Messy Vermont Morning; Mixed Storm Working Out As Planned

Five inches of new snow and counting in St. Albans, 
Vermont as of 7:45 a.m. 

 Before dawn this morning, it was snowing pretty hard and certainly steadily outside my house in St. Albans,  Vermont. 

As of a little before dawn, we're in the thick of a middling size winter storm, bringing, as expected, a variety of stuff falling from the sky. 

So far at least, the storm is working out pretty close to what had been forecast. Which is an accomplishment, given how challenging the forecasts were and are. 

As expected, temperatures in a thick layer of the atmosphere from the surface on up to several thousand feet are near 32 degrees.

The closer you get to the Canadian border, the greater the chances that almost all of this will be snow.  The heaviest snow was coming down early this morning, and will begin to taper off toward noon.

North of Route 2, total snow accumulations still look to be in the four to eight inch range, with the lowest amounts near Route 2 where mixing with sleet is more likely. 

 As of 7:45 a.m., I've had 5.0 inches of new snow in St. Albans, up from 2.5 inches at 5:30 a.m. There are several reports of four or five inches of new snow in northern Vermont, so I won't be surprised if a couple locations go up above eight inches. 

South of Route 2 is the real mess. As of early this morning, it was freezing rain in south central Vermont, in places like Rutland and White River Junction.  That icy mess probably won't work much further northward than that. In fact, Springfield switched from freezing rain to snow at around 7 am. 

Springfield's switch is probably the first sign that somewhat somewhat chillier air  aloft is starting to change things back to snow where it was freezing rain and sleet early this morning. 

Steady precipitation will continue for a few hours this morning before tapering off this afternoon.  

The biggest impact from this storm is travel.  I wouldn't recommend going anywhere today. Especially this morning. Roads are slick statewide. I noticed a section of Interstate 91 near Weathersfield was closed earlier this morning due to a tractor trailer wreck. 

Web cam image taken around 5:30 a.m. this morning showed
heavy snow falling in Burlington, Vermont. 

Utility trouble won't be extreme, but there should be some spot issues with this storm. The thickest ice accumulation will be in the southern half of Vermont.  

There might be a few branches and power lines that will snap, but the ice won't be enough to cause widespread problems.

Up near the Canadian border, it' is mostly snow, as mentioned, but it's fairly wet and heavy.  That'll lead to spot power outages here and there, but I doubt it will be anything widespread or long lasting. 

You probably won't like shoveling and otherwise cleaning up after this storm.  Whatever accumulates will be heavy to lift. It's not the powdery fluff we usually get in January. 

After this storm, it'll stay on the mild side for January, but there won't be much exciting weather. 

A new storm will get going around the coast of North Carolina tomorrow, and it will turn into a nor'easter that will go too far south and east to give Vermont anything more than light snow showers Sunday night and Monday.

That nor'easter will then stall to the east of Maine for a couple days, keeping Vermont in the clouds with episodes of light snow into midweek. It won't accumulate much. 

There's still not any real cold air nearby to work with, so despite the north winds from that offshore nor'easter, there's no frigid air in sight 

High temperatures will gradually fall back from the low to mid 30s today and tomorrow to the mid 20s by Thursday, (Mid 20s is about normal for this time of year).  Overnight lows will stay warm.  Expect upper 20s at first, and then lows in the 15-20 degree range by midweek. Such low temperatures are still a little on the warm side for this time of year.