Wet And Windy Christmas Eve/Day: Some Flooding, Wind Problems Still Likely

Winter flooding near Enosburg, Vermont in January, 2018
High temperatures, heavy rain and snow melt could easily
cause flooding tomorrow and Christmas in 
southern and central Vermont. 

 You can tell how energetic our Christmas storm will be as we look to the central and western United States.  

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There were signs in places like Steamboat Springs, Colorado yesterday with a wild thunderstorm/blinding snow squall that swept through the resort town. 

Today, high wind warnings are up for a huge area from Colorado to North Dakota.  

Blizzard warnings are in effect for parts of the eastern Dakotas and western Minnesota, including the area where a lot of my relatives and friends live around Yankton, South Dakota.

As the storm consolidates tomorrow, flooding will become a concern in much of the zone hit by that epic snowstorm last week. Heavy rains and very mild temperatures will quickly melt that snow during this storm, resulting in the flooding. 

Parts of Vermont are included in this, and I'll get into Vermont specifics in a bit.

Strong winds will also buffet the East Coast and southeastern Canada, leading to the risk of power failures.  There's even the risk of a few tornadoes early on Christmas Day in eastern North Carolina. 

For us here in Vermont, this storm looks fairly impressive, but by no means cataclysmic, unless you like a White Christmas. 

You'll see the winds pick up tomorrow - Christmas Eve - as temperatures rocket upward well into the 40s to around 50.  

Christmas Eve night will be rather stormy, but the air will feel springlike.  The highest winds with this storm look like they'll avoid Vermont, but some areas, especially the western slopes of the Green Mountains and the Champlain Valley, will still see gusts over 40 mph. 

That's enough to bring down a few branches and maybe cause some isolated power outages, but nothing extreme.  

Winds might be even stronger in Bennington County and a few other parts of far southern Vermont, where a high wind watch is up for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning for possible gusts to 60 mph. 

Rainfall with this storm looks like it will unfortunately be heaviest in areas with deep snow cover in southern and central Vermont.  There, rainfall up to two inches through Christmas Day seems sure to create some flooding. 

Again, this won't be an extreme disaster, but certainly something to watch out for. I'm sure roads, streets, parking lots and basements will flood. Remember, if you're driving and you see that the road ahead of you is flooded, just turn around and find another way to get where you're going. 

Stalling out in frigid flood waters is at best an enormous bummer and at worst, fatal. Larger creeks and rivers, like the Otter Creek, will probably at least get into minor flood stage.  Smaller brooks will respond faster and risk causing washouts and culvert collapses, so watch out on those back roads. 

Northern Vermont will get a bit less rain, maybe three quarters of an inch.  There's also not much snow on the ground up there. That means brooks and streams will probably rise sharply, and rivers will go up, too, but any flooding looks to be minor and not widespread at all. 

The storm's cold front will come through a little later on Christmas Day than originally thought.  The first part of the day will be remarkably warm, with temperatures in the 50s.  The record high in Burlington on Christmas Day is 62 degrees, set in 1964.  It's doubtful that it will get that warm, but given how weird this year has been, anything's possible.  

Temperatures will come down during the afternoon Christmas Day, but not as dramatically as first feared. 

This slower pace means earlier predictions of a "flash freeze" won't come to pass, at least not to the extent some of us thought.  A flash freeze is when temperatures crash from very warm levels to sub freezing in, say, ,an hour or two, causing roads to instantly ice up.  Flash freezes are dangerous because they tend to catch people off guard. 

This time, a narrow punch of dry air will come in right after the cold front, shutting down the precipitation. The cold air will also sort of take its time getting here, so it will take several hours before temperatures go below freezing.  This will give the roads a chance to dry out some before freezing 

There will certainly be icy patches around later on Christmas Day and night, but, again, it won't be a disaster.