Vermont Thursday Evening Update: Arctic Blast On Its Way; Storm Questions Remain

The National Weather Service in South Burlington put out
a map with expected wind chills Friday night and 
Saturday. Click on the map to make it bigger and easier
to see. Widespread 30s and 40s below wind chills expected.

 It's been kind of an interesting meteorological day in Vermont, amid the fog and gloom of January. 

A weather front was draped over the northern end of the state.  Near the Canadian border, temperatures stayed stuck near 20 degrees all day.   Along and south of Route 2, temperatures reached the 30s. 

Tonight, that front will consolidate and move south, first giving us some patchy light snow. Then, later on, it will start to bring us that long heralded cold blast will arrive. It should be near or below zero by the time the sun sets Friday. 

The wind will really pick up from the north, gusting to at least 30 mph Friday afternoon and night. Wind funneling down the Champlain Valley might produce some higher gusts. 

Needless to say with the subzero temperatures and strong gusts driving wind have prompted a wind chill warning for pretty much all of Vermont. Wind chills Friday night into Saturday will be in the 30 to 45 below range. That's the worst I've seen in years. 

We're lucky the offshore storm that will contribute to Friday and Friday night's wind won't be closer.  We'd really get into the gales. As it is, they're expected gusts to 70 mph on Cape Cod and the Islands with this thing. 

As we mentioned, it'll stay quiet and cold over the weekend before the storm arrives.

We're at the stage at which the computerized forecasting models are "windshield wipering," as I like to say.  We've pretty much established that a storm will be going up the East Coast, but the exact path is still very much in doubt.

The computer models go back and forth like windshield wipers with the storm track.  It's going east of New England!, Wait, no, it's going up through Central New England! Ooops, no, further east!  Wait, up through New York?  

Experienced meteorologists tend to ignore individual model runs, and watch for trends. The atmosphere is all connected, so experts are watching the atmosphere from the West Coast of North America all the way to off the East Coast right now.  That will help meteorologists refine the expected storm track as we get closer to the event. 

Once we get closer to the storm, meteorologists will start making stabs at predicting how much snow we'll get out of this. Wisely, nobody is hazarding a guess quite yet. 

Another thing that's still being watched: There could be localized strong or damaging winds with this, especially along the western slopes of the Green Mountains and parts of the Northeast Kingdom. We'll see!

There's now no question, though, that this will be a disruptive storm for somebody. Before the storm makes the turn north, it looks like a stripe of the South from Arkansas to Georgia and the Carolinas are in for some rough winter weather Saturday and Sunday. We're talking snow, and worse, freezing rain and sleet. Nobody handles ice all that well, but southerners are especially bad at it. 

So, like every storm risk, we'll just wait for updates and pass 'em along.  Stay warm, everyone!