Good evening folks:

A quiet night for Wednesday but a more active weather day in-store for your Thursday. Temperatures tonight will be widely variable and depend on amounts of cloud cover (and how soon high clouds roll in overnight). Generally, most of us fall into the mid-to-upper 20’s with partly cloudy skies on average. It should be a smooth ride in to work/school tomorrow…

Temperatures will continue a slow rise through around noontime and many locations in the Champlain Valley could flirt with 40 degrees or a bit better. It is worth mentioning that after the rainfall tomorrow night, temperatures could also easily rebound to these levels–if not exceed them a bit through the overnight hours into Friday AM:

A good helping of rain for most of us is on tap for your Thursday afternoon. The possibility of some freezing rain does exist in some colder hollows/valleys within the Northern ADK’s and SLV as well as in regions east of the Green Mountains. Staying vigilant of the temperatures at street level tomorrow will be crucial as warmer air aloft ensures mostly rain falling from the sky. Generally speaking, precipitation breaks out between noon and 2PM from southwest to northeast–starting as rain for many of us. Northeast Kingdom and parts of the ADK’s may be freezing rain (or even a brief period of snow) for at least the onset…

By 5pm, most of us pick up between 0.25″ and 0.50″ of rainfall while some areas east of the Green Mountains & the Northeast Kingdom struggle to get colder hollows above 32 degrees. This could result in light icing in some areas–up to 0.10″:

In addition to the rainfall, winds will increase across the region through Thursday afternoon, peaking between midnight and 7am on Friday morning (between 15 and 25 mph). Some gusts will exceed 30 mph in the CPV. Possibly 50+ mph wind gusts in the Northern ADK’s and Southern Greens as a south wind turns more southwesterly…

Temperatures Friday AM could briefly be quite mild: in the mid-to-upper 40’s–especially in parts of Southern VT. By Friday afternoon, seasonably chilly air from the northwest starts to filter in which will set the stage for a cold start to the weekend. Saturday will be our brief “cold shot” before another temperature moderation on Sunday–back into the upper 30’s/low 40’s for the CPV. Quieter weather for the long-term with no big storms on the horizon.

-Meteorologist Justin Templer