Snow Cover In Vermont Improves, Still Shy Of Normal In The Mountains

The snow pack in Vermont's mid and high elevations has
 gotten closer to normal due to recent storms, but is 
still below average for this time of year Pictured here
is Mount Mansfield this past Sunday. 

 Every winter and early spring, the National Weather Service office in South Burlington releases a spring flood outlook every other week. 

This biweekly statement also serves as a proxy to tell us how much available water there is in the snow cover to help soak the ground in the spring. 

The latest statement came out yesterday. To surely nobody's surprise, the snow cover and the water equivalent in that snow has gone up noticeably in the past couple of weeks. 

Snow cover and the amount of water in the snow is actually up to near normal for this time of year.  

Mid and higher elevations have not entirely made up the early season deficit and snow cover up there remains below normal.

Interestingly, the higher up you go, the more behind normal you get. As of February 2, the snow depth atop Mount Mansfield was 38 inches or 15 inches shy of normal. 

The amount of "rain" in the snow pack - how much water you'd get if you melted it - is about 2.5 to 4.5 inches at Vermont elevations between 1,000 an 2,500 feet above sea level.  That is definitely below normal.

Due to the relative lack of cold snaps this winter, river ice is also thinner than normal, which reduces the risk of ice jams and the floods those can cause. 

The snow pack, especially in the mountains, will continue to slowly build at least for the next week or two. It's hard to pick out whether we'll get any more big storms in the next couple of weeks. The weather pattern does favor frequent little storms, each of which would add slightly to the snow pack.

The first in that series of little storms is coming later this morning, in the form of a band of snow followed by a mini-thaw of a few hours this afternoon that won't be enough to melt much of the snow. 

New snowfall today will be a dusting to two inches. So no biggie.

 Odds favor near or below normal temperatures for the next couple of weeks, so a big, early snow-destroying thaw seems unlikely. 

So it's possible - but definitely not certain -  the snow pack, and the equivalent water in that snow, will reach closer to normal as we make our way through February. 

By the way, these biweekly flood outlooks are not foolproof predictions. They just follow what the trends are. For instance, if it were to suddenly warm up to way above freezing with heavy rain,  there would be a high risk of flooding due to the rain and snow melt. 

Conversely, if the snow pack managed to get way above normal so that there were tons of water waiting to be released, that wouldn't automatically result in spring flooding. If the spring melting is slow and gradual, we wouldn't really see any flooding to speak of.