Tuesday Evening Update: Vermont Escaping The Real Rough Weather; New Storm Adding Misery To Nation

The wall of snow outside my door in St. Albans, Vermont,
gets a tiny bit of additional height as a snow showers passes
through.  A little more snow at the end of the week?

The storm that swept past Vermont overnight and this morning was something of an under-performer for us. 

A fair amount of sleet mixed in with the snow statewide, so amounts fell well short of the eight to 12 inches across the north. 

Totals were more like three to six inches. Plus, many valley locations, and even some mid-elevations south, had a sort of mini-thaw as temperatures briefly climbed into the mid 30s.

Careful out there driving this evening. A cold front of sorts has created a line of brief but relatively hefty snow showers along with falling temperatures. It's moving west to east, and especially hitting northern and central New York. 

Roads are rapidly becoming ice covered as temperatures go below freezing, and the snow is making it worse. The snow won't amount to much, but it will make things challenging. 

Tomorrow and most of Thursday will be pretty quiet and sort of cold, but nothing outlandish, like what's happening in the Midwest and South. 

Everybody is still watching a new developing winter storm that's producing a new round of unwanted heavy snow and severe icing in the South 

As advertised, that storm is heading toward New England, and winter storm watches are already up for most of central and southern New England later Thursday and Friday. Heavy snow and ice are anticipated there. 

Forecasts for this late week storm have been all over the place, but keep trending further and further east.  If this holds, we might not get all that much snow, except maybe in southern Vermont. 

We'll have to watch the trends to see if they keep pushing this thing east, or reverse themselves.

It's looking like it'll warm up next week, and we might start having a few more above freezing afternoons. It's getting toward the end of winter, so thawing should slowly become more common as we head toward and into March. 

NATIONAL NEWS

The winter siege continues unabated the middle of the nation and South

Places like Dallas and Oklahoma City had their coldest morning in more than 100 years today, with a 14 below reported in OKC and 2 below in Dallas.  The average temperature for the entire state of Oklahoma was a bit below zero yesterday, the first time on record that has happened

Now, they're getting another snowstorm. 

A section of Interstate 35 in Austin, Texas Monday morning.
Locals say this stretch of road would normally be jam packed
with morning commuters at the time this photo was taken

Usually, when there's a record low, it exceeds the old record by only a couple or few degrees. This time, the record lows completely obliterated the old records. Shreveport, Louisiana got down to 1 degree above zero, breaking the old record by 19 degrees!

Tyler, Texas reported 6 below, beating the old record low for the date of 17 above.

There must be hundreds of thousands of homes, at least, with frozen pipes, especially considering all those long lasting power outages in Texas and Oklahoma. Power in some spots might not come back on until later in the week. 

In some spots, like Oregon and the Chicago area, accumulated snow and ice has led to some building collapses.

In Utah, up to four feet of snow in the mountains this week fell on unstable snow, leading to an extreme avalanche risk. 

In the Northern Plains, things are finally getting much better. Tonight will be the eleventh in a row with temperatures in the teens or 20s below in Grand Forks, North Dakota, but by early next week, afternoon readings are forecast to go above freezing.