Vermont Windstorm Wasn't So Bad: Slightly Weaker Winds Make Huge Difference

The National Weather Service office in South Burlington
put out this map of peak wind gusts from Monday. (Click
on the image to make it bigger and easier to see). Slightly
lighter gusts than predicted in some areas prevented
any big power outages or serious tree damage.

 Frankly, Monday's wind storm in Vermont wasn't as bad as I'd expected.

That's a good thing, of course. However, ahead of Monday's weather system,  I was still being a little overblown, so to speak, on anticipating how strong the winds would get.  Let's just say the Christmas decorations outdoors are still intact.  

Overall, top wind speeds ended up being around  5 to 10 mph less than many forecasts I saw.  That's not a big departure from what was predicted, but it made all the difference. 

I've noticed living in Vermont all these years that generally speaking, you really start to see some power outages and tree damage when wind gusts reach 50 mph or more.  Forecasts had called for gusts in the 45 to 50 mph range, so you'd expect a little trouble.  

Peak wind gusts ended up being mostly in 35 to 45 mph range on Monday, with a few isolated places getting stronger winds than that.  Those winds led to a few scattered, brief outages, but really no biggie.

A couple things happened to minimize the wind, I think.  An inversion, which is a narrow band of air slightly above the surface in which temperatures rose with height, acted as a block or lid. This lid helped prevent high speed winds at elevations of around 5,000  feet from mixing down to the surface.

Out ahead of the storm's strong cold front, rain was light, but a bit more widespread than at least I anticipated. That light rain helped reinforce that inversion.

There was also the risk that convective showers along the cold front, when it came through, would grab some of that high speed wind several thousand feet above us and bring it to the surface.

Those cold front showers did exactly that, and it was pretty gusty when the front came through. But those showers didn't really grab as much wind from aloft as they could have.

Winds continued to gust over 30 mph overnight in many areas, as expected, so it's still pretty blustery out there. The gusts will slowly diminish during the day today.

There's not too much weather excitement in our immediate future. Winter will throw another handful of snowflakes at us tomorrow.  Don't expect more than an inch of accumulation.  Another breezy, warm storm is in the forecast for Friday. It'll probably be somewhat similar to the one we had yesterday.

Generally speaking, long range forecasts call for generally warmer than average temperatures through at least December 20.  There could well be some snowy and/or cold days thrown into the mix during that period, but odds are it will be on the warm side for this time of year.

So far, it seems to be a gentle start to the winter.