FOX44 - Burlington / Plattsburgh News, Weather & SportsNear 50 Degrees, Unusual Winter Continues

Burlington, Vermont -

Driving to work today (at the nice, bright, and early time of 2:45 a.m.) I actually rolled my window down for some fresh air.  No, not because it was smelly in the car or because I needed help defrosting the inside of my windows, but because it was 46 degrees!

As of 10:29 a.m. on Tuesday, here are temperatures around the region:

Burlington: 39

Plattsburgh: 41

Montpelier: 42

Rutland: 42

Lebanon: 37

St. Johnsbury: 37

Newport: 39

Saranac Lake: 32

Morrisville: 35

Springfield: 35

These aren't earth-shattering numbers by any means, but we typically at least get a long break from these mild temperatures!  2011 ended on a very warm note (compared to averages) and it's spilling over into 2012 too.

This is courtesy of CPC (Climate Prediction Center) an off-shoot from NOAA and the National Weather Service.  I snatched this off the NWS Burlington site here.

Take a look at the graph and let it sink in.  You're looking at a 31-day running mean of temperatures in Celsius.  Say what? That means at any given point on the graph (which is of the last year in Burlington) a number is plotted of the previous 31 days' temperatures.  The straight black line signifies the "norm".  If you see red that means temps have been on the warm side, and blue, vice versa.

For example. August 28. That's when Irene hit. I'm just using that date because it's the first one that came to mind.  So the running mean for that day would trace back to late July and go through August 28.  The total and ending number would be the average temperature for that period (late July to late August).

I like this image because it shows how mild the majority of 2011 was in Burlington.  I know this doesn't lump the rest of Vermont/New Hampshire/New York into the same pile.  Other places like St. Johnsbury, Vermont were much COOLER in 2011.  They saw several months BELOW average in terms of temperature.  However overall, the year was warmer in St. J than average.  Burlington has a great set of data to use when looking back at historical information and comparing #'s.

Speaking of St. Johnsbury, here's something interesting:

These are temperature records in Saint Johnsbury in the last 100+ years.  The black line is the "trend".  Since each year is different, and those blue dots are scattered all over the place, the black line gives a nice visual to the temp trend.  It's getting warmer according to these records!  Why that is is a whole other discussion.

In Burlington it's been the same trend:

In the short-term, the large-scale weather pattern is favorable for warmth for us.  As of Tuesday morning here's what it looked like:

The darker-shaded areas denote where the jet stream core is.  Dips in the jet stream show intrusions of cold air from the north.  There is a small dip in the inner mountain west through the four corners of the U.S.  Into the east there isn't that dip that we usually see in the winter.  Large scale patterns have kept much of the cold air locked in the northern parts of North America, while the Continental United States remains mild overall. In the near term the pattern doesn't appear to be changing, but those forecasts are not accurate more than two weeks out.  So after that it's very uncertain. 

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