The outlook continues to evolve for the home stretch of 2024 including the busy holiday period and there are some significant updates to the shorter term weather picture as well. Though it is amazing the progress that numerical weather prediction (modeling) has made during my professional life, stuff always seems to find a way to defy expectation.
The cold rain Monday night shouldn't come as any surprise. Less than a quarter inch of this is expected and it should all be over by daybreak Tuesday. Daytime temperatures on Tuesday are the bigger story since we have a torchy dry westerly wind accompanied by some breaks of sunshine. This will boost temperatures to the highest levels of the month with close to 50-degree readings in valley locations and closer to 40 up on the mountain. Wednesday's temperatures are also expected to be mild but with less wind and ultimately more cloudiness
Wednesday's late day clouds come out ahead of a nice midweek dose of snow. It will be a warmer event with temperatures within a few degrees of the freezing mark while the snow is falling. It all begins around 7 pm Wednesday with snow showers continuing through Thursday morning. The wet snow Wednesday night will amount to 4-6 inches but readings are expected to turn colder by Thursday morning (with the additional snow showers adding 2-4, supplying skiers with a well-deserved powder day. Northern Vermont is the place to be for this event as southern Vermont is expected to receive more ice and rain and is not positioned well for Thursday's snow showers.
The solstice period defined by Friday December 20th to Monday December 23rd is very likely going to be the coldest period of the month. Expect readings to stay below 20 on the mountain during most of this 96-hour stretch. The snow/storm potential is still there for Saturday though it does seem like the weaker storm Wednesday has helped to realign the storm track further southeast for the weekend. Energy and some light snow from the clipper is expected to be somewhere in the Ohio Valley on Friday and will be seeking fuel and support from any energy along the Atlantic coastline. The southeast shift of any such interaction is making it more unlikely that northern Vermont sees significant snow from this though a few of the many simulations over the past 24 hours still suggest its possible. What seems more likely right now is for the aforementioned cold and some accompanying snow showers Saturday followed by cold bluebird weather Sunday into Monday.
The period running from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day continues to look warmer,the intensity of which comes as a surprise though some sort of Christmas thaw has been almost as certain in Vermont as the sun rising in the east over the past decade. Our one exception seems to be 2017-18 which was brutally cold. I was more surprised by the culprit for all this as it seems the jet in the Pacific will become rather intense in the days before Christmas, forcing arctic air into retreat mode. Though other teleconnection indicators continue to be mixed, the arctic retreat is legit and we can expect moderating temperatures by Christmas Eve and perhaps our first taste of above freezing temperatures on Christmas Day. For now, it continues to appear dry as this moderation is occurring without significant rain or mixed precipitation in the forecast picture until the last full weekend of the month. New Year's remains far enough out on the timeline for additional changes and hopefully a shift to more mitigated warmup.
As we pass the 75th anniversary of Mad River Glen, it dawned on me how much pop culture has changed over that span of time, specifically music, my other passion. Out of respect for this, and hopefully as a pleasant distraction from a holiday thaw or anything else going on in the world, expect to see some music show up in the threads feed and on the blog. Each year of Mad River Glen's existence will see respect get paid to a different musician. That's 75 different musicians in 75 years and a challenge to come up with one good one for each year that was relevant to the year. It will be a fun exercise for me and hopefully an enjoyable listen should you partake in any of this journey.
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