Hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas holiday. Boxing day started below zero in many places in spite of the fact that the mid level environment barely supports snow with the large upper level ridge now fully established in eastern Canada. It makes for a very inverted temperature profile, a very stable environment, and without the problem of having low clouds to contend with, the bluebird plate special is served through Friday with temperatures staying below the freezing mark for the most part.
Unfortunately, we won't make it through the entirety of this eastern North American warm stretch without some thawing and some rain. Much of the mild weather has been focused on areas both west and north of Vermont strangely and a dose of this mild weather appears headed for us during the last 60 or so hours of 2024. There's a bit more to this story and I will try and tell it the best I can.
Clouds are expected to make a return for the Saturday portion of the weekend. As expected, precipitation isn't expected for the 28th, wind is expected to remain light and temperatures are not expected to exceed the mid-thirties. So long as above-freezing temperatures aren't accompanied by higher dewpoints, the impact is relatively limited. Low pressure is expected to spin its way through the eastern Great Lakes and eventually deep into Quebec on Monday. This track is obviously less than ideal and although low level cold air is expected to resist the scouring for a time, it is mostly expected to give way as precipitation arrives Sunday afternoon, mostly in the form of rain. It appears temperatures will hover around 40 while the rain is falling Sunday evening and night and its certainly my hope that most of it is over and done with Monday morning. At this point westerly winds are expected to push mild Pacific air into the region making for a mild 2nd to last day of 2024 though it remains somewhat uncertain whether we can entirely clear all the precipitation away from Vermont.
And then hopefully the fun begins. A second and stronger weather system is expected to make a Rocky Mountain exit late on December 30th and advance east-northeast toward New England. Cold air is in very short supply in eastern North America, but this stronger area of low pressure is expected to track more favorably and make an eventual transfer to the Atlantic Coast before potentially bombing in the Gulf of Maine. Temperatures will remain unquestionably mild on New Year's Eve, hanging out near 40 through much of the afternoon before precipitation chances increase during the evening. Temperature profile appear like they might support a wet snowfall across the high country during the last few hours of 2024 while mixed precipitation or rainfall occurs at lower elevation. As time progresses and when, if the storm bombs, snowfall is favored at all elevations and could be very significant above 1500 feet making for a big start to 2025. There continues to be some variation in the model simulations but a few of the ensemble aggregates are bullish on the bombing which is a pretty crucial question given the lack of cold air support.
Good fundamental support remains for an excellent stretch of weather for the first 2 weeks of 2025. Arctic air will need some time to reestablish itself over the continent and return New England to below normal temperatures, but January is a month where it doesn't take much to at least make it sub-freezing and we should see a good stretch of that in the aftermath of whatever happens on New Year's Day. Split flow in the Pacific is very encouraging for those hoping for more opportunities at storms and my guess is that we see another opportunity at a good storm before an arctic envelopment sometime in the first full week of January (Jan 6-10).
No comments:
Post a Comment