Vermont's Thanksgiving Weather Pleasant Enough This Year. That's Not Always The Case

The biggest travel trouble in Vermont this Thanksgiving
might be scraping TONS of frost from vehicles. 
Thanksgiving weather in Vermont isn't always this easy. 

If you have to drive anywhere in Vermont today for Thanksgiving, you're in luck. 

The forecast remains the same as we've been touting for a few days now. There's no weather issues, save for slick spots on bridges and overpasses early this morning from frost. 

 There's nothing else to worry about on the roads, at least in terms of weather. 

Temperatures will be quite close to normal. The average high temperature in Burlington on Thanksgiving is 39 degrees. The normal low is 26 degree. The forecast high for today in Burlington is 43 degrees The low this morning was right around 25.

This Thanksgiving will be the first in four years without measurable precipitation.  That's a little off normal, because most Thanksgivings tend to have at least a trace of precipitation, and fairly often, that's in the form of snow. 

On average, there's just 0.11 inches of precipitation on Thanksgiving and 0.5 inches of snow.

I really can't detect any trends in temperature and precipitation over the years on Thanksgiving. It does of course, hit on different dates each year, so that just increases the amount of potential randomness about the kind of conditions you'd see on the holiday.

The warmest Thanksgiving in Burlington, at least, was 63 degrees in 1941. The low temperature that day in 1941 was 52 degrees, which is the highest low temperature for Thanksgiving. 

The chilliest Thanksgiving on record was in the cold year of 1972, when it got down to 2 degrees. 

However, a great argument can be made that the actual coldest Thanksgiving was just four years ago, in 2018. The high temperature that day was 14 degrees, the most frigid "high" temperature for a Thanksgiving. Next morning, November 23, 2018, for the Black Friday sales, it was minus 1 in Burlington, setting a new mark for the earliest subzero reading on record.

The wettest and Thanksgiving was in 1920, when there was 0.95 inches of melted precipitation. That precipitation came as 7.5 inches of snow, so 1920 held the record for snowiest Thanksgiving, at least until 1971

That 1971 Thanksgiving produced 8.6 inches of snow in Burlington. This was a pretty epic snowstorm, and Burlington actually had among the smallest snowfall totals in the state that day.  

It snowed all day on Thanksgiving, 1971, with 20 inches reported in Waitsfield and Montpelier, a foot in Rutland and 14 inches in Rochester. That was the start of a Vermont snowy winter. The 108.9 inches of snow that fell on Burlington in the winter of 1971-72 still ranks as the seventh snowiest winter on record. 

We've seen some other memorable storms on or around Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving, 1950, the Great Appalachian Storm hit, bringing a killer blizzard west of the mountain range and extreme winds east. Burlington, Vermont in that storm had a gust to 72 mph, still its highest winds on record. 

So, overall, we're lucky, at least in terms of weather this Thanksgiving. The weather won't be memorable at all. But I do hope everyone has a happy, memorable and lovely Thanksgiving 2022.