"Energizer Bunny" Storm Added A Little More To Vermont Snow Totals Last Night

During the winter, we don't shovel the back way
from the house into the gardens at our house in St. 
Albans, Vermont. Good thing. That would be quite a chore!

 Flurries were still fluttering down at dawn this Saturday morning in St. Albans, Vermont from a storm that has been reluctant to depart. It was just light snow and flurries around here all night.  

Since 6 p.m. Friday, we only added two inches to the total, leaving St. Albans with an impressive 15.7 inches of new snow from the storm.  

Not a lot of new snow reports had come in as of 7 a.m. Saturday, but I know we'll get updates later. The National Weather Service in South Burlington at around 6:20 this morning did issue an updated list of statewide snow totals, but most of the reports in that list were as of last evening.   

It seems like most of the snow totals in central and northern Vermont are clustered tightly around 14 to 16 inches sor so Burlington's official total was 16.1 inches. The storm there missed scoring in the top 20 list of greatest snowstorms by just 0.8 inches. 

It'll be interesting to see the updates. Especially along the Route 7 and Route 22A corridor in places like Charlotte, New Haven, Vergennes, areas like that.

Charlotte had already received 17 inches of new snow by late afternoon Friday, among the most in the state. Then, for a few hours last evening, a pretty intense band of snow coming off of Lake Champlain developed and socked areas along Routes 7 and 22A in the central and southern Champlain Valley.

The lake effect snow band surprised me, since there's not a huge area of open water left on Lake Champlain. Much of the lake is frozen, and you need open water to see lake effect snow.  Anyway, I'm curious to see how much snow this lake band added to the totals in and near Charlotte and Vergennes.

That band of snow off the lake has dissipated, and those flurries still playing around with us should end later this morning. 

The shoveling has only just begun in St. Albans, Vermont
but the snow piles are already getting pretty big. 

We're still looking at a nice day for either cleanup or playing in the snow, at least if you dress for it. It'll get sunnier and sunnier as the day wears on as temperatures hover in the teens. The last place to see the sun will be the Northeast Kingdom, where clouds could linger into the afternoon.

Road conditions in Vermont are better than yesterday, but most of them are still snow covered and slippery.  Things should continue improving on the highways during the day today.  I can hear a lot of state and local plow trucks rumbling back and forth in St. Albans early this morning. I'm sure the same is true in the rest of the state.

When there's a deep, fresh snowpack and the night is clear and calm temperatures really crash more much more than they would if there were a thin, old snowpack.

We'll quickly get down into the 5 to 20 below range the first half of tonight.  The fact that high pressure that will cause the clear skies will start to move east after midnight, introducing a light south wind.  That light breeze will halt the slide in temperatures late tonight, especially west of the Green Mountains. 

We still don't see much new snow in the forecast for at least the next week. 

A very quick, compact not really strong nor'easter off the New England coast might come close enough Tuesday morning to offer far eastern Vermont a dusting of snow, we'll see about that.  Other disturbances might throw a little light snow at us toward the end of next week.

After tonight, we're going to lose the cold air, too. At least for now, those repeated Arctic blasts we saw in January are on hiatus.  Expect near to a little above normal temperatures for the next week.  On some days, the warmer valleys might poke a little above freezing on some afternoons, but we won't have a huge thaw, either.