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| A major highway interchange early this morning a little north of Houston, Texas. Roads are basically impassable due to snow and ice. Traffic signals are out due to rolling blackouts brought on by the cold. |
I'll get into Vermont specifics in a bit, but I do have to marvel at how serious and widespread this whole thing is.
Some of the reports are pretty incredible. The sandy beaches of normally tropical Galveston, Texas were snow covered as lightning crackled overhead. At the very southern tip of Texas, at Brownsville, snow dusted the palm trees and it was already down to 29 degrees before dawn.
Slightly further north, the reports are ridiculous. At 6 a.m. local time, Oklahoma City reported blowing snow, a temperature of minus 5 and a wind chill of 28 below. That's really nasty by Vermont standards, never mind warmer Oklahoma.
Further south in Dallas, Texas, it was 8 degrees at 6 a.m. It won't get past the mid-teens this afternoon, and will flirt with zero tonight. The normal high and low this time of year in Dallas is 60/40.
Amid all the ice in the southern, central and eastern parts of the nation, reports of car crashes and multi-vehicle wrecks piled up almost as fast as the snow.
CNN reports at least 11 deaths so far from the storm, a toll that is sure to rise. Most of the deaths so far have been via vehicle crashes on those icy roads. At last check, 1.5 million homes and businesses were without power, many of those in areas facing record cold.
The situation in Texas is especially dire. The power grid there cannot keep up with electricity demands from people trying to heat their homes. There hasn't been a statewide, sustained cold wave like this since at least 1989, probably earlier, so the power grid is not designed for this weather.
The result is rolling blackouts that started overnight across Texas. These will probably continue until the cold wave ends toward the end of the week. Outages are worse, more widespread and longer lasting than anticipated.
People across much of Texas are suffering through cold houses as power remains out for hours. Pipes will surely freeze and there will be lots of damage from this. Worse, many people, especially the elderly, are at really high risk from the cold an power failures.
This is developing into a major story on its own. Social media early this morning is raging with people complaining about the blackouts, and either real or perceived unfairness over who gets blacked out and for how long.
The storm that's approaching us here in Vermont is or will disrupt life from Texas to Maine.
The character of this winter siege has been ice storms. That is continuing with ice storm warnings popping up in a line from Alabama to southern New York.
A second major storm - one that will affect us in Vermont around Friday - will cause more havoc from the Gulf Coast to New England as the week goes on.
With that overview, let's get into what's going to happen here in Vermont.
VERMONT IMPACTS
We see a few more adjustments in the forecast this morning as the storm approaches. The trend is for more snow across the north and more mixed precipitation across southern Vermont with this system.
By the way, the second storm late in the week is trending just a bit colder, too. More on that in a minute.
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| Latest storm forecast from the National Weather Service, South Burlington, Vermont. Widespread 10 inches of snow expected northern parts of state. Much less accumulation, but very dense 2-6 inches due to expected sleet. |
This is all an illustration of how forecasts change as better information becomes available closer to the storm. On Friday and Saturday, it appeared that the least accumulation from Tuesday's storm would be over northwestern Vermont and the most toward the southern part of the state.
Now the opposite is true.
Details, Storm #1
This storm is putting down a layer of snow from Texas to Maine. The deepest snow accumulations from this storm actually look like they will be over northern New York an northwestern Vermont.
Clouds have already covered the sky over Vermont and patchy light snow will break out this afternoon. This is just moisture running out ahead of the storm. It'll be good for a dusting to two inches of snow by evening, and some of the roads will be slick by the afternoon and evening commute.
The main show begins overnight. The heaviest stuff will come through between midnight tonight and noon Tuesday.
In the hours either side of dawn tomorrow, snow will be coming down at a rate of an inch or two per hour in the northern half of Vermont. Snow plows really can't do a great job of keeping up with snow falling at that rate.
A lot of us are working remotely from home anyway, and tomorrow morning will be just another excuse to do that. Don't travel Tuesday morning if you don't have to. It's going to be a mess.
That mess will be statewide but it will be a different sort of mess in southern Vermont. There is a better chance of sleet and freezing rain that earlier forecast. In fact, sleet could briefly make it as far north as Montpelier tomorrow morning before switching back to snow.
The southern half of Vermont will get an initial thump of snow, followed by sleet and some freezing rain. The further south you go, the more mixed precipitation you'll get. Luckily, since it will be more sleet than freezing rain, there won't be too much ice on the trees in southern Vermont.
But a little ice is a danger, because the next storm late in the week could bring more freezing rain further weighing down the trees.
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| This big pile of snow currently greets me as I leave my front door in St. Albans, Vermont. If we get two snowstorms this week, I'm not sure how I will deal with that mountain of snow. |
In the north, the snow will become light and more scattered as we go through Tuesday afternoon and night. In the south, mixed schmutz will go back over to snow and end.
North of Route 2, total accumulations are expected to be in the eight to 12 inch range. Forecasters think amounts will taper off to around six inches near Rutland and White River Junction and two to five inches in far southern Vermont.
Remember, though, that sleet and ice are much more dense than snow. The cleanup after the storm might actually be more back-breaking in southern Vermont than in the north, where you'll have to shovel snow, not dense sleet.
Details, Storm #2
The second storm, for Thursday and Friday, is still far enough away so that nobody is really sure what's going to happen.
The storm, with tons of moisture with it is going to run northward out of the Gulf of Mexico and head toward western New York. A secondary storm will then form along the New York and New England coast.
The question that continues to bedevil forecasters is which of the two storms will dominate as they come closest to us?
If the one going by just to our west dominates we get a lot of mixed precipitation after a thump of snow. If the coastal storm turns out to be the dominate one, we still get mixed precipitation, but more in the way of snow, especially in northwestern areas.
The trend in this morning's forecast has been toward the colder, coastal storm scenario. If that happens northwestern Vermont could get quite a bit of snow out of the second one. If that happens, I envision some giant snow banks up my way by the end of the week.
I don't know if this colder trend in the forecasts will hold, or will forecasts flip back to the warmer, schmutz, ice and rain scenario.
Like the current storm, we probably won't have a really great handle on it until the day before this thing actually hits. We know the end of the week will bring us a messy storm. We just don't know yet what kind of mess it will be.
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