Historic Winter Storms Still Slamming Nation; Vermont To Get Involved

I have to show an updated National Weather Service map for
today. All that pink is winter storm warnings. I've never
seen such a large are of the nation under a winter storm
warning and I've never seen so much of the South
under a warning too.

Before I get into what we can now expect from the winter storms in Vermont, I have to say how amazed I am by the breadth of the winter weather in the nation. 

This is turning out to be one of the Top 10 most extreme winter weather events for the nation in my lifetime (58 years if you must know).  

I've never seen such a huge area covered by a winter storm warning, and how far south it goes.  This warning extends across the South from New Mexico to Alabama.  All of Oklahoma and Arkansas, and virtually all of Texas is under this warning. 

This warning extends northward to Ohio, and will soon go even further north to Maine 

Even Brownsville, on the far southern tip of Texas, is under a winter storm warning. There, normal temperatures are like Vermont in early June - low 70s for highs, low 50s for lows.  Instead, they're expecting freezing rain with temperatures around 32 degrees. 

Other normally balmy cities under weird winter storm warnings include Houston, Texas, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi. 

I'm also still stunned by how widespread damaging freezing rain has been, and how,  these destructive ice storms will expand and worsen. 

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency Saturday as ice - in some places more than a half inch thick, cut power to at least 270,000 people in the state, including in areas around Portland and Salem. 

Further north, Seattle had one of its top 10 biggest snowstorms Saturday with 11 inches. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also declared a state of emergency due to the ice, and anticipated extreme, record cold.  Even in places that don't get much ice in Texas, there are concerns the electrical grid won't hold up to incredibly high demand as wind chills dive below zero in most of the state. 

A damaging ice storm also hit the area around Greensboro, North Carolina and much of Virginia Saturday. 

Ice storms that will hinder travel and damage trees and power lines will continue for the next few days from Texas, through the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys and up the Appalachian chain from North Carolina to New England. 

VERMONT IMPACTS

While we here in Vermont won't suffer the worst of the extremes out of this, this will still be a challenging week. We'll face snow, and very likely freezing rain and sleet, along with all the hazards that come with these winter storms. 

We'll have two main storms to deal with: One focused on Tuesday, the other on Thursday and Friday. 

Let's deal with the storm for Monday night and Tuesday first:  

The winter storm watch last night only extended as far north as Route 2 in Vermont, but now covers the whole state.  Latest forecasts put pretty much the entire state in the sweet spot for snow, though mixed precipitation is a risk in the south. 

The warning goes from Monday evening through Tuesday evening.  The heaviest precipitation will come down between the pre-dawn hours Monday and noon Tuesday. Snow will start Monday afternoon and its intensity will pick up later on at night. 

Tuesday morning, sleet and freezing rain could get as far north as Route 4, but should mostly stay further south than that. 

At this point, if mixed precipitation does come into southern Vermont, it looks like it will be more sleet than freezing rain. That's good, because sleet doesn't weigh down trees like freezing rain does.

There is the risk of damaging freezing rain with this first storm further south into the Catskills of New York and southern New England. This is especially a nasty risk because of what might happen with that next storm. 

That storm, on Thursday and Friday, will have a lot of moisture with it, but will track further west than Tuesday's system. 

That means it'll be a warmer storm, putting mixed precipitation in play for all of Vermont. 

The late week storm will probably start as a good burst of snow, then go over to a mix. Or even rain. That depends on a lot of factors. 

If the storm that will go off to our west tries to spin up a subsidiary storm in New England, that would lock the colder air over the region, and a lot of freezing rain could result. If there's already a lot of ice on trees from Tuesday's storm in southern and central New England, more freezing rain would be a disaster. 

That's just one of many scenarios that could play out with the weekend storm. We really don't yet know what types and how much stuff will come out of the sky with the storm at the end of the week. Just expect a storm. 

We'll get through Tuesday's storm, then try to figure out how the second system will screw up our lives. 

After that second storm, the overall weather pattern will start to untangle itself, so the extreme weather in the nation will wane and the South will warm up.  

We in Vermont will probably end up with calmer weather after this week's excitement as well.