Wintry upcoming week perhaps culminating in an east coast storm Friday

Very cold arctic air is making its eastward advance toward Vermont. Football fans saw a sub-zero game in Kansas City on Saturday night and that airmass will broaden its impact in the coming days. The polar air is taking the scenic route on its trip to New England, traveling well south of the Great Lakes. Whenever arctic air envelops us from the southwest in this way, Vermont typically avoids the "extreme" chill and this week will be no different. Temperatures will be in the teens and 20's for during the day through much of this week with overnight lows falling to the single numbers. We won't even be manage to match Oklahoma and Kansas chill from the weekend which is another reason to be fascinated by how weather can work. 

A mixed bag of weather ended as a nice burst of snow to wrap up the ski day on Saturday and the snow burst will be another theme for Sunday. It will be of the colder variety as well and as a disturbance in the polar jet brings the likelihood of a snow squall on a day that should already feature plenty of flurries. It will be gusty during the squall and gusty anyway with temperatures hovering around 20 on the mountain. More sunshine, less wind and better visibility can be expected for the holiday Monday though it will be a little chillier with high temperatures remaining in the teens across the Vermont high country. Snow accumulations Sunday will be in the 1-2 inch range.

I am pretty convinced the polar jet will suppress the big storm activity for Tuesday though models are indicated an inverted trough type feature capable of bringing some light snow and another light accumulation for us. Wednesday appears drier and should include a few hours of sunshine with clouds and potentially more light snow possible for Thursday. As mentioned temperatures will be well below freezing, but not extreme by Vermont standards. 

The polar vortex will get stretched eastward this week over southeastern Canada and will ultimately split with the trailing piece dropping over New England Friday. There's a lot of intriguing weather that can happen in this situation with plenty of cold air in place and the polar vortex weakening and slowing, providing an open door for east coast storm development. The New England coast is the more favored location in such a setup, but a large swath of the region could certainly see accumulating snow Friday followed by a chlly weekend. I had mentioned in an earlier post that we could see a round of extreme chill on the weekend of Jan 20-21, but the available arctic air appears somewhat modified and appears less likely to produce excessive sub-zero weather though it will certainly be lower than 20 degrees with sub-zero wind chills. 

Some things to like and not to like regarding the long range. The PV drop for next weekend, once it passes will clear the polar jet from New England and temperatures will modify dramatically by January 23rd and January 24th. The advertised jet stream would suggest mulitple days of above freezing temperatures. With the Pacific and EPO remaining cooperative, any warmup shouldn't last long and there are growing indications ridging in the jet stream will return to Alaska, funneling a quick return of arctic air toward Vermont before the end of January.