outlook into early Feb is still at least dotted with some snow or snow potential

Not the enviable existence to be a winter weather and snow enthusiast in an outlook consisting of another round of raging warmth covering much of the central part of the North American continent. Vermont and much of interior New England are not positioned to take the brunt of this warmth but our outlook still has both mild temperatures and rain to go along with a possible decent storm late in the weekend. 

We also have some snow in our short term outlook. This begins around midnight Wednesday and should fall lightly but at a steady pace through mid-morning. The overrunning snow does not look especially impressive though we are still positioned well to receive 2-4 inches before precipitations turns to a light freezing drizzle later Wednesday. Another steadier round of precipitation is also expected to fall as some freezing rain Wednesday evening before a milder push of temperatures turns ever it all wet by Thursday morning. Models indicate that clouds will prevail for Thursday, but if the sun breaks for even just a few hours, it will urn into the mildest day of the month with temperatures soaring well into the 40's even on the mountain. Even with the clouds, Thursday will be balmy with above-freezing temperatures all day quickly melting any ice. 

It's a bit disheartening to see arctic air go into this kind of retreat mode even as the Pacific remains reasonably cooperative. El Nino has finally showed clear signs of weakening, cooling a few tenths of a degree celsius in critical equatorial regions and approaching a category defined more as "moderate" as opposed to a "strong" ENSO. Warmth above the 40-degrees north line in North America is a prominant feature in any El Nino and the recent arctic outbreak was a break of from that. Just as the fundamentals became so universally supportive for such an outbreak  they have quickly reversed with some of the coldest weather across the northern hemisphere indicated to position itself over Greenland and Alaska over the next 10 days, two regions that have been very warm so far this month. 

Continuing with the shorter range weather picture, more wet weather is expected to approach northern New England Thursday night with rain arriving around midnight Friday in the MRV. No flood risk or huge melt off with this event fortunately. A last second low level cold push will actually try to push temperatures back toward the freezing mark Thursday evening and brings with it a chance for some icing. Recall that this is the event I had more or less thrown in the towel on as far as any hopes of getting snow. It does look like a colder event though and if your geeky enough to keep score at home, 3 degrees C away from some snow Friday morning. For now though the event looks rainy or icy with precipitation ending Friday morning. 

El Nino continues to produce an express train of storminess with another event lined up for Saturday night into Sunday. Though I am a little concerned the jet stream might confine the action to our south, at least this is a snow or no situation in Vermont and potentially a good one if it all breaks right with the storm track. As of Tuesday morning, the prospects for such an event certainly were improved and I would put the chances of a decent snow event at about 40 percent. A few days of sub-freezing temperatures follow this potential storm on Sunday carrying us through the rest of January before we are yet again challenged by the raging warmth to our west. I am pretty convinced the first 10 days of February will consist of well above normal temperatures and around 2 forty degree temperature days. I was a little more encouraged to see more signs of split flow in the ensemble data and this keeps us in the game to to speak to churn up a decent storm even with the limited cold. 

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