Seasonable, fair weather now, but winter arrives by mid-December

Good day to you, denizens of southeastern Vermont, I hope that you had a peaceful and enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday!

Aside from some mixed rain, sleet, and snow late Thursday night in elevations above 1,000 to 1,500 feet in the southern Green Mountains, we can expect fair and seasonable weather to dominate the upcoming week.

Thanks to a strong Pacific jet stream, we've been in the doldrums in terms of our weather pattern. This jet stream has caused mainly a west to east flow across the country, which is also known as a “zonal” pattern. Its opposite is a “meridional” pattern, which is more amplified with south to north flows.

Until we see such amplification in the stream flow across the country, we can expect fairly fair weather with occasional frontal passages. In fact, we are seeing evidence of just such a change by the second or third week in December. Winter cold and possibly storminess looks like it will empty into southern Vermont, so keep that on your radar and I will update you next week.

For Wednesday, we'll see a mainly dry cold frontal passage. Ahead of this feature, we will briefly warm up into the mid 40s under mostly sunny skies during the morning before falling back into the high teens to low 20s by late Wednesday night. Southwest winds will shift to the west and northwest and could gust over 25 mph at times before slackening by midnight.

For Thursday, cold air advection will be underway and highs should only be in the mid to upper 30s in southern Vermont. We can expect mostly sunny skies and light winds. By evening, clouds will be increasing as another cold front approaches the region.

There will be more moisture with this feature, as it could tap some energy off the Mid-Atlantic coast. Rain showers can be expected in the lower elevations, but above 1,000 feet or so we should see mixes of rain, sleet and snow, and an inch of two of snow and sleet can't be ruled out by Friday morning across the highest peaks of the southern Greens. Lows will be in the low 30s.

For Friday, after some morning rain and snow showers, we should have a partly sunny day with breezy conditions and highs in the low 40s and lows in the upper 20s.

For the period of Saturday through Tuesday, we should see fair and seasonable weather with highs in the low 40s and lows generally 25-30 degrees. There's the potential for a shower on Sunday, but that's uncertain as of this writing. Have a great week and start gearing up for winter!