Nor'easter Week: Mid-Atlantic Targeted; Vermont Still Sitting It Out

Here's what the meteorologists at CBS think will happen
with the storm. Perhaps two feet or more in parts of Pennslyvania,
New Jersey and southern New York. Forecasts are still
varying somewhat, though.

 The forecast for that anticipated big nor'easter hasn't changed much since yesterday.  

A big dump in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the New York City metro area and probably southern New England, and nothing much here in Vermont.

The devil will be in the details, but this could easily be the biggest snowstorm in years in some of the hardest hit areas.  

What makes everybody confident about this storm happening is the fact that all the computer models have been insistent on this storm since Saturday. That's an unusual consensus for that many days ahead of the actual storm. 

The storm will be moving along at a decent clip, so the snow that those areas get will come down torrentially. 

Already, winter storm watches are up for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and northern Virginia.  Don't travel to those areas Wednesday and Thursday. It's going to be a real mess. It looks like the Interstate 95 corridor will be really nasty. 

There are questions  about how close to the coast the snow will get. The immediate coastline in these areas might be more wet than white, but that's still a question mark as it's a couple days out from the storm yet. 

This storm will disproportionately be in the news, too, since it's hitting the major media centers of New York and maybe Washington DC.   Thus, it will get much more attention than much more dangerous storms that hit in the so called hinterlands, like the extreme August derecho in Iowa that caused at least $7.5 billion in damage. 

Here in Vermont, it seems like southern Vermont will get some snow out of this.  The question is how much?  Earlier guesses aren't that impressive.  Some computer models have light snow making it as far north as roughly Route 2.  Other computer models keep the snow south of Route 4. 

This forecast will get narrowed down and refined over the next couple of days.

On the one hand, I'm glad I won't be shoveling potentially one to two feet of snow out of my driveway, like countless people will in places further south. 

But this is not about me.  A big snowstorm would have been great for Vermont. Ski areas are already hurting greatly because few people can travel to them due to the pandemic.  A big dump would have helped the cause.

Additionally, there's still definitely some lingering dry conditions in Vermont from the drought from this summer and fall. 

This will be the second very wet nor'easter this month that largely will have missed Vermont. The dry conditions have actually worsened in western Vermont so far this month because there's been so little rain and snow. 

Heavy snows would go a long way to help water tables recover for next spring.

Of course, this is just mid-December.  If precipitation becomes noticeably heavier in the coming months, we'll be fine. In the short term, though, there will be very little precipitation in the Green Mountain State for at least the next week. 

The ground will freeze up though.  With highs in the teens to around 20 and lows in the single numbers Tuesday through Thursday, the ground will get pretty frosty.  Which is also bad news. Without a protective layer of snow, the ground will freeze more readily than it would had there been a snow cover.

This frozen ground means it will be harder for rain and melted snow to soak in during any thaws we get this winter.