Stormy Day Is Here, Wind/Rain Today, Some Snow Saturday Night?

Leaf blower weather. Trees in back of my house in St.
Albans, Vermont retained many of their leaves as of
yesterday afternoon, but.........

 As expected, it's windy out there in Vermont and surrounding areas.  The trick is, how windy will it get before it really starts to rain later this morning and afternoon?  

As forecasters had predicted, there's a bit of an inversion in the atmosphere that's preventing some of the strongest winds from reaching down to the surface.

An inversion is a layer in the atmosphere, thin in this case, in which temperatures rise with height, instead of doing the opposite like usual. This acts as a sort of lid that helps prevent some strong winds up around 3,000 feet in elevation and above from getting down into the valleys. 

It's not a perfect lid, so some wind is coming in.  If this inversion breaks up more, the wind will get stronger - enough to cause scattered instances of damage like power lines snapped and tree branches down. 

If the inversion holds this morning, it will be windy, but nothing super bad. In any event, wind advisories are still up across much of northern Vermont, pretty much the entire western slopes of the Green Mountains, and in much of the Adirondacks and White Mountains.

I've seen quite a few gusts to 30 mph around, with a few places going to 40 mph. As of 5 a.m the highest winds reported were 47 mph in East Berkshire and 46 mph in Underhill.  I bet winds became even a bit stronger after that in some of the traditional windy areas of the Green Mountain western slopes. 

Power outage trends do indicate winds have really picked up. 

As of 7:15 a.m. there was a smattering of power outages mostly along the western slopes of the Greens affecting about 600 or so customers. By 8 a.m. the number of Vermont homes and businesses without electricity had soared to more than 6,000, mostly in Washington County. 

The storm system's strong front will push a band of moderate to briefly locally heavy rain late this morning afternoon west to east across Vermont. That rain will tend to dampen the winds down again. It'll stay pretty breezy, but not as tempestuous as this morning.  

......most of the leaves had blown off in gusty winds by
just after dawn today. Note the leaves that had been on the
shed roof yesterday have also gone away. 

The rain won't be enough to cause flooding locally, though the southeast facing slopes of the Green Mountains will probably get more than in inch of rain out of this.  Most of us will see between a half inch and an inch of rain, with a little less than that around the International border.

On the southeast slopes of New Hampshire's White Mountains and in parts of western Maine, the rain might cause some flooding.

SATURDAY NIGHT SNOW?

We're still looking at another quick hitting little storm Saturday and Saturday night that seems to want to give at least some of us the first real snow accumulation of the season.

It'll be a small storm, but a bit of a powerhouse as it zips northeastward through New England Saturday night. Most of us will start off with light rain Saturday afternoon, but temperatures in the atmosphere look like they want to crash Saturday evening.

That would be enough to bring snow to almost all of us, even in the valleys. Those valleys might only get some wet snowflakes, or maybe even a slush accumulation on the grass and such.

Once you get up to 1,000 feet or so up the slopes, there could be a decent couple inches of snow.  Since it will probably come down in a quick thump, the first icy/snowy road situation seems like something to think about Saturday night at mid and high elevations. 

After a relatively quiet, cloudy and cool Sunday, another system will splash us with a little rain and snow Monday.