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| Some damage to trees from freezing rain in Alburgh, Vermont in January, 2020. The Green Mountain State is at risk for a winter storm toward Thursday that could drop a bunch of snow, rain, ice or all of the above. |
The snow of course missed Vermont, but the icy air sure didn't. This was the 15th morning that Burlington, Vermont has gotten to zero or below this month.
That's the most in a single month since 17 such days happened in February, 2015. The most zero or subzero days in one month was 23 in January, 1970, says the National Weather Service in South Burlington.
Coming up, we have a warmup and a potentially messy, snarly possibility of a winter storm. More on that in a bit.
First some final blizzard stats:
The most snow I've seen reported from the storm so far is 30.9 inches in Stoughton, Massachusetts, followed closely by 30.4 in Sharon, Mass. and 30 inches in Quincy. Many reports of more than two feet of snow came in from Massachusetts, especially in the South Shore area.
Boston picked up 23.8 inches of snow, their seventh largest snowstorm on record. It was also Boston's snowiest single January day on record as well.
The storm did verify as an official blizzard in parts of Delaware, New Jersey, Long Island, New York, eastern Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
The last of the blizzard warnings in the United States expired in Downeast Maine earlier this morning. As of 6 a.m., it has already stopped snowing in that neck of the woods. The most reported snow in Maine was 18 inches at Brunswick.
Some wags called this New England storm a "blizzicane" considering the several hours of sometimes hurricane force gusts along the coast. Barnstable, Massachusetts reported a gust to 83 mph and there quite a few gusts of 70 mph or more along the New England coast.
Now that the Blizzard of '22 is over in New England, attention is turning to a new winter storm.
NEW STORM
The National Weather Service is already gearing up to warn people of yet another nasty winter storm that will affect a broad area from Texas to New England during the middle of the week. This one will cover much more real estate than our dearly departed Blizzard of '22 did.
Worse, it will contain a wide variety of weather, including heavy snow, a bunch of freezing rain, possible flooding, a chance at severe thunderstorms, high winds and bitter cold, depending upon where you are.
This won't be a powerful, deep concentrated storm like the one New England just had. Instead, the next winter storm will be the child of a strong, warm ridge of high pressure off the East Coast, a feed of rich moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and a sharp Arctic blast heading southward through the middle of the nation.
By Wednesday, a slow moving cold front will extend from somewhere in or near northern New England to Texas. One or more storms will ride northeastward along this front, making full use of the deep Gulf of Mexico moisture.
This far out, the devil is in the details as to who gets what and how bad. But this is a classic setup for a damaging ice storm somewhere. At this point, that seems most likely in a band from northeast Texas, through Arkansas to southern Illinois, but that picture could shift north or south.
Northwest of that ice would be a heavy snowstorm. People southeast of the ice zone could see some flooding.
Also, as the storm eventually works its way into the Northeast, rain and thawing atop all that blizzard snow could also result in a flood.
Meanwhile, Texas can expect an Arctic cold snap that might not be as destructive as the disaster last February, but will still be a hard test for the state's rickety electrical infrastructure.
VERMONT IMPACTS
It's unclear what this new storm will do to the Green Mountain State, but it will probably be a lot more than the blizzard that missed us Saturday.
Depending on where the stalled front sets up, we could see anything from a heavy snowstorm, to another round of ugly freezing rain, or just warm, plain rain that could cause localized flooding especially if the rain breaks up ice in the rivers.
From this vantage point, the best chance of a snowstorm is north of Route 2 and the best chance of a warm rain is south of Route 4 on Thursday. Some places in Vermont could get a bunch of freezing rain, which isn't good.
That's just a wild stab in the dark at this point. Vermont is going to be very close to some super warm air just to the south and some Arctic air just to the north. With that set up, it's impossible to tell at this point where in Vermont the cold air might invade, or where the warmth might filter in.
We'll just have to update as we go along. Expect benign weather with a welcome warming trend through Wednesday. Then, all bets are off.
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