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| Snow-laden trees look ghostly in the pre-dawn darkness Saturday morning in St. Albans, Vermont. Wet snow has cut power to nearly 46,000 Vermont customers as of 5:30 a.m. |
The reason why I'm saying this is that it almost seems like everybody in Vermont is losing power as the wet, heavy snow continues overnight and early this morning. Nearly 46,000 homes and businesses were without power as of 5:30 a.m. and that number was continuing to rise as the snow continued.
The power outages are now statewide, instead of being just limited to southern Vermont. Forecasts of heavier snow in northern Vermont came true, so there's branches, trees and wires falling all over the place.
It's dangerous to be out driving, especially on rural roads. Not only is there deep snow and ice on the roads, trees and live wires are falling across them in some areas. Stay home this Saturday morning.
Not all that much additional snow will fall in the valleys today, maybe one to three inches, but the damage is done. It will take quite a lot of time to restore power to everybody, given the scope of the problem. This is likely the most damaging snowstorm in Vermont since December, 2014 when another big, wet, soggy storm cut power to 100,000 customers in Green Mountain State.
Even when the snow drops back to light snow and flurries, new power outages will probably crop up all day. In the valleys, temperatures will climb into the mid-30s. This will cause trees to shed their heavy snow loads. Branches will pop up back into place, possibly shearing wires off poles in the process.
We obviously don't have complete snow totals yet, but the few reports we have our impressive. They include 20.2 inches in Shrewsbury, 17 inches in Pomfret, 15.3 inches in Greensboro and 15 inches in St. Johnsbury.
If the power stays on (fingers crossed!) I'll update this post with more information a bit later this morning.
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