A Snow Squally Day, And Another Potentially Messy Storm?

A heavy snow squall passing through
Burlington, Vermont several years ago.
They're in the forecast today, and they
could dangerously cut visibility 
on area roadways, so watch out. 

 Here in Vermont, we're in an active weather pattern again, so that means we're going to continue on with "interesting" weather for awhile yet. 

Rivers in Vermont are stabilizing for now after the wind, rain and ice from Thursday and Friday. Power outages have been fixed and the roads this  morning were OK, until a new wave of snow moved in to slicken them up again. 

The biggest disaster in our area from this storm was in and around Jay, New York, along the Ausable River as ice jams formed. Several houses were flooded, as were a number of vehicle, WPTZ reported.  A new truck was shown lodged amid huge chunks of ice. 

Behind the ice jam, the Ausable River rose to its third highest level on record. Residents had to evacuate hastily through frigid water as the floods rose quickly near the ice jam, WPTZ reported.

There are scattered ice jams in Vermont from the last storm, but none of them are causing major problems at the moment.  Those jams might be a problem later in the week, though. We'll get into that in a sec. 

Snow Squalls

As previously advertised, a compact little storm is coming through today. Some snow was already edging into northwestern Vermont at dawn and that will continue eastward across mostly the northern half of the state this morning. 

The  morning snow could add an inch or snow to the ground in some spots.  Although some spots in the Green Mountains reported bursts of heavy snow this morning, so some high elevations could get a bit more.  

The area around the storm's cold front is the interesting part. The front already  has a history of creating lines of blinding snow squalls Friday in the Midwest, some even contained the Jim Cantore favorite - thundersnow.  More lightning was reported along this same line of snow squalls in far western New York this morning. 

The main snow squalls hadn't hit Vermont yet as of 9 a.m
but bursts of snow have already make roads a bit of a
challenge, as you can see in this photo taken in 
St. Albans at around 8:30 a.m. 

I don't think we'll have any thunder here (but you never know!) but the snow squalls will be a problem.  Snow squalls are brief, intense gushes of snow accompanied by pushes of wind. They're a lot like strong or severe storms in the summer, except with snow. 

They don't last long, but they do tend to abruptly change the visibility on the roads from crystal clear to nothing in an instant.  That's why snow squalls are so dangerous. 

People are flying along at top speed, and suddenly they're blinded by the snow and don't see the car crash up ahead. Until it's too late. Then you have a pileup.   

Snow squalls are probably the major cause of those snowy, deadly highway pileups you see on the news from time to time.

The main line of snow squalls at this point look like they'll cross Vermont west to east sometime between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., give or take.  Eastern areas will get them last, obviously. 

If these things develop, the National Weather Service in South Burlington will issue snow squall warnings. These alerts act very much like severe thunderstorm warnings do in the summer. They cover just a county, or a handful of counties, and cover a limited time period, say the next hour after one is issued

If you receive a snow squall warning, then don't go driving anywhere. Wait it out. If you're driving and you get the warning, it doesn't hurt to find a place to pull off the highway before it hits and wait it out. 

There won't be much accumulation from these things, because they don't last long. Maybe an inch or two, that's it. 

The line of snow squalls will also cover a wide area, eventually, crossing most of New England and New York, and extending down into Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

Messy Storm?

The jury is out on just how the next storm will play out on Tuesday and Wednesday, but it looks like it might have some similarities to the last storm we just went through. 

A cold front will sharpen up a little to our north and west as a moisture-laden storm rides northeastward along it.  

If the storm goes far enough to our west, then we'll get some more thawing rains and warm temperatures, which would aggravate those leftover ice jams out there.  If it comes closer, we'll deal with another round of ugly ice and mixed precipitation. 

It's unclear how much moisture from the storm would come this way, so we don't know how heavy the rain or ice would be. Stay tuned.

There's still the possibility of another storm, which would be mostly snow, to come along next Friday.  We'll wait and see on that one.