Today's Wild Vermont Plunge Into Winter Really Impressed Me

My garden shed and yard as it looked yesterday in St. 
Albans, Vermont........

 Today's snow was pretty amazing here in Vermont and northern New York. The amounts were pretty impressive but the low temperatures that accompanied it are off the charts.   

By late afternoon, when temperatures this time of year should be in the mid and upper 50s, it was actually below freezing across most of western and northern Vermont.  

This includes the normally warm Champlain Valley.  Bursts of heavy snow accompanied these cold temperatures. 

A for example: Burlington at 4 p.m. was 30 degrees with moderate snow and a wind chill of just 19 degrees. 

That's a very rare feat for a time of year when strong spring sunshine can filter heat through the clouds, keeping us at least above freezing.

This left us with a rare late April spectacle of icy, slippery roads, including the main ones. With warm ground, too, combined with the time of year, this should not have happened. But there you go. Be careful out there through this evening. 

This will surely go down for one of the coldest storms for so late in the season.  Not the coldest, though. I managed to find a day in late April with a high temperature of 27 back in 1919, but with less snow. Storm total in that spell was 0.6 inches. 

Snowfall with this storm has been pretty impressive for this late in the season. As of 4:45 p.m. 3.8 inches of snow had accumulated outside my doors in St. Albans, Vermont.  As of 4:40 p.m. Burlington had 2.3 inches. That made today their eighth snowiest day of the winter. 

So far, the most snow reported in Vermont is four inches in Walden, but I'm sure we'll get subsequent reports of deeper snow than that.  

.....and the exact same view this afternoon

It was warmer in southeastern Vermont where it rained, and warmer still in southern New England, where a band of severe thunderstorms rumbled through this afternoon. 

As the cold front smacked into eastern Vermont and changed the rain to snow mid to late afternoon, some residents had the luck to enjoy some thundersnow.   (Thunder and lightning while it was snowing).

Mercifully, the steadiest snow was getting ready to taper off as we head into the evening, especially in the valleys.  

There will be snow showers all night, but accumulations in the lowlands will be pretty minimal. 

It'll still continue to pile up in the mountains, though. Way up at the ski areas, it'll be six inches or more in the northern half of Vermont. 

Fingers crossed, it also might not get too much colder than it already is overnight. The lower the temperature the more damage to outside plants.  Most of us will keep hovering in the mid and upper 20s through dawn, but a few colder places will get down near 20.

The snow won't melt too fast tomorrow, as temperatures stay in the 30s to near 40 under mostly cloudy skies and continued snow showers. Still, with warm ground and a bit of the sun's warmth poking through, a fair amount of it could disappear. 

By Saturday, temperatures should bounce back up to the mid 60s, so this snow will by then be a forgotten spring nightmare. Except for the frost bitten, snow-smushed outdoor plants you'll be trying to revive.

After a cool, rainy spell Sunday (with no snow!) we have a shot of rebounding up to the mid 70s by Wednesday.  Winter to summer in just a week, how's that for ya?